Evangelizing after the Riots - Audio
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We're moving through Ephesians. We're in chapter 5. And this week, we're going to hear from Paul, he's talking a little bit about the situation and Ephesus and how that's going to have to change the way they do things. You know, we've got to modus operandi. We have a way that we do stuff in this life. And there's a change that's happened in Ephesus where they had this way that they were doing things and it had to change because stuff had happened, because life had happened. Circumstances had changed. Context had changed. Culture had changed. Why isn't our evangelism working? Why isn't our evangelism working? And when I say "our", I'm not just talking about "Coast Bowel Church", I'm talking about the church in North America, that's really the church in the West. I'm talking about the fact that in Europe, church attendance has been plummeting since the 1920s and 30s after the Great War. I'm talking about the fact that church attendance and religious faith and conviction in Christian faith has been beginning to subside here in the United States of America, traditionally the most Christian, the most faithful country in Western civilization. Now, Evangelicalism and every other form of Christian commitment is beginning to fail. And yet I submit that it's not that we don't want to share the good news. I submit that it's not that you don't want to impact the people around you, to share the good news of Jesus Christ. In fact, I don't even want to suggest that you're not doing it. I think that you are. I know that I've been ineffective. For me, typically this is what happens. I meet people who aren't believers, and I really enjoy my atheist friends, and so I like to work on them, to try and bring them to faith, because I want them to have the same joy and hope that I have. I have a friend, Atheist John. He works at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. He's a smart guy, real sharp dude. Ex-Christian, in fact, he grew up in a family of faith, a very intense family of faith, and he walked away. And so I spend a lot of time arguing with Atheist John. I don't seem as much anymore, but we used to go head-to-head when I lived up in Pasadena, and we would get into yelling arguments. I was like, "God exists." He says, "No, he doesn't." I'm like, "Yes, he does. No, he doesn't. Why are you so angry about it?" Atheist John, still an atheist. When I was in high school, I used to fight with Lutheran Nicole. She was walking away from Lutheranism at the time, and now she's far beyond it. She's left Lutheranism, but I used to fight with her all the time about Christian faith, about the resurrection, about miracles, about this, and that because I wanted her to be committed, I wanted her to believe. I believed. I knew I had experienced this good thing, and I wanted it for her, too. Why wasn't evangelism working? Some of us have given up trying, right? We don't even bother. We're at work, and you're just looking around, and you're like, "I just want to get by. I don't want to deal with this. I don't know how. I feel like if I start to talk about this stuff, it's just going to disrupt a really good working environment." People are going to be like, "Look, if you want to talk about the Rams coming back to LA, that's awesome." But when you start talking about Jesus or your politics, "No, stick with working me. I'm done. I don't want anything to do with this. Let's just remain friends." You don't want to be offensive. You don't want to feel like you're crossing a line. You don't want to lose a great relationship that you have with someone. You think, "Well, maybe in the future, maybe in the future, if I build up this great relationship with this person that I enjoy, that I love, that I care about, then eventually, eventually I'll have a chance to share." Some of us just have no idea how to begin. You see this person, a friend, a relative, sometimes a close member of your family, and you can see the despair. You can see the hopelessness. And you're like, "If you would just give Jesus a try and you don't know how to get it going." Some of us don't because we have past experiences with evangelism that are no good. Sometimes we have wrecked relationships because when we started saying what we said, that person just had no time to walk away and we missed that person. I remember once I was on an airplane and the guy across the aisle from me, he was a Moravian, and he spent the entire flight from Charlotte to Orange County, so long flight, trying to get me to believe in Jesus. And I kept telling the man I already believe, and he just wouldn't stop. And I was thinking, "Boy, I don't want to be that guy." He crossed a line, he got in my face, and I mean, for what? He just turned me off. In fact, at that point I was like, "I don't want to evangelize anymore." I think deep down, every single person here who's come to faith and who deeply believes in the faith and who loves this church, I think every one of us have a dream. And in our dream, this is my dream, maybe you share it, I think you probably do. In my dream, so I've got a bunch of people in my life who just aren't into Jesus or church or Christianity or whatever. And in my dream, in my dream, one of these people walks up to me and is like, "Tom, I just feel so guilty about my sins. And I just really feel like I need forgiveness. If only there was a God who would do that." And I'd be like, "Hey, I got something for you. Have some good news. Let me tell you the truth. That's my dream. I keep hoping it's going to happen. It never does." I wish that it weren't this heart-pounding, tense, awful, nerve-wracking experience where I feel like I'm divulging something that's going to wreck everything that I have with this person. What if our problem is not that we lack courage? What if we're thinking evangelism wrong? What if we're thinking about evangelism that probably worked in a different context?
Transcription truncated.
In this message, Pastor Tom teaches on Ephesians 5:15-17, urging believers to be astute in recognizing opportunities to share Jesus Christ and to show that the Good News truly is good news to those who are confused and hurting.