Taboo! [Part 2]
29.04.08 14:20 Filed in: Leadership
When did relational evangelism become such a cop-out?
It’s right. It’s the best way to evangelize by far. We talk about it as Christians not because of it’s effectiveness but many times because there’s no way to track it and so we feel relieved of our "Christianly duties".
We have a military base in our town. It's pretty famous actually. It's been in 2 different movies, A Soldier's Story and Biloxi Blues. Elvis Presley went through basic training there. It's called Fort Chaffee. In January of this year there was a huge brush fire that burnt down 150 abandoned barracks. In a matter of hours this raging fire tore through an important part of our town's history. In fact my grandpa stayed at Fort Chaffee after his time in Korea for 3 months before going back home to Rockford, IL. We went out to Chaffee after the fire (he happened to be in town and wanted to see it) and the very barracks he stayed in were gone. All that's left of these barracks are the chimneys and foundations hidden beneath the charred remains of the once epic buildings.
Any of you that have seen Chaffee, it was amazing. I didn’t realize how many old barracks we had out there. That destruction was from a fire that lasted a few hours, that has long since been quenched. But we have friends, family, students, etc that are going to a fire that will never be quenched and many of us are so desensitized to that statement, it doesn’t affect our hearts the way it used to.
It’s taboo. We just don't talk about it anymore.
I'm not saying that we all need to go find our lunch tables or anything.
DOES IT GRIEVE YOUR HEART TO HEAR THIS PHRASE, PEOPLE ARE DYING AN GOING TO HELL!?
Can I be brutally honest? I'm a pastor. And it really doesn't bother me that "people" are dying and going to hell. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe you're more spiritual than I am. But if you were honest with yourself you would probably share my sentiments as twisted as they sound. So what are we going to do about this? I'll tell you what I did. I got ahold of a picture of Fort Chaffee and on the back I wrote down every name I could think of that needs a relationship with Jesus Christ. Then out loud, to myself, I said this phrase, "People are dying and going to hell." But I plugged in each of their names... because maybe I didn't care about people, but I care about that person. When there's a face to it, all of a sudden it matters more. Who knows maybe after all of this, eventually, I can care about generics. Maybe it won't be so taboo anymore.
Fort Chaffee Pic
It’s right. It’s the best way to evangelize by far. We talk about it as Christians not because of it’s effectiveness but many times because there’s no way to track it and so we feel relieved of our "Christianly duties".
We have a military base in our town. It's pretty famous actually. It's been in 2 different movies, A Soldier's Story and Biloxi Blues. Elvis Presley went through basic training there. It's called Fort Chaffee. In January of this year there was a huge brush fire that burnt down 150 abandoned barracks. In a matter of hours this raging fire tore through an important part of our town's history. In fact my grandpa stayed at Fort Chaffee after his time in Korea for 3 months before going back home to Rockford, IL. We went out to Chaffee after the fire (he happened to be in town and wanted to see it) and the very barracks he stayed in were gone. All that's left of these barracks are the chimneys and foundations hidden beneath the charred remains of the once epic buildings.
Any of you that have seen Chaffee, it was amazing. I didn’t realize how many old barracks we had out there. That destruction was from a fire that lasted a few hours, that has long since been quenched. But we have friends, family, students, etc that are going to a fire that will never be quenched and many of us are so desensitized to that statement, it doesn’t affect our hearts the way it used to.
It’s taboo. We just don't talk about it anymore.
I'm not saying that we all need to go find our lunch tables or anything.
DOES IT GRIEVE YOUR HEART TO HEAR THIS PHRASE, PEOPLE ARE DYING AN GOING TO HELL!?
Can I be brutally honest? I'm a pastor. And it really doesn't bother me that "people" are dying and going to hell. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Maybe you're more spiritual than I am. But if you were honest with yourself you would probably share my sentiments as twisted as they sound. So what are we going to do about this? I'll tell you what I did. I got ahold of a picture of Fort Chaffee and on the back I wrote down every name I could think of that needs a relationship with Jesus Christ. Then out loud, to myself, I said this phrase, "People are dying and going to hell." But I plugged in each of their names... because maybe I didn't care about people, but I care about that person. When there's a face to it, all of a sudden it matters more. Who knows maybe after all of this, eventually, I can care about generics. Maybe it won't be so taboo anymore.
Fort Chaffee Pic
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