Evangelism takes time

All of my life, I have never been at peace with myself as an evangelist. I recognize that God has blessed me with some very good experiences and given me some unique gifts; yet, I have never felt comfortable "leading" someone to the Lord. I know I've had a positive influence on some folks who have given their lives to Jesus, however, there is no single Christian for which I could honestly take credit. No one that I could say, "I was key in leading them to Christ."

This is something that bothers me from time to time. Of course, I realize that evangelism is a complicated process-- it's ultimately the work of God to draw a person to faith in Jesus. I'm fully aware that it's not about a special combination of Bible verses and witty arguments that stimulate salvation. Nevertheless, it seems that not much soul-saving goes on in my immediate proximity. Again, I find myself questioning if something's not-just-right in my heart.

Finally, it dawned on me to make this a matter of prayer. I started praying about "soul-saving," asking God to guide my mind and my heart for the purpose of making me, and our congregation, evangelistic.

Here's the greatest insight that I have received thus far: Evangelism is less like selling someone a product; it is more like making a friend.

Selling something to another does not involve any significant emotional attachment. Making a friend is emotionally risky. That's why some folks have such a hard time doing it.

I suppose the baseline medium of any good family is time. Family takes time. Church takes time. Evangelism takes time.

The formula (at least for God and me) goes something like this: I start seriously praying for a great change in my life. As I pray, I'm intuitively aware that something within me needs to change in order for God to carry out this His work. Soon thereafter, some particular aspect of my life starts getting completely screwy. In the past, I would get frustrated and sidetracked; now, I've learned that God is pointing me toward something. At the center of this storm in my life, is the thing that needs to change. (I should mention that it usually is something personal and difficult to accept.) Now, I can pray more specifically about this new discovery. God is good, he'll keep grinding along with me.

Since I started praying for evangelism, the storm has centered around time. I would boil it down to this: If the Sunshine Church of Christ is to become a greater "church"; we, the people of the Sunshine Church, are going to have to make time to be church.

For many of us, definitely including myself here, it will involve a complete paradigm shift in our thinking about time. Growing up on a farm, I understand the mentality of hard work. If I am working- I'm making good use of time. The problem is this: we work and work and work, and though we didn't really waste any time, we eventually realize that our time could have been better spent. Just like the father, who diligently works hard (for his family), but ultimately fails at fatherhood because he was too busy working; we are all, often, too busy to be church (family) for one another.

Our sense of individuality far outweighs our sense of community. We must figure out a way to change this. It will be difficult because the dominant culture, within which we live, highly promotes individualism. We will need to find the a counter-cultural path.

Imagine if for some reason you were forced to part with half of everything you own. Some of the choices would be easy, but eventually it would get very, very hard. It is the same with time. We know God has given us the time we need to do His will. Yet, we can't find time to do it. Something must give! I am convinced, that for you and me, in this day and age, time is our proverbial bull that we must grab by the horns.