Glen Scrivener likes to say that pastoral care is evangelism for Christians, and evangelism is pastoral care for those who aren’t Christians.
There’s a lot of insight in that aphorism, but one angle is to notice that you’re doing the same thing when you talk to your friends in church to your friends outside: you’re bringing Jesus into your conversation and applying him and what he’s done to the issue at hand.
Glen often comments that he wishes after church we didn’t just talk about the football, or whatever the latest buzz is about in the news, but actually spoke of Jesus to each other. I’d like to push that idea a little further.
We’re supposed to learn how to behave inside the church, before that behaviour spreads to the world, like a little leaven spreading through the lump (though Jesus intended that analogy negatively!). The pattern is first the garden, then the land of Eden, then to the ends of the earth (Genesis 2-3), it’s Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria, then to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28). It’s start here where we are and then build beyond.
There are two reasons for this. The first is simply that the church is the people of God. This is your new household, this is the place you’ve been placed to grow, this is your ‘where we are.’ Beyond that it’s also the people you’re called to grow with. The point isn’t simply to get as many sheep into the barn as possible but for all in Christ to grow up mature. You speaking of Christ to your brother and sister (in the church) is as important as you speaking Christ to your neighbour (outside the church). Perhaps even more important.
The second is if the church is ‘the life of the world’ as Schmemann famously said, and Leithart loves to repeat, then perhaps we can also say that the church is the ‘school’ of the world. It’s the pattern of the kingdom that’s supposed to be spreading out into communities such that as the church lives God’s way, God’s ways start to change the environment around them. If we speak Christ to our brothers and sisters, we will speak Christ to our neighbours. Not just because that’s a good way to ‘practice’ as though the main event were outside the church’s walls, but because we will become the sort of people who speak Christ to those we meet. We’ll be trained for life in the kingdom, and we’ll find then that God will build the kingdom where we go. Our participation in his building is to live a life according to his pattern.
So, at church on Sunday, talk about Jesus over coffee to those you chat with.
Except, that’s actually kind of awkward isn’t it? I find it difficult too. Some of this is our British inability to be genuine about anything, it seems really twee to just say to someone else ‘that’s what I love about Jesus’ in the context of our struggles and triumphs. It isn’t though, it’s life.
It is a little different when you are (or have been) a Pastor in a setting because people talk to me differently. They’re much more likely to tell me their problems and I’m often in a mode of listening where I’m either thinking “what wisdom do I have here” (not bad) or “how can I point them to Jesus” (usually better). What I’m saying is perhaps we should all have a “how can I point them to Jesus” question in our heads.
For a bit anyway, if it becomes second nature to just talk about Jesus then we’ll find you’ve overcome your Britishness and you just talk about him. In that circumstance we will, Glen assures us, have become excellent evangelists, because talking about Jesus is second nature. You don’t need to wait until then, much like chatting Jesus on a Sunday, you start by starting.
Want to be bolder in evangelism? Try telling the gospel to Christians in the context of whatever is going on in their lives. You’ve got a double bonus: first they’ll be helped by it—it’s what they need after all—and second they’re already into Jesus so are going to give you a good reception. If any Christians do scoff at you talking about Jesus in the context of everything (even if you make a hash of it) then they have their own problems.
Church is the main event. Church teaches us how to live. The Church is where we learn to be ‘kingdom people;’ which really just means ‘what you learned and were trained in inside church done outside church.’ The Church is God’s plan A to rescue the world and for the Father to transform the world into the image of the Son by the Spirit.
Big fan of Church.
Photo by Daniel Tseng on Unsplash
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