Lausanne World Pulse – The Evolution of Evangelism: Ideas for the Road Ahead
By Mark Russell
Creative CommunicationThe next paradigm we need to develop is one of creative communication. Our world is going through extensive change. Businesses that relied on certain methods are struggling. Successful organizations realize that the goal is not to develop a new process; rather, it is to have a new attitude which recognizes that true capability comes from being continually adaptable and flexible. This means constant creativity.The same is true for the Church and evangelism. In my country and many others, we have seen the Church develop several different ways of “doing church.” Many churches have transitioned from a traditional approach to a contemporary, cell-based or house church model. In many cases these changes have been justified and implemented appropriately. However, there are some cases where people believe that their way is the only right way to “do church.” We are not to put our minds together and come up with an overarching model that would work everywhere. Rather, we need to stay in a state of constant creativity. We need to continually seek new ways to communicate the old story that has transformed our lives. One creative way is to simply tell the story of our own individual journey with Christ. No one else came to Christ like you did. No one else has learned from him the same things in the same way. Your story is always unique because you are unique. I have been in many settings where the willing evangelist has been taught a method for sharing his or her testimony in a way that strips the originality from it and makes each incomparable story sound something like a plagiarized tract. Instead of seeking ways to make our stories sound the same, we need to let them be different. In the inherent distinctions of our journeys the focus will drift to the one who has changed us. This is an essential element of creative communication. We each tell our own unique story so that the transcendent nature of Christ becomes increasingly clearer to the earnest seeker.
There are also people who believe their story is largely uninteresting. Perhaps they were never drug addicts or served time in prison. It does not matter who you are, where you come from or what you have done; if your journey is not a wonderful, beautiful story of defeat and victory, trials and jubilations, marked by an ever increasing amount of joy and peace, then you need to ask yourself what kind of journey you are on. If your story is not worth sharing, perhaps you need to reevaluate your journey. Such honest and earnest self-evaluation can be liberating. Life with Christ is not boring and dreary, it is a dream come true for those who have tasted the sweetness of living water.
Endnote
1. Hunter, George. 2000. The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 47.
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Mark Russell is a doctoral student at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, USA. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky with his wife and their two children. |