Barneyisfat

I just finished a very interesting book on Evangelism in a postmodern world. “Live to Tell” by Brad Kallenberg is a good start to a difficult problem. His main thesis (and I’m quite bad at pairing things down, so bear with me) is that modern Evangelistic techniques fail to work in a postmodern age because they fail to live up to the Biblical model of Evangelism and were, in retrospect, merely a response to the modernist worldview. Brad believes that if the Christian church rejected modern evangelistic techniques and took up a more biblically based approach we would see much more fruit. Intriguing – here’s what I took from it.

The 4-spiritual laws were written to pair the Gospel message down to a more palatable form that the modern world could easily swallow. Modernists took the greatest story every told and stripped it of all narrative elements (because their thought structure deplores pure narrative) and reduced it to unmovable laws. It was a brilliant strategy to win the minds of a modern world and really rather effective.

A postmodern mind, on the other hand, thrives on narrative. We need stories.

We associate the word shoe with what goes on our feet because our mothers said “shoe” as they placed them on our feet. We associate the word with comfort, with support, and with protection because we have learned that shoes are good for all of these things. Most people have no concept of God. A modern with no concept of God craves to know the bear minimum, the facts that he or she can memorize by rote and spit back on a final exam. The postmodern wants to hear a story of who God is. He or she wants to know how we know that God is good.

Now, what has always bothered me about our current evangelization efforts (namely the idea that if we just get “them” to acknowledge our religion as factually superior they must convert) is that sometimes our religion isn’t factually superior. There are items in the Christian faith that simply don’t make much sense. Islam makes perfect sense – it factually corresponds to the way we think – do enough good to cancel out your bad and you’re in! That’s the way we think … Christianity is the opposite of how we naturally think. “Give up all your rights and surrender to a God and the amount of good or bad you do is irrelevant, but do good anyway,” doesn’t make much sense. At least, not to us.

A postmodern evangelistic effort is rooted in community. Bring people into the community and allow them to see how we live. The hope, of course, is that we live differently enough to attract life change. We learn the word “shoe” as our mother put them on our feet. We learn the word “Christian” as we see them in life and on TV. We learn what it means to be a Christian as we live life with them and watch how they interact one with another.

It’s a scary prospect, to invite non-believers into our churches and homes so that they can see the lives we live. It’s a lot easier to puke up 4 laws that reduce God to fit our minds’ conceptions. But, it’s also more biblical and more in line with church tradition.

At the moment I am working at a drug and alcohol rehab center in Samara, RU. We do this, every day. We invited alcoholics and drug addicts into our home that they may see how we live. We invite them to say “our” prays with us until the prayers become “their” prayers. We invite them to follow along as we read God’s holy scriptures until our lives show the truth behind the words. We invite them to join us in singing until the songs become a form of worship for them.

And it works.