Bait-and-Switch Evangelism or Do-able Evangelism

I'm addicted to the podcast of This American Life, the stories and themes are fascinating. One of the more recent podcasts was on the theme of "bait and switch." Held up as a classic example of this tactic was the efforts of evangelical Christians to convert nonbelievers. The segment ended with an interview with Jim Henderson. I posted the interview on TFC's website here.

His websites are offthemap.com and doableevangelism.com and his book, Evangelism without Additives can be ordered here.

Here are some excerpts from this interview:

From interviewer, "Jim's 5 years of pastoring taught him that sinners like Jesus but they don't like Jesus' people, causing him to rethink how he was approaching nonbelievers."

Jim, "I was tired of thinking of you as a project and not you as a person."

"Most of the ways [we] observe evangelism being done, as it's being marketed - the large rallies, all that stuff - the statistics are just abysmal about the number of converts that actually stick. It does not result in what the church wants. The church wants disciples; Jesus didn't say 'go into the world and make converts' he said, 'go into the world and make disciples', which is a completely different project... Jesus did not model this behavior. He did not have to lower himself to a bait-and-switch. So this has been an adoption of American consumerism. It's largely based upon sales... I want people to follow Jesus, but I'm done with the whole sales pitch."


"Doable evangelism does not concern itself with converting people, it's not about sales, it's about connecting. There are three spiritual practices for connecting with people.
1) Notice people.
2) Pray for people behind their backs
3) Actually listen"

"Our goal is to get Christians engaged in the process, our concern is not with results. Our goal is teaching Christians not to be jerks. Our goal is helping Christians learn to be normal... Our goal is to help people build friendships... that's how human beings change, through relationships. When people like each other, the rules change."

"I'm much more concerned about the starting line of faith. Why don't we try to get them across the starting line, rather than the finish line."
___________________________________________________________

The reason this resonates with me is because I spent most of my life as the "bait-and-switch guy." I would befriend people simply for the sake of converting them. If I could tell there wasn't much chance of that happening, I'd move onto another person. I was operating under this method as late as the early days of pastoring TFC. I could post some pretty sick examples but for the sake of personal pride, I won't.

My motives were honest, I wanted people to meet Jesus. My methods, however, were very UN-Christlike. The guilt I would feel for taking too long to turn the conversation toward Jesus and the weight of "if I don't do this right, they might burn in hell" was very unhealthy.

The answer, then, is to build relationships that have NO AGENDA, to love people simply for the sake of LOVING THEM. It's hard to say that, as explained in the interview, because evangelicals have guilt if they don't "produce fruit."
I love how Jim was cool with the the interviewer's branding his method as "all bait and no switch." A life truly lived for Jesus is all that's needed. A person intriqued by that life will eventually open up dialogue about what that life is all about. But even if they never do, they are still humans created in God's image, deserving of our love, respect and service. To love, without ever seeing that friend make the decision you'd die for them to make has to be similar to Christ's self-sacrificial love from the cross. How many billions of people did Jesus die for that will never accept that love and forgiveness? Yet he still poured out his life.

This requires slowing down, rather than building a lot of shallow and short-lived relationships with a lot of poeple, you build deeper and longer relationships with fewer people. This has been very hard for me to grasp but I'm beginning to get there.

One encouraging stat that Jim shared is that it often takes 4 years for a person to decide to follow Christ. This gives me hope because I'm about 1.5 years into a friendship that looks like what Jim is proposing, this friend has been exploring faith in Christ off and on since we became friends.

Also following Jim's idea, this friend first became interested in Christ because of what they saw in Erin and my lives. To directly quote this friend, "I'm not so sure about my faith, but I love yours and I have so much faith in you so I figure that means something, right?"

Yes, yes it does.



Following this line of thinking, check out this video David posted to his blog.

Christians Trying to Convert Non-Christians from Rethink Mission on Vimeo.

Doing my part for church growth

This is tongue-in-cheek obviously, but there's a lot of truth to it, too. My personal role in contributing to the growth of quickly growing attractional churches could be described this way:

Contributing to the growth of local megachurches, one disgruntled family at a time.

Sunday's Advisory Council Meeting

Sunday was our monthly Advisory Council meeting and I'm pleased to report we made some significant decisions for our church. As I've been sharing, the new direction for Trinity Family is to commit ourselves to Simplicity, Community and Generosity. Here are a few of the decisions from Sunday that will help move us in that new direction.

1) Simplify and enhance our website I'd been thinking that our current website is too 'brochure-like' and not set up for community building. We're also paying $50/month for web hosting. We're going to switch to a server that only charges $12/ month, rewrite the content to fit our new direction and integrate Church Community Builder into our current site. It's going to take a few months to make this happen; first we'll redo our current site and then we'll launch and integrate CCB.

2) Refreshments Not a huge financial decision and we're already doing it, but we formalized the decision to redirect some of the money we're now saving on rent toward Sunday morning refreshments.

3) Giving to the under resourced This is what has me the most pumped. TFC is already modeling generosity in the fact that we give away 13% of our offerings; 7% is for for local ministry through our district and 6% goes to our overseas mission work. A part of our denomination's mission funding goes toward Nazarene Compassionate Ministries.
But beyond that 13%, we're trying to find more ways to give. Decisions such as cutting rent and using a cheaper web service are all ways to cut expenses so we can give more. We're cutting as much operating cost as possible so more money can be given away!
We haven't finalized it yet but we're currently considering allocating these newly freed resources in this way; %30 for helping people within our own congregation, 60% given to organizations that serve the poor in our local community, such as Gardner Multi-services Center and 10% will be given to efforts to serve the global poor. We'll also continue to have special offerings to serve the world's poor, such as the offering we took in July for World Vision.

And this is just the beginning of the larger impact TFC is going to have on our local and global community.

Sleeping next to Daddy

For the past month or so, Dawson has been waking up at 5:30 - every single day. In order to get him back to sleep and try to break him of this painful habit, we're lying right next to him on the couch after that 5:30 feeding. The past two days, he's fallen back asleep. Yesterday Erin laid next to him, this morning it was my turn.

At about 5:45, Dawson began falling back to sleep, nestled in between myself and the back of the couch. I let him lay there for about 1o minutes before carrying him to his crib. Those 10 minutes were wonderful. Dawson's, blanket-covered, warm little body was snuggled next to mine. His head was laying on the side of my arm and his little legs were curved along the top of my legs. Nothing really better in the world than lying next to your sleeping little boy. My thoughts then turned from my little boy to my Heavenly Father.

As my little boy lay on my left, nestled between the couch and my body, I imagined my much bigger Father on the right, holding me in between his infinite person and my little son. Just as I'm content to simply hold my son, I know my Father is content to hold his son. It was a good time of enjoying the presence of my earthly son and my heavenly father.

All year, I've been trying to focus upon the discipline of constantly practicing the presence of God. Each morning, I read a section for Practicing His Presence (linked on the right side of this blog) and try to turn my thoughts to God throughout the rest of the day. To be honest, I've been pretty unsuccessful at it. Occasionally however, I have moments with God similar to this morning's moment with Dawson.

Here's an excerpt from this morning's reading:

"Can I bring the Lord back in my mind-flow every few seconds so that God shall always be in my mind? I choose to make the rest of my life an experiment in answering this question.

Someone may be saying that this introspection and this struggle to achieve God-consciousness is abnormal and perilous. I am going to take the risks, for somebody ought to do it. If our religious premises are correct at all then this oneness with God is the most normal condition one can have. It is what made Christ, Christ. It was what St. Augustine meant when he said, 'Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless until they find their rest in thee.'

I do not invite anybody else to follow this arduous path. I wish many might. We need to know so much which one man cannot answer. For example: 'Can a laboring man successfully attain this continuous surrender to God? Can a man working at a machine pray for people all day long, talk with God all day long, and at the same time do his task efficiently? Can a merchant do business, can an accountant keep books, ceaselessly surrender to God? Can a mother wash dishes, care for the babies, continuously talking to God?'

Is this obtainable?

Any hour of any day may be made perfect by merely choosing. It is perfect if one looks toward God that entire hour, waiting for His leadership all through the hour and trying hard to do every tiny thing exactly as God wishes it done, as perfectly as possible. No emotions are necessary. Just the doing of God's will perfectly makes the hour a perfect one."

A New Era begins for TFC

There was an energy level among the congregation on Sunday that I haven't experienced for a long time. People kept telling me, through smiles and hugs, how much they love the changes that have just happened.

These changes have been a long time coming. Last spring, we began a numerical slide that has resulted in our Sunday morning worship attendance being between 2/3 - 1/2 of what it was a year ago at this time. Toward the beginning of that slide, after a very lowly attended Sunday in March, I spent a sleepless night talking with God and wrestling with my fears and hopes. My fear was that if we continued to "do church" as we were at the time, we might not continue to exist. That fear lead to a hope, a hope that TFC could stop focusing on "doing church" and become more intentional about "being the church." At about 4 AM, I got a pretty clear picture of the changes we could make.

I began sharing those changes with staff, the board and then ministry leaders; everyone was on board with the ideas. Last summer, we polled the congregation to find out approaches were working and to gauge their openness to the potential changes. The surveys revealed an almost unanimous support of the structural changes our leadership was considering.

In August, we took a big first step in introducing Discussion Groups to Sunday AM worship. To say these groups have been a success would be the understatement of the year. Every Sunday, over 90% of the congregation participates in discussion groups. This past Sunday, only ONE person skipped discussion groups and that was because of a family emergency. It was almost hard to hear the other members of my group over the dull roar of the conversations happening all over the commons. The introduction of Discussion Groups, as well as "Ask Anything" Sundays, have all been a part of our effort to take a more dialogical approach to Sunday morning worship.

The immediate success of Discussion Groups allowed our leadership to take a bigger step in this move from "doing" to "being." In summary, our new focus as a church is upon three main values, Simplicity, Community and Generosity. Let me explain our new focus on these areas.

Simplicity = When TFC launched 4 years ago, I was determined to make us into a church that would wow everyone who showed up for worship. 4 years later, I've broken (been broken is probably the better way of saying it) out of that consumerism / attractional approach. Our unique niche in the Kingdom isn't going to come from what we do but in what we are. Our first major step in simplification is in moving out of the auditorium of PRMS and into the commons. In making this move, we've eliminated as much set-up as possible, focusing on the essentials for corporate worship. Elements such as stage lighting and moving backgrounds have been lost in our move into the commons and I'm not sure whether we'll be able to find them again.

Community Also left behind in our move were the cushy but permanent chairs of the PRMS auditorium. We've now got portable chairs that can be arranged in a large half-circle for corporate worship or into smaller circles for Discussion Groups. It's amazing what changing from rows facing one direction to a circle of chairs does for group dynamics.
Moving into the commons is saving us a LOT of money in rent payments, lowering our operational overhead by thousands of dollars. Our Advisory Council is considering using some of the saved money for an online service designed to help churches build community.
We're also rebudgeting some money for morning refreshments. Worshiping in the commons means we're able to have coffee and donuts again! Amazing how something so simple can go so far in community building.
Following the advice from last summer's surveys, we're also going to be having regular community meals as a part of our worship. Our first community meal will be Nov. 22nd.

Generosity This is what has me more fired up than any of our changes - the more we lower our operational expenses, the more we can give away. The less we spend on rent, the more we can give to organizations that serve the poor and under resourced, both locally and globally. My constant challenge to our congregation is "spend less on self so you can give away more." I'm glad to say that TFC is taking another step in that direction. We do already give 7% of our offerings to local ministry work and 6% to global evangelism, but we'll be able to do more now. Our Advisory Council is also working out a process for setting up a fund to help families within our congregation; having funds available for those in immediate need - allowing us to live out the New Testament value of taking care of each other.
What do you think honors Jesus more, spending our resources on facilities or on serving the poor? If you're not sure, check this out.

While these changes may not seem too radical on the surface, they're indications of deep changes that have happened within me. My whole understanding of how a group of Christ-followers are to live together as a local expression of the Kingdom of God has been turned upside-down over the past 9 months. Last spring was a season of disillusionment and failure within the typical North American protestant model. Last summer was a season of depression and hopelessness (to read my self-confession to my church from a few weeks ago, click here). This fall has been a season of rebirth for Trinity Family, a rebirth into a new model of church that greatly parallels the old model we see in the New Testament.

And it's my sneaking suspicion that the approaches that make TFC different from just about every other church in our area are going to be common place within the next couple of decades.

Below are pictures from Sunday, including our TFC Kidz area. We would've moved into the commons sooner but it took a few months of planning to figure out how to make TFC Kidz work in a different space. I'm proud to say Pastor Andy figured it out.


The tech guys figuring out the digital sound board DONATED to TFC, which helps us further simplify our set-up process.

Allow me to introduce you to this guy named Jesus

I started Trinity Family with a burning desire to lead pre-Christians to Jesus. It has happened over the past four years and it's always exhilerating. During the past two years, however, a new desire has begun burning inside of me; the desire to lead Christians to Jesus.

During these four years of pastoring, I've come to realize that many Christians (myself included) have ignored vast sections of Jesus' teaching and example from the gospels and have created a Jesus that fits comfortably into their particular paradigm. To put it another way, there are a lot of false Jesus's floating out there; the Jesus of the religious right, the Jesus of politial ideologies, the Jesus of American patriotism, the Jesus of economic prosperity, the "Jesus of Suburbia (to quote Green Day) and many other false Jesus's.

Leading a pre-Christian to Jesus and then discipling that new Christian is an exhuasting and rewarding work. Trying to lead an established Christian to Jesus however, is a serious threat to one's personal well-being and vocational comfort. For a well-meaning Christian to leave behind a false Jesus to which they've held onto for years and turn to the Jesus of scripture is a drastic and rarely seen conversion. Difficult personal experiences over the past couple years have taught me that most established Christians don't take too kindly to having their false views of Jesus challenged; personal attacks, sleepless nights, tears of anguish, broken relationships and various other unfortunate circumstances have resulted from being faithful to this burning desire to lead Christians to Jesus.

But when the conversion happens - it makes all that other stuff worth it!

For an example, check out the email conversation I had last week with a guy from nearby conversation, with whom I've been friends for years and has an almost identical background as myself.

Donnie,
Hey brother, I just listenend to your Politics sermon from a year ago. Very, very nicely done. This has been an issue that I have just recently been delivered from, and I wish there were more people that believed like you and could deliver a message like this. Nice job (a little late).
Also, I'd like to get your perspective and thoughts on some issues that I'm dealing with at [my church], mostly pertaining to passion and outreach. Obviously these are things that Trinity does well, and I'd like to know what you think could be done. I would like to get your idea on how a large, prominent, comfortable, rich, white, Johnson County suburban, Nazarene church can become an outreach centered church.

I really want to include my responses, which share a lot of behind-the-scenes struggles, but I don't feel it's appropriate to share all of that.

Good stuff man. I appreciate your out of the box thinking and mentality towards this Christian contentment that the church finds itself in.
I got deep in trouble last year during election season as I would listen to the one-sided lineup all day of Chris Stigall, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage. I noticed myself becoming very angry as the day progressed. I would even come home and rant to Michelle about how I hated the greedy left, and how much I thought Obama was a dumb a**. Not cool. About a month ago, I made it out to your blog and saw that you were reccommending the Turning Jesus Over to Caesar podcast. As I read through your blog I honestly thought to myself, "Donnie must be a bleeding heart, liberal idiot that is way off track." (sorry) However, I did listen to the sermon with a very critical mind and finished with a very open minded broken spirit. I made the paradigm shift of realizing that first I am a citizen of the Kingdom of Christ and second I am a citizen of the USA, and that has made all of the difference. I basically have stopped fighting the politics war and focused my attention back on the eternal soul war. I feel very liberated.
Thanks for what you do for the kingdom. Keep it up.

Part of one of my responses:
Of course, you realize that your life just got more difficult. The right-winged politics you'll experience from some people at _____ Church will drive you crazy. And if people find out you don't believe that the Republican party is God's plan to "bring America back to God," you'll become a marked man. I suggest you keep these ideas to just a few close friends. Being set free from right-wing politics in most convservative churches is like converting to Christianity in a Muslim nation, very dangerous! I'm only half-way joking.
It's not about liberal or conservative, it's about Jesus and His Kingdom. If I were pastoring on the East coast, I'd probably have to tell my church that the Democratic party isn't God's party. Also, would you be okay if I shared your email on my blog? I'll write it in such a way that people won't know who I'm talking about. I'd like to share perspective, if you don't mind.

His final response

Yeah, you can share it. I'm still developing what exactly I believe, but I now see the world through a Kingdom view, rather than an American view. You are correct about being careful when sharing this idea. It's not something that I'm going to be bringing up at the next board meeting.


"I hope you will put up with a little more of my foolishness. Please bear with me. For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ.3 But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed." - 2 Corinthians 11:1-4

A great article on the lady who inspired and coached us in our Love Wins ministry

Check out this article. After reading the Glamour article on Harmony, we were able to find her online. Harmony has coached and inspired us in starting Love Wins. She's quite an encouragement to us.

And on the Love Wins front, we combined with Bonita's again last weekend to serve at My Father's House. We spent the morning helping organize the storage area of their thrift store. The service project was a great time, as was hanging out together at lunch afterwards.

My favorite part of the morning was the 'stump / shock the pastor' session while doing some work. I had some hard questions thrown at me as well as some "I shouldn't say that in front of a pastor," even though I don't care. In fact, in situations like that, I usually drop a profanity to let people know I'm a normal guy.

But what I think is really going on when people throw tough questions at me or take on a tough persona is the deeper question of "will you befriend and accept me for who I am." Or even deeper, "does God love and accept me just the way I am."

The answer to both questions is a solid "YES!"

I wasn't prepared for this part...

I had a burning drive to start this church. I was driven by the reality that the best way to reach unchurched people is to start a new church. I was thirsting to be a part of awe-inspiring life change. And it has happened. It's happened in amazing ways. And it's continuing to happen. You can hear one amazing story here (start at the 24:23 mark). To borrow a line from ABC's Wide World of Sports that has now become cliche, I eagerly anticipated and have thoroughly enjoyed the "thrill of victory."

But in no way was I prepared for "the agony of defeat." I wasn't ready to watch as people I'd baptized decided to return to a life of sin. I had no way of knowing that people I'd personally discipled would leave TFC to find a church where they could be "spiritually fed." How was I to know that I'd be capable of both leading someone to faith and then committing an unintentional and unperceived (to me) slight that so offended them they inexplicably cut off the relationship? I didn't know that the high of helping a person push through their personal barriers to faith would give way to the low of watching that person let up on their search. In the midst of the excitement in helping a marriage reconcile, I was unable to see the devestating divorce waiting in the future.  And never, not even in my wildest dreams, (though I was warned by other pastors) could I have imagined the incredibly immature behavior to come from people who sincerely consider themselves mature Christians.

I just didn't see any of it coming. And it's taking a lot of work to learn how to sort through it all.

I guess this is just what it means to pastor a congregation. A friend of mine, who also started a new church, recently told me about how he'd experienced the thrill of baptizing his neighbors, only to experience the agony of seeing them divorce a year later. I now understand the ache in Paul's heart as he wrote these words to the church he planted in Corinth, "I wrote that letter in great anguish, with a troubled heart and many tears. I didn’t want to grieve you, but I wanted to let you know how much love I have for you." - 2 Corinthians 2:4
"Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger?" - 2 Corinthians 11:28-29

Paul knew the pain of seeing people he loved make terrible choices and even turn away from Christ.

What did Paul do? Did the agony and frustration cause him quit proclaiming the gospel and to give up starting new churches? No. He was doggedly determined to do what he knew deep in his heart that God had called him to do. May I do the same. May I continue to proclaim Christ with boldness and love. May I lead with a soft heart and a thick skin.