Recent conversations in my life have started me thinking on this question: what is the best way to preach the Gospel?
After much pondering and struggling with this question for many years in my own Christian walk, the only answer I feel sure of is that there is no answer.
There are so many theological and practical debates about how we should live out our lives as Christians and how to tell other people about Jesus. Do we drink? Do we dance? Do we sing at Sunday services? Do we have electric guitars? And did you know that drums are of the devil? The debate points are exhaustingly endless and I kinda don’t care anymore.
What I do care about is if people come to know Jesus, they are reunited with their Heavenly Father and gain the counsel of the Holy Spirit. That’s all I care about. How they came to know Jesus doesn’t’ matter. Whether it was a tract, a fake $100 bill, a deep cultivated relationship, a preacher on TV, a pastor’s message on Sunday, or a crazy man preaching on the street corner, I don’t care. The reason I don’t care is because preaching the Gospel is about the Who and not the How. Who we are preaching about will always be more important than how we are doing it.
Part of the reason I have come to believe this is because we are all going to fail. There will always be a time–whether from the pulpit or from a coffee shop–when we will try to share the Gospel and fall flat on our faces. However, I would rather try and fail a hundred times than never attempt because I’m not quite perfect yet. A hundred failures is a hundred opportunities for God’s grace and power to shine through my weaknesses.
Beyond failure, I have come to learn that God reaches different people through very different avenues. Some people need to be walked, hand in hand with one person, to the feet of Jesus. Others may need to feel the security of a gathering. Still others need to be alone with Him to hear His voice. We are all different and I’ve learned to understand that our differences–when we’re not fighting about them–make us a more whole and complete picture of who God is. He is a God of diversity and creativity. He is a God who sometimes speaks in a cloud of fire, and sometimes speaks in a whisper. Jesus is a man who embraced children and cast money changers out of the temple with a whip. The trinity of God is complex and surprising. Jesus is the only way to God the Father, but I refuse to believe there is only one path to Jesus.
So here is what I have determined for myself: I am going to follow the Golden Rule when it comes to preaching. I am going to preach the Gospel in a way which I would like to have it preached to me. I will invest in relationships over time, I will teach in settings appropriate to my strengths and gifting, but you won’t find me walking the street with a stack of tracts in my hand. It makes me uncomfortable when a stranger approaches me on the street, so I’m doubly uncomfortable when I am asked to approach others. I’ll leave the street preaching to someone else who loves to meet new people, who is comfortable in that space, and who God has gifted to do that.
Most importantly, this is what I am going to stop doing: I’m going to stop shooting others down from the sidelines. I’m going to stop telling people they are ‘doing it wrong’ because it doesn’t’ make sense to me or it makes me uncomfortable. If I am asked for advice or direction, I will gladly give it. Otherwise, I’m going to KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT unless it is to give encouragement to people who are doing something I am not equipped to do.
I recognize there is a lot of fear and doubt attached to how we go about preaching the Gospel and what it means to be associated with “those crazies”. However, if you really think about it, the Gospel is a Crazy Story. There is nothing sane about a sinless man giving up His life for the rest of us who can’t even love the people closest to us well, not to mention the rest of the world. There is nothing normal about a God who could wipe us all out with a thought, but chooses to be patient and sacrificing so we can be reunited with Him. We teach a crazy love story. Get over being crazy. Start asking yourselves the question of what’s the worst that could happen if the Gospel is preached differently than how you think it should be? If a group of believers start doing strange bold crazy things for Jesus, what’s the worst that could happen? They might fail, so what? Hopefully, they will learn from the experience and do better next time. Maybe the worst thing which could happen is that they totally skew the message (hopefully unintentionally) and preach that Jesus is chicken. So what? Do we not trust that our God is bigger than one mixed up message and that He is able to call anyone to Himself through any means? And what if someone never once speaks in front of a group of people, but spends time serving individuals and walking alongside them through the difficult parts of life? What’s the worst that could happen? They may not have as big ‘numbers’ of people they save, but since when is following Jesus about numbers?
Here is the hard truth, there are people in the world who are choosing to live separated from God. In the end, this choice will lead them to Hell because God will not force himself on anyone, and Heaven is His domain. So we need every member of the body of Christ, doing whatever it is that they do best, to reach people and introduce them to Jesus. That’s it.
If I touched a personal button, please know I am aware that this summary leaves out a lot of loopholes and past situations in which the message of Jesus has been twisted for personal gain. However, I would encourage you to examine if the stories about TV pastors embezzling money or the lazy Christian who never shares their faith are really the majority. I’m sure you’ll find they just aren’t. There are too many Christians going about their day trying to introduce people to Jesus through whatever means and talents they have for it to be true. So let’s stop policing one another about how we preach the Gospel and keep pointing people to who Jesus really is.
Continuing the adventure,
Jess
Jess Boctor 