Missio Dei Suburbia

Post-Game Interview - September 7, 2008

We kept it short this week for the sake of clarity

Q: So you've just finished this series on evangelism - could you boil everything down to one single thought?

MCA: God wants people to know him and he intends for us to point people to him.

Q: How do we do that?

MCA: It doesn't work well as a formula, but might be a helpful pattern for us:

1. Learn the gospel. Love the gospel. Live the gospel.
2. Make connections with people on their terms
3. Engage in conversations that connect the details of life to the story of the gospel

MCA: Think one step at a time and be prepared to retrace your steps regularly.

Post-Game Interview - August 31, 2008

Following this morning's worship gathering:

Q: I was thinking about this earlier, but how do you evaluate if things go well on a Sunday?

MCA: I think there are a couple of ways to look at it. You can evaluate a sermon as a piece of communication and try to measure the effectiveness of what you say. But how do you do that? So much of what goes on in preaching won't be obvious. And just because a lot of people show up may or may not mean anything. As we're growing, I think it's important for us to remember that the win for us is not how many people show up but are we seeing people's lives changed by the gospel. So I might like this sermon better than that sermon - thought I was more prepared, felt like I was connecting well with everyone, etc. But at the end of the day, what I want to ask myself is whether or not I communicated the message of the particular text I'm preaching as well as I could.

Q: So how do you think you did with Jonah 3?

MCA: I actually thought I hit on the heart of this part of the story pretty early in the week. Sometimes it doesn't come into focus until late in the process but I really felt that what we were supposed to hear through the muddiness of Jonah's message and the Ninevites' response was that even when we struggle to tell and take in the gospel, we can rest assured that there's a God who goes to great lengths to tell his story.

Q: I have to ask - the microphone?

MCA: Yeah, who knows. For anyone reading this who wasn't there this morning, my 'face mic' kept cutting in and out on me. We've been having some problems the last few weeks but this was easily the most distracting - to me and everyone else.

Q: What goes through your mind when that kind of stuff happens?

MCA: I keep waiting for Aaron [Slaten, our worship leader] to walk up and hand me another mic or give me the kill sign or something. I actually had a handheld mic behind me that we had used earlier - first time in a long time I was tempted to use it. A couple of things that were going through my mind - is there something I'm doing to cause it and praying that God will either fix the problem or help people stay focused on what we're talking about.

Q: So how did Jonah 3 bring out this theme of evangelism we've been talking about the past few weeks?

MCA: Well, we talked about our need to make connections with people if we're ever going to have the kinds of conversations we're talking about in evangelism. I thought Jonah 3 actually served as an encouragement that even if we completely miss the boat - and the story of Jonah's message and the Ninevites' response doesn't make it real clear one way or the other - there's a God who goes to great lengths to tell his story.

Q: How does that help us in evangelism?

MCA: I think it frees us up. We care about what we say and how we say it - but our skill in telling people about Jesus is not the source of hope for us or those who need to hear the gospel.

Q: You spent some time talking about what goes on in our conversations with people - could you go through that again?

A: Yeah. Tim Keller up in NYC talks about the need to make the gospel intelligible, credible and plausible. Meaning that in the course of our conversations about Jesus and the gospel, we have to find ways to help people see how attractive biblical Christianity really is - are we talking about something that seems to good to be true? And then are we walking into those convictions, beliefs and objections that keep people from believing that Christianity is true and a viable way to live. And if we can help people see that Christianity is attractive and true - because we've painted a picture they understand, are drawn to, and can buy into because we're helping to pull apart the arguments they've held onto as a way to keep Christianity at arm's length - then we can help people see that their story is never going to end the way they want it to without Christ.

Q: It seemed like you were struggling with how much detail to put into explaining how to have these kinds of conversations.

MCA: Yeah, it's just a lot of information and preaching to a couple hundred people is just a hard context to talk about something that we have to walk through individually. So hopefully this stirred the pot to create some conversations in our community groups this week - maybe in some of the campus ministries that are hanging out with us. And hopefully we can find some helpful ways to walk people through this process in a way that helps them make connections and have conversations in ways that ring true with who they are and where God has them in the world.

Post-Game Interview - August 24, 2008

Someone suggested taking a few minutes after our sermon on Sundays to answer a few questions and build on what we said during the worship gathering at Christ Church. So here's this week's post-game interview...

Q: What are you hoping people walk away with from this morning?

MCA: Hopefully, Jonah 2 taught us that every problem, struggle and challenge we face in life comes down to a question of whether we believe the gospel. Particularly when it comes to evangelism, our struggle to engage people with the gospel can't simply be resolved by trying harder or learning new strategies.

Q: Do you like talking about evangelism?

MCA: Yes and no. Yes, because we were created to tell this story to whomever God gives us the opportunity to talk with. No, because the topic usually sets people off.

Q: What do you mean?

MCA: Two things in particular. I basically said that evangelism is something we should all be doing but that we aren't supposed to do it in the same way. So some people will struggle with the first part of that, wondering if it's true that we're all supposed to do evangelism or share our faith. Other people will struggle - not with the idea that different people do evangelism in different ways - but thinking that we're discounting or dismissing a particular type of evangelism.

Q: Yeah, I was wondering if you thought some people thought you were going after certain kinds of evangelistic programs?

MCA: It wouldn't surprise me because anytime you say things like 'beach evangelism is awkward and can feel artificial', you could take that to mean that therefore, that kind of evangelism is unhelpful or even wrong. I don't know what to say except that's not what I mean. I think God uses lots of different ways to communicate the story of the gospel to people - and I'm pretty sure I said this - I never doubt the intentions and motivations of people who are trying to find ways to tell that story and help other people tell that story. But what I'm also dealing with is the reality that no single approach works for everyone and that a lot of people end up on the sidelines because they think the only way they can talk about the gospel is by using ways that are really foreign to their personality and context. So this particular sermon was easily one of the hardest I've had to deal with since I've been here.

Q: Why's that?

MCA: Because I've got friends who probably think I sold them out this morning. I've got a couple of people who really struggle with the whole concept of evangelism who want to talk this week because what they heard is - all Christians evangelize. And I'm pretty sure I'll hear from some of my friends involved in ministries I care deeply about who heard me say they're doing something wrong in the way they do evangelism.

Q: So what are you going to tell them?

MCA: I hope they heard both sides of the coin - that yes, we should all be engaged evangelistically but in very different ways because of who we are and the people who are around us. So to my friends who are really nervous about evangelism, what I hope they see is the tremendous opportunity they have to communicate the gospel in ways that are authentic to who they are and the people in their pathway. That might be a very confrontational approach or a very relational approach - God uses both.

And to anyone who thinks I cut their legs out from under them and dumped on what they do, I hope they hear me saying that we share the same goal of seeing more and more Christians engage people around them with the story of the gospel. My concern after fifteen years in ministry and lots of conversations with people inside and outside the church is that our current approach to equipping people evangelistically isn't producing the results we all want.

Q: By results, do you mean conversions?

MCA: Good question...and no. I simply mean that with the emphasis we've put on evangelism, we'd expect more people to be active in sharing their faith. But they're not - why? Maybe because there's a disconnect between how they were trained and how they function with other people. Evangelism isn't a matter of being introverted or extroverted but it does feel sometimes that things breakdown along the lines.

Q: So is there anyone to blame for this?

MCA: I'll tell you what frustrates me - people who look back to evangelistic training they received in a church or in a campus ministry and blame the person who trained them for their lack of evangelistic activity. There's not anyone I know in any group I know that has anything other than the best intentions in mind when they set out to train people. But sometimes things get lost in translation and you end up with people who feel cheated and burned and like they're JV Christians because they struggle to do evangelism the way they were trained.

Q: So...

MCA: Sorry, didn't want to interrupt but one of the things I prayed for all week and will be praying this upcoming week is that the Enemy doesn't get hold of this and use it.

Q: How do you think  he'd do that?

MCA: I can tell you how he does it now. I have a good number of conversations with people who used to be involved in this campus ministry or that evangelistic training program through a church that are hostile towards those groups. And because I'll say things like, 'there are other ways to do evangelism besides XYZ,' they think they've found an ally to talk trash about this guy or that group. Not to discount their pain or frustration, but I do feel like most of the time that's coming straight from the pits of hell.

Q: Why do you think that?

MCA: Mainly because when I ask them, 'so how are you sharing your faith now,' they've got nothing. And that plays very well into the plans of the enemy. I mean, what's his goal? No evangelism...no one share their faith; nobody preach the gospel. And if you're so mad at so-and-so that you don't do any evangelism at all? Score one for the bad guys.

Q: So where do we go from here?

MCA: Hopefully we learn the story of the gospel together, growing in our love for the gospel that leads to gospel-saturated lives that do things like evangelism in very different ways so that very different people can communicate the same gospel in very different settings.

Q: What's coming next week?

MCA: Well, I want to try to put my money where my mouth is and talk about some ways that we can engage evangelistically in ways that ring true with who we are and where God's placed us in this world. So we'll see what happens.