Some thinking about evangelism...

I've been doing some thinking about evangelism recently - this popped up in my reading recently.....


"In the emerging culture, the more you have been indoctrinated in modern evangelism training, the more adroit you are at memorising the lead-ins and lines and arguments and closings, the less effective you will be in helping the people God loves and misses to come home to him. Why?

Because they don't want a sales pitch, and they don't want their conversations to be steered, and they don't want to be preached to or "closed" or "handled." Postmoderns don't believe in hype and won't believe the hype. Fed up with commercials, they hunger for real communication". (A is for Abductive Sweet, McClaren.

I find myself in our context agreeing more than disagreeing.

Comments

Gordon said…
I thought I'd give the blogger comments a whirl...
4:52 PM
Anonymous said…
Yes, you are right, people just want to be loved genuinely and they see straight through you...

I have a degree in Social Work and am now a SA Officer however, I very rarely draw on my Social Work skills but rather administer love to people, it works far better than the professional routine.

I think sometimes as a movement we are trying to hard to professionalise things and we are loosing the plot in the meantime.

In our context I have seen angry men reduce to kittens just by being shown kindness and love (genuine that is) when all else has failed.

Anyway enough of this. It is my soap box issue.

God Bless

Glenda M
10:15 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play
Read more