A Revolution

In preparation for last night's very first Evangelism Workshop, I ended up researching a ton of material.  The Bible, evangelism programs, old stuff that I'd written on the subject...plenty of thought went into this.  As I was writing up the final draft of the workshop I realized something semi-startling:  there's no way we can do the kind of evangelism we're called to do--the kind scripture talks about and our neighbors need/can accept--while holding on to the way we've done church in the modern era.

The more I pondered and drafted, the more it became clear to me that this call to evangelism would require serious changes in the way we think about church, God, the world, our neighbors, and the interaction between them all.  A set of nifty tips and nice ideas won't do it.  That's like pouring new wine into old wineskins.  The Spirit that we need will burst them.  What we need is, in effect, a revolution.  It's not something new, exactly.  God has always meant it to be this way.  But we've buried what we're supposed to be doing under a host of assumptions about church and life that have chained our faith instead of letting it free to be shared.  We talked about all of that last night.  We'll talk more in the weeks to come.

In the end, this is why it's SO CRITICAL that everyone from church be a part of these meetings.  We cannot change our mindset or vision with 1/3 of the congregation motivated and 2/3 clinging on to the same old assumptions without examining them explicitly.  The Spirit of true evangelism (which is quite different than what we think of as evangelism nowadays, as we are learning) needs to breathe in all of us.

This first session is already underway and will conclude next week.  It's too late to join at this point.  The next session happens after worship on June 3rd and June 24th.  That's your next opportunity to experience the revolution.  It's going to pick up momentum.  It'll provide us a positive, wonderful way forward as a congregation.  Don't get left behind.  Mark those dates on your calendar so you can hear and understand what we're talking about.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)