Blog.

The people at the conference I attended spoke of the difficulty of trying the “traditional” model in the Arabic world, and how people often responded in very rude, offended, and sometimes hostile manners.  If I remember correctly, one of the speakers was even arrested in the middle east for blasphemy.  Traditional evangelism would imply a Muslim believer would have to renounce Islam, accept Christ, attend a church and stop wearing those funny clothes.  In trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, we are basically insulting their culture, their families, beliefs, and traditions.  Being Muslim is much more than having a certain set of beliefs.  It’s an IDENTITY and the CULTURE of an entire group of people.  Asking them to “convert” and become “Christian” is asking them to give all that up.  It’s like asking a stereotypical American west-coast-long-hair-surfer-dude to become Chinese.  He may be able to get paperwork that says he’s a member of the Chinese nation and he can learn to speak mandarin, but he’ll never truly be Chinese.  He’ll never be completely accepted by the native people.  He’ll always feel somewhat out of place, because his culture and identity is a west-coast-surfer-dude.

Consider this visual:

The big circle in the middle represents the Kingdom of God.  The small circles represent the various cultural belief groups: C=Christians, M=Muslims, J=Jews. (you could substitute others)  With the traditional model, we’ve tried to get the people from the other small circles to “convert” into whatever circle we’re in.  This is where I believe we’re misguided, and it is rarely effective.

Let’s take another look:

In this model, the outreach goal is refocused on guiding people into the Kingdom of God, not one another’s smaller circles.  The idea is that a Jew or Muslim can be in the Kingdom of God and still be a Jew or a Muslim.  They don’t have to look like “us” in order to be loved by God and invited to live in the Kingdom.  The common bond between all people that enter the kingdom is that there is ONE way in.  This is represented in the picture by the arrows pointing to the Kingdom circle.  Think of all three arrows representing the same thing: the “straight path”; the “way”.

If you ask a Muslim believer to define what the straight path is, “Jesus” probably won’t be their first answer.  But, if your conversation starts with the Qur’an and fill in the gaps using the Old Testament/Psalms, it becomes increasingly clear that Jesus is the messiah and more than just a prophet.  As more questions are raised about who Jesus was, the gospels can be introduced into the conversation.  Then you encounter a passage where Jesus says “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me…” (John 14:6).  To a Muslim, this passage might be paraphrased: “I am the straight path...  No one enters into the Kingdom except through me”…

Once a person accepts Jesus as the way, the messiah, the savior, they move into the Kingdom.  That doesn’t mean they have to start attending your church, speaking “christianese“, and go on a steady diet of Tomlin and Hillsong worship music.  In fact, Muslims can still go to Mosque and continue the traditional prayers 5 times a day.  (I’ve heard stories of entire Mosques becoming Muslim followers of Jesus.)  Jews can still celebrate the traditional feasts and customs of their heritage.  After all, the goal of most (all?) of these traditions is to honor God.  Who can argue with that?

The goal is to engage people in love, honoring instead of insulting, building relationships using common ground to launch meaningful conversations that get straight to the heart.

Next up – “Israel: EPIC”

In my last post, we looked at the importance the Kingdom of God and why it is integral in discussions with those of the Islam faith.  In this post, I want to examine the traditional view of Christian “evangelism” and why I believe outreach to the Muslim community (and many other backgrounds) as a whole has not been very effective.

First of all, I really dislike the word “evangelism”.  It brings to mind memories from my fairly conservative upbringing of gospel tracts, door knocking, and awkward, forced conversations that consisted of trying to shove the “good news” down the throats of some poor unsuspecting neighbor. (who was probably a member of the local Baptist congregation anyway)

Ok, so I didn’t really do much door knocking and handing out of tracts, but I know a lot of people who did.  And I’ve had conversations with people who have a distaste in their mouths from having those conversations forced on them.  I’ve even been the guy on the receiving end of those conversations, and they’re never fun.  Who wants a stranger to approach them uninvited, only to insist that you’re a sinner and a terrible person, and that if you hear/believe/repent/confess/be baptized you will be saved?  Heck, that’s hard enough to do if you have an actual relationship with the person, but to a complete stranger it’s pretty ludicrous.

The main problem with this model (and variants of this model) is it divides the world into those you consider “saved” and those that are “lost”.  The goal is then to somehow get the “lost” group into the “saved” group.  In order to do this, churches throughout the years have developed all kinds of formulas and methods on how to “reach the lost”.  My issue with this is that it tends to produce a mindset that views the “lost” as a project to be won.  When people start thinking this way, they tend to be so devoted to “saving” the “lost” person that they often forget to love them.  They miss the matters of the heart, the needs of the individual, they often fail to see that instead of forced theology, the “lost” person might just really need a FRIEND.  After all, the greatest commandments (according to Jesus – Matthew 22:34-40) were to ‘Love God’ and ‘Love others’ (my paraphrase), NOT ‘go force your beliefs on people so that they might be saved’.

Now, I’m not condemning all those that believe in this model, have handed out tracts, etc.  I don’t think anyone who decides to engage in outreach of any kind goes into it thinking that people are “projects”.  I’m sure that God, despite some not-so-friendly evangelistic models, still changed hearts through those efforts.  I owe much of who I am today to these very people who were extremely passionate about evangelism, and I have the utmost respect for their dedication and love for God.  But…

I believe there is a better way.  to be continued…