Evangelists

[zorkan]

How do you cope with them?
Do you just ignore them because arguing is fruitless?
Walked up a nice hill a few days ago on my own.
At peace with the world when walking down, until confronted by 2 evangelists walking up.
Got an earful of stuff like the world is flat and 6,000 years old, and if I don't believe in Jesus I'll be burning for all eternity.
How is the soul flammable?
My guard was down, but I also managed to ask them about Noah's Ark and Adam and Eve.
I learned that fossils are proof of the Flood and the snake spoke in Hebrew.
I wasted my breath on pointing out that all drinking water would be saline and snakes can't speak.
If the earth is flat then what's holding it up?
Appears that Hell does.

 

[zorkan]

Being the little devil I am:

"The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose."

C. S. Lewis

[billy rubin]

tell them that you are going to sacrifice your children to satan next tuesday and invite them to eat the livers with you afterwards

[Dark Lightning]

   Back in the '80s I knew a guy who made knives as a hobby. He was headed out the door (his house) and a couple of evangelicals approached him. He said he was on his way to a Satanic ritual and showed them the knife he was going to sacrifice the baby with. He's a big burly guy and makes a great crazy face. They took off running.

These days, he'd be arrested for brandishing that knife.

[zorkan]

They keep me out of town centres these days, standing in the main square shouting into a microphone.
London, Birmingham, Coventry are the worst I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxoTbIxr7Vs

I could lose it and get arrested myself.
The loving god might also burn me in hell.

[GreenBlaze]

I am a Christian myself. Some people know how to do this correctly evangelising. Online is different from real life face to face. Different people have different approaches and not all church's preach this heavy style of hell and damnation, but they preach the message of love and forgiveness. A more Episcopalian/Anglican church may be restrained on this preaching of hell and damnation. Everyone is considered to have their own talents in the faith how to help, but may be some of these people do not have that skill and may be forcing themselves to do this thinking they are doing good, when they may not be and need to adapt or do something else. May be some to, they are doing ok for what they represent, these things need to be looked at. This is not what I attempt to do, I am not an evangelist myself.

Just last week a church I attended had a sermon about this and I took the transcript for it and have seen this today and will share it in this thread-
See below-

Anyone who has ever watched a street evangelist in London, if I can call them that, would have observed that they plough a very lonely furrow.
When in full flow, they are often spectacularly ignored. Most people pass them by. Indeed, they often visibly quicken their step in order to do so.
Well, such defenders of the faith, however devout they may be, are often regarded as crackpots.

Now, they may, of course, be very good people. American style TV evangelists are another breed that attract similar criticism.
Audiences are often subjected to long ,loud, aggressive, judgmental rants that sometimes feel like, or more like mental illness than genuine evangelical zeal.

Now I am of course describing the extreme end of the evangelist spectrum but it is clear that any heavy handed attempts to advance the faith and win converts are often seen to be wholly ineffective.

And they're seen as futile because their methods feel forced, impersonal, and frankly cringe worthy to a modern audience. And one even starts to question the real motives of the evangelist.

Now, as one critical Christian voice has put it, evangelism frequently fails because it treats people as projects rather than individuals.
A point I think well made because it leads to a feeling of being used rather than of being welcomed and loved.

And sometimes evangelist strategies can seem to rely heavily on fear-based tactics. Now, evangelism, as you've heard, is the outcome of the story in this morning's gospel reading.  Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. And we see Jesus breaking all the social, racial, and gender barriers of the time to offer salvation to a marginalized outcast.

And she's a woman with a check of history. We're led to believe that she is a promiscuous woman, but she fears judgment. She's clearly very needy and has a genuine spiritual hunger or thirst better analogy in the story. So when Jesus shocks her by speaking to her and asks for a drink, he then redirects the conversation to living water, offering her eternal spiritual satisfaction. and she is transformed by his words.

She recognizes him as a prophet and she goes back to her village with great excitement and becomes a witness for Jesus.
And for what it's worth, according to tradition, she is the first recorded evangelist. Now of course past and present there have been there are many people like this woman. They have made mistakes in their life and they know it. They have led disappointing lives.

They've let themselves down. Maybe they've let others down. They feel rejected, marginalized, unfulfilled, spiritually empty. They're lost.
They feel there must be something better, but they don't know how to get there. And many people are still looking for a deeper sense of belonging, but don't know how to articulate this. Now, over the years, I've had many rewarding conversations with individuals
who, after they realize that I'm not a psychological threat, reveal their often deep-seated spiritual cravings.

And these have usually been warm conversations and sometimes with virtual strangers,
people I've met while away and people I knew that I may not see again. And often people show their appreciation for the insights that have been shared. And that's two-way. It's reciprocal. We learn from each other.

And in these casual encounters, you never quite know what seeds might have been sown that may later come to fruition in some bigger commitment. But I do know this. Such conversations would never have been fulfilling or even had developed at all
if I'd gone in as if into battle to put it bluntly bashed them over the head with God.

By taking an exploratory gentle approach, God is slowly discerned in the depths of their lives. Even though initially individuals may not quite see it in those terms.

Yes, the deeper biblical dimensions may come later if and when their spiritual consciousness starts to expand.
Now I think we all know I guess many of us have had conversations like this. I think we probably all know that listening and talking to people on matters spiritual with an attitude of openness is always valuable and rewarding and it respects individuality and I've always found myself want to urge fellow Christians to talk to others openly about spiritual matters but keep the faith content soft at least in the first instance.

Most people have their own matters of ultimate concern. Deep life issues particular to them about birth or relationships, death, and of course for many people is the fear that their lives have no real meaning. Questions surface, why are we here and where are we going?

Scottish theologian William Barklay said, "Some individuals don't yet know the why of their existence." And very often people need guidance in exploring that. Now this of course what I'm describing here is not evangelism in the conventional sense but it is first and foremost about connection reaching out with love and understanding. It's being relational. It's about establishing trust.

Just as Jesus, you sense, connected with the woman at the well and established trust. I don't think I've ever really found it helpful to kick off by discussing the tenets of faith. We have to start where people are now, which means it's important to actively listen to hear their story.
And it could be a two-way process because we can learn from each other's spiritual perceptions.

And what surprises me in those sort of conversations I've had is just how much spiritual sensibility people start to demonstrate once they begin to open up. But conversely, I've noted how ignorant some are about religiosity and the spectrum of possibilities that it offers. And it's not their fault.
There are narrow views which have been received in early life and never challenged.

Intelligent people can hold infantile views about God instilled when they were younger and not surprisingly they have long since rejected them.
They are clearly not aware of the broader theological spiritual spectrum that exists. But then why should they be?
Perhaps we need to ask those at the margins what the church can do for them rather than telling them so that we are better able to help them in their spiritual search and help them to find the why of their existence.

And this requires a sensitive relational bottom up approach. It's evangelism reimagined. And what I'm saying of course is nothing new.
But it seems clear that we need to tread carefully with those who are spiritually bereft in this troubled and disorientating world.
It's no surprise that there is currently so much suspicion and hostility directed towards our faith because it's so often wilfully distorted to support all kinds of warped ideologies.

And of course, there are many other spiritualities and belief systems competing for attention. But I sense and I believe something is waiting to be kindled in the hearts of people outside. They are looking to discover a depth dimension to their lives.
They are looking for living water.

We are called to help them in that search to invite them to engage with the beauty, the mystery and poetics of Christianity,
but hopefully reccast the vastly different t world of the 21st century. Seeking is a process. But our hope is that with our help, their search will lead them to see that we follow the ultimate source of truth and goodness. And hopefully they will come to drink deeply from this world.

[Dark Lightning]

PREACH IT! 

[billy rubin]

i have zero problems with evangelists. if they approach me, i tell them that i am not interested and they thank me and walk away. or sometimes i discuss theology or scripture with them, if theyre open to conversation. i dont know why people are so hostile to them.

as a quaker in a big city farmers market, i had many conversations with roman catholics, reformed protestants, evangelical pentacostalists, baptists, ethiopian protestants, norse pagans, new age pagans, ISKONs, sunni muslims, witnesses, and on and on.

all of them were interesting to talk to. nobody ever berated me about the state of my soul, although i can see how that might be unwelcome. but it has never occurred to me anywhere i couldnt continue walking away from.