Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on June 25, 2023. Based on Matthew 10:25-39.
Have you all heard of Brother Jed? He was a traveling preacher, at one time based in Columbia and later based in Terre Haute. He traveled around the country, mostly the Midwest, mostly visiting college campuses. He and his followers would carry signs telling everyone how evil they are and would yell at them, preaching about the coming judgment. He visited Missouri S&T several times while I’ve lived here. Although he passed away last year, I suspect that his wife and children and other followers are still carrying on his ministry.
Those of us involved in campus ministry would always talk about him when he visited. We unanimously disagreed with his methods. Jason Smith, who is the advisor to Chi Alpha and also the manager of Coffeesmiths, calls it “inoculating people to the Gospel.” If the only way people hear about the good news of God’s love is through such hateful, confrontational people, who just yell at them without trying to know them, they won’t be open to more loving, relational evangelism. We in campus ministry are united in our methods of building those relationships, seeing the needs of college students, and meeting them where they are.
I need to tell you about another experience I had. Two weeks ago, we held Pride in downtown Rolla. There was a small group of protesters. I’m not sure that they all came together, but they all hovered on the edge together. By and large, they were conversational in their approach. But one woman was wearing a shirt that said, in huge letters, “ASK ME WHY YOU DESERVE HELL.” Now, no matter what you believe, no matter whether you are a universalist like me or an annihilationist or infernalist with a Calvinist or Arminian theology, regardless, this is NOT the way to start a conversation! If you approach someone with the attitude that they need to be told how evil they are, they will simply shut down and the conversation will be over before it even begins.
But these aren’t the only bad forms of evangelism. Along Acorn Trail, I will periodically see people set up with a rack of flyers. I think they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I run by too fast and too far away to be sure. When I’m getting my morning exercise or otherwise enjoying God’s Creation, I have no interest in whatever message they might be selling. Of course, Jehovah’s Witnesses are also well-known for door-to-door proselytizing. Like, yes, by all means, interrupt whatever I’m doing to tell me something I didn’t want to know.
What is the common denominator to all of these bad forms of evangelism? They are fundamentally focused on the evangelizer’s perspective. They start from a position of what the evangelizer wants to say and wants others to hear, rather than starting from a position of understanding what people themselves want to hear.
In a sense, these forms of evangelism are easy. They require no real understanding of other people’s perspectives. You can be like Brother Jed and assume all people are basically evil, and craft a message accordingly. You can have pre-printed tracts that have a generic message for all people. You can have your Four Spiritual Laws in hand and go through a rehearsed speech. Basically, all you need is a hammer, because every potential convert is a nail.
That is not at all what Jesus taught his disciples to do. He didn’t send them to stand on street corners and harangue passersby. He didn’t send them with a formulaic message and just-so stories and pat answers. Instead, he told them to go and live with people in their villages. Learn their needs, fulfill their needs, and bring them into community. In so doing, they would build the kingdom of God.
But what is the kingdom of God exactly? In progressive circles, it is more common to speak of the kin-dom of God, without the g, to state that we are all God’s family, God’s kin, and all need to be brought into a familial relationship. That’s good and removes the patriarchal overtones, and also makes it more understandable to those of us who live in a modern democracy rather than historical monarchy. However, I prefer to keep a reference to God’s reign. The kingdom of God is a transformed world in which God is sovereign, where God rules over all people, over a renewed social order.
The kingdom of God comes about when we are aligned with God’s will. This is the vertical dimension. To be ruled by God, we must study God’s Word, God’s message to the world best expressed in the person of Jesus Christ. Every day, every moment, there are forces in society that want to pull us away from God. We are tempted to pursue money, or power, or fame. We are drawn into groups that teach us to hate some other group. We are asked to choose between what we believe to be true and honorable and just, versus what allows us to fit in. Submitting to God’s reign requires a constant effort to turn away from these worldly distractions and towards God’s message of hope and love.
But the kingdom of God has a horizontal dimension as well: how we relate to others. Where things often go awry is that we believe our way of understanding God—the vertical dimension—is the way that others must believe, too. So, we focus our efforts on convincing other people that they are wrong and we are right. We set up a win-lose dichotomy. We point to ourselves as models of faithfulness, of true belief. This of course leaves us open to accusations of hypocrisy, and rightly so. If you consider Christianity as a whole over the past two millennia, hypocrisy is our defining characteristic. From the Crusades to liberate the Holy Land—and pillage and plunder it while we were there—to the Indian boarding schools to the Inquisition and pogroms, we have largely failed to live up to our ideals. As long as we are convinced of the rightness of our beliefs and our responsibility to make others believe as we do, we will continue to transgress the spirit of the Gospel.
Unfortunately, we inherit this legacy, so we have to work extra hard for our message to escape its context. Communication isn’t just what is said, but also what is heard, and what is heard depends on context and experience. Let me give you an example. In 2005, I quit drinking. I didn’t make anyone else quit, and didn’t really talk about it. I would still hang out with my neighbors and friends and family who all drank. I would often drink non-alcoholic beer. No big deal, right? But some of them apparently took my teetotaling as a judgment on their actions. Whether they had a guilty conscience or associated me with rabid temperance preachers, my simple act of not drinking was interpreted as an indictment of their personal choices.
In the same way, we need to take care that our message about our faith is received with a spirit of love. We have to overcome the inoculation others have received from bad theology and bad preachers. This is hard. In fact, it’s impossible for us to do on our own. But Jesus’s training to his disciples was that God would go with them. They wouldn’t need to rely on their own abilities and knowledge. Rather, Jesus gave them authority over unclean spirits—that is, they could heal people by Jesus’s power, not their own. Elsewhere he counseled his disciples that they shouldn’t make up their minds in advance of what they were going to say, but rather to rely on the Holy Spirit to speak through them. Yes, spreading God’s message is hard, but we’re just the instruments of God’s shalom, of God’s reign breaking through. It is God’s strength working through us that will transform hearts and minds.
I’m reminded of something a spiritual advisor once told me. He said that in building God’s kingdom, we do perhaps 2% of the work and God does 98%. The way you burn out is if you try to do, say, 3%, or even worse, try to do 100%. But God does ask that you do your full 2%, not just 1% and certainly not zero. We can’t just sit back and wait for God’s kingdom to emerge, but we can be secure in the knowledge that God will do most of the work, as long as we try.
So, I’ve talked a lot about what not to do, about bad models of evangelism. What are some good models? Let’s turn back to what Jesus taught his disciples. He said, Go into all the villages, healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand. First, go: It is not sufficient to wait for people to come to you. You must actively seek people out to share God’s love. I consider the patrons at the Mission to be part of my ministry, as well as one of the clerks at the Mobil On the Run and my barber. Remember, our goal is to build God’s kingdom, not to build a church.
Next, serve people and seek their well-being. Any time there are two people involved, there are three realities. There is an objective reality, your own subjective reality, and the other person’s subjective reality. Consider the case of giving a gift. To make it concrete, suppose I give a gift of $200 running shoes, the same model that I use, to one of my elk-hunting friends. The objective reality is that they are shoes intended for running that cost $200. From my perspective, I believe they are great shoes. They’re the kind I use and love, so I think that my friend will love them, too. But let’s see things from his perspective. First, is he a runner? Some of my hunting partners are runners, others are not. Second, are they the right size? Did I ask him what size shoe he wears, or just go buy them? Third, even if he’s a runner and the shoes are the right size, they may not be the right shoes for him. There is more to a shoe than just the length and width. Maybe his feet have some different needs than mine do. Maybe his running style requires support in different places than mine do.
What I’m saying is, even if a particular way of understanding God and understanding Jesus’s teachings fits you well, it may not fit someone else. To be ambassadors for Christ, we need to learn other people’s needs. We need to see the world from their perspective and care for their whole selves, physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Only when we are in right relationship with a person can they hear our message of love and inclusion. Only when we are aligned horizontally can we help them become aligned vertically. Instead of pointing them towards ourselves, instead of telling them what we believe, we point them towards the Source of all goodness and encourage them to find their own path to the Divine. Let us strive to focus always on bringing about God’s reign in this world, not by forcing others to believe and act as we do, but by seeing the world through their eyes and showing them their own path that will lead them to the Truth. Amen.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
2 Replies to “The Vertical and the Horizontal”
Comments are closed.