See You in the Fundy Papers!

[keep staring until you get it :)]

Most of life happens on the way to the bathroom.  I’d finished my over-priced Starbucks juice cocktail, grabbed my bible and bag and was on my way to the privy.  “Are you a Christian?” The question muddled up through the circus of milk steamers and baristas yelling and Top 40 tunes.  I turned around to see a bearded guy in his twenties with determined eyes and underbite. 

            “Yeah…?”  My bladder was disappointed.  Kinda cool though, I love how the body of Christ is universal. “Um…yeah, I’m actually a pastor downtown.”

            “Oh cool, do you believe in Jesus?” I hadn’t seen an underbite in a long time, I tried unsuccessfully not to stare.

            “Well…yeah, yep, I do.”  I positioned elbow awkwardly on the table—bladder will have to wait.

            “What do you believe about Him?” Okay…slightly odd, but let’s roll with it.

            “Well, I believe He’s the son of God, savior of the world, that He rose from the dead.”

            “And do you believe in that book there?”  He pointed to my Zondervan discount pleather-covered ESV.

            “You bet, man.”

            “What do you believe about it?”  I’m getting grilled by this random dude, but you’re a pastor now, McDonald, you have to get used to random grillings.

            “Well…ahem…I believe that it’s the word of God, written by the Holy Spirit.”

            “So, how do you get to know Jesus?”

            I can’t quite figure out if this is an evangelism opportunity or an inquisition, but my guess is the latter: “You accept Him as savior and Lord, you worship with the community, you pray and study, and you reach out to the needy and broken—the ones He is reaching out to.”  [for the sake of space, I’ve compressed and groomed my answer a bit here, it had a lot more “ums” in it].

            “And don’t you proclaim Him?”

            “Yeah…yeah, you do that too.”

            “You share the truth, you share the gospel right?”

            “Yes, of course.”

            “Do you do that?” Flashbacks of my college years at a fundamentalist Baptist school, walking into the mall armed with tracts of the Four Spiritual Laws, my heart beating in my ears.

            “Yes,” and I add a lot more ums, “I share the gospel when the opportunity presents itself.”

            “When the opportunity presents itself?” He seems to be incensed, although his facial expression doesn’t change much, “Does Jesus say, ‘What I have told you in secret, proclaim from the rooftop?’”

            “Yeah…yeah, He did say that.” Is it hot in here? My bladder raises the threat level. 

            “So shouldn’t we do that?  Shouldn’t we yell from the rooftops and shouldn’t we proclaim it in the streets? That’s how Jesus did it.”

            “Well, Jesus was working within the culture of the time, right?  In that culture, many teachers would just walk up to people on the street.  In our culture, we communicate differently—“

            “Yeah, but if everyone was headed toward a cliff wouldn’t you tell them to stop?  Isn’t everyone headed toward Hell?”

            Wait! Hey, I have an answer for this, our senior Pastor just preached on it! “Brother, didn’t Paul tell us to be ready to answer anyone who asks us about the truth—“

            “Peter said that.”  Oops.

            “Yeah, so be ready, in season and out for anyone who—“

            “Paul said that.”  Oops, I have just lost street cred with a street evangelist.

            “Ummm…so, yeah, well they said that we should be speak with gentleness and respect to anyone who asks about our gospel hope.”

            “So we shouldn’t proclaim from the rooftops?”

            “Well…Jesus was speaking about the culture at the time, we speak within our culture.”

            “Did Jesus say that?”

            I’m a little dizzy, “Ummm, what?”

            “Did Jesus say anywhere to ‘speak within your culture’ when you evangelize?”

            “Huh?” My bladder scoffs at my missiological theory.  “No…I guess He didn’t.  But, He did work with in the culture of His time, right?  He spoke the truth in the way people communicated back then.”

            “Yeah, but did He ever say to do that?”

            “Uhhh…” My bladder is brutally pummeling my other organs.

            He relents, “So, I’ve been ordained an evangelist in my own church.”

            “Oh, ummm, yeah?”  Think dry thoughts.

            “We’re a more conservative church, and I’m interested in the philosophy and thinking behind how other churches work.” He gives me a tract bearing the name of a local fundamentalist church.  He really emphasized “other.”

            “Okay?”

            “Well…I don’t mean to waste your time—“

            “Not at all man, good to talk with you. ”

            “I saw your bible here and I thought I’d come say hello.  Maybe that’s what God wants you to hear today—we have to spread the gospel, not speak in our own culture.”

            “Yeah maybe.  I’m Josh, by the way.”

            “I’m [I’ll call him Rocky, after Saint Peter].”

            “Good to meet you, Rocky.”

            “You too brother.”

And I headed down the hall to sweet relief.

Now, that was not the conversation I had expected to have here at the Castleton Starbucks, but why not?  Rocky:  his long sleeves despite the heat, his determined and somewhat detached look, his chainsaw-subtle manner of spreading the Word.  I know Rocky, I have dear friends who are Rocky, I’ve been Rocky myself.

            Our conversation brings me into the familiar foggy discourse in my own head of how I—and folks like me—define ourselves on the Christian spectrum.   We aren’t fundamentalists for sure—we read Phillip Yancey, not Hal Lindsay, we sometimes even vote democrat!  But we aren’t liberal/progressives—we believe in the historical Jesus, we’re usually pro-life, we didn’t “rainbow” our facebook profiles {although we have a lot of friends who did}.  We’re somewhere in the schizophrenic middle, seated on Bill Hybel’s left and Anne Lamott’s right.  This, of course, imbues a conversation with Rocky at the crowded Starbucks with a world-class awkwardness. 

            In my own personal baggage is a turn at Jerry Fallwell’s fundamentalist college in the mid-90’s.  In the sweltering Virginia heat, we learned about young-earth Creationism, one-dimensional, uncomplicated biblical history, and the evils of cigarettes and blue jeans. Yet at the same time, we learned that God calls us from sin to a new life with boundaries and standards, that discipline and hard work are important to the Christian life, and that God loves you simply and completely.  Just as we were insulated, we were kept safe; as much as we were smothered, we were loved.  On a side note, I saw more diversity there of race, socio-economic class, and background than I’ve seen on any secular campus since.  On another side note, I saw crappy academic standards, theo-bullying, and sketchy corporate conduct there as well. 

            So I speak Rocky’s language, or at least can translate a little. I’m trying to learn from these interactions.  Henri Nouwen writes about a conversation with an older professor friend who said, “my whole life I’ve been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions are my work.”  As I’ve only just approached the pastor workbench here about ten years after every one else, I’m still figuring out what this means, but I know it means I can learn—and not learn—from my fundy friend.

           

What I learned:

•  Evangelism is always a touchy subject, but it is something we’re commanded to do.  Seeing someone with a bullhorn or a clap-board sign declaring that the “End is Near” usually causes me to stroll to the other side of the street, but evangelism still must be done somehow.  Sometimes in my over-educated discussion of ‘speaking within our culture,’ evangelism gets lost.  The gospel is never ‘within’ the culture, that’s the point.  There are better and worse ways to present it, sure, but it still needs to be presented.

• Boldness.  “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7).  As uncouth as it might have been, Rocky was being bold and passionate to discuss the gospel.  In the midst of the refined, oversensitive environment of a coffee shop, he was holding out truth that he—and I—believe. 

• Challenge.  “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).  The whole conversation made me itch deep down in my spinal cord, but maybe I should have been itching.  He was challenging me with words and truths from scriptures to be able to “answer” (as apparently Paul and Peter said) about the way I live the gospel.

What I ain’t learned:

• Hermeneutics.  Rocky’s hermeneutic principle (his way of interpreting scripture) of “Did Jesus ever say that?” Isn’t quite that right way to approach the gospel.  Jesus didn’t address everything verbally, but instead lived an example of how we are to live in the world.  After He ascended, Jesus spoke by the Holy Spirit through the community, Peter, Paul, and other biblical writers on how to conduct ourselves. 
• The Sawed-off approach.  I don’t believe Jesus took this approach to evangelism.  He spoke boldly about the truth, but He did so in a culture of itinerant traveling sages who took on disciples and taught them regularly. He also told us to “make disciples of all people” in the Great Commission—this means travelling with people, pointing them toward Christ, not accosting them on the corner and putting a notch on your belt.  Will the Holy Spirit, on occasion, move you to start a spiritual conversation with a random person over a Frappachino?  Yes, I believe He will, but I believe that is the exception to the rule and is not the only way to define “evangelism.”

Alas, Qoheleth’s wisdom has come to me: “the more words, the less the meaning” (Ecclesiastes 6:11) so I will put a pin in this here blog post.  I try to keep my own scribbles down to about 1500 words, thanks for sticking around.  All this to say that I’m glad I met Rocky—just as I’m glad to have met a meth addict who has a deeper prayer life than most people I know, a disgraced evangelical pastor who had an affair, an octogenarian African-American saint who came up in the scary part of town, a farmer who raised his son with Downs Syndrome when there was no such thing as “government services.” 

These “interruptions” God gives us are always much more interesting than we’d make them out to be, and they are the “work” of the gospel in our lives.

Pay attention. 

XO,Josh