SWEEPS: Evangelism and Education

When I first preached this sermon 15 years ago, the opening paragraph was about how I found a great deal on business cards when cleaning out my spam filter. It was 250 cards for $1.99. You went to the website, picked a template, filled in the blanks, got a preview of how it looked, fixed anything you didn't like, approved it and went through the check out. Of course, they tried to upsell me by presenting pictures of coffee mugs, T-shirts, etc. with info from my business cards on them. And, of course, the shipping cost was a lot more than the $1.99 for the cards, although they did include another 250 cards. But in a couple of days I had cards with a picture of my Episcopal church on it, our name, address, phone number and service times, with my name as priest. Doing such things online was relatively new and so I told my congregation that if they were interested, they could go to the website and check it out. And they could use the cards I distributed to invite people to church.

It might have sounded like a commercial but as a former copywriter, I can tell you it really wasn't. It was something more effective than the ads we get bombarded with all the time: it was a personal testimonial. I was sincere in my praise for the product. I didn't get paid to say it. I didn't hype it, either; I just told it like it was. Also I didn't try to close the deal; I simply told the people I was talking to where to go if they were interested.

Why did I do it? To show the people listening to the sermon how to evangelize others. We're in the middle of our SWEEPS sermon series and we are talking about evangelism and education. These are 2 important and related activities for the church as a whole. However, it is vital that Christians as individuals should also be involved in them.

Unfortunately, when it comes to evangelism, we in America have modeled it on marketing and on high-pressure sales techniques. And so those of us who really don't have the knack for marketing or have a taste for arm-twisting can feel that we can't pass on the gospel. Nonsense. If you can recommend a good doctor or mechanic to a friend, you can recommend Jesus to them. If you can recommend a good restaurant to an acquaintance, then you can recommend your church to them. If that person isn't interested, fine. But if they are, you've passed on a helpful bit of information.

You do need to have thought out 2 things first: the basic facts of the gospel and how it made a difference in your life.

You would think that most Christians would know the basics of the faith. After all, we not only preach on them and recite the creed every Sunday in church, we also make learning about them the heart of the confirmation process. Sadly, a lot of kids treat confirmation as a course you have to pass in order to graduate from church. We don't retain that information any better than we do high school algebra.

You tend to remember things better if they relate to your life. But many Christians believe, along with non-Christians, that the gospel is mostly about taking out fire insurance for the afterlife. They miss the huge emphasis that Jesus puts on life now in the world. Part of this comes from misinterpreting the term “kingdom of heaven” found in Matthew. Matthew's gospel seems to have been targeted at an audience of Jewish believers. And they, like Orthodox Jews today, tried to rule out the very possibility of taking God's name in vain by avoiding using the word “God” at all. So Matthew substituted “kingdom of heaven” for “kingdom of God” which is used in all the other canonical gospels and so is probably the term that Jesus used. (Mark 4:11; Luke 4:43; John 3:3)

The kingdom of God is sometimes talked of in the future tense but Jesus does talk about the kingdom of God existing in the present tense as well. (Mark 1:15; Luke 11:20) The kingdom is not a country with borders; it is wherever God reigns as king. For instance, when Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a field in which weeds grow up alongside good grain, he isn't saying that there will be evil in heaven. He is describing the kingdom of God in the world, present tense. (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

Think of it like D-Day. The landing of the Allies in France was the beginning of the end of Hitler's Third Reich. As the Allies took over Nazi-occupied countries, they brought freedom. But Europe wasn't completely free until they took Germany back from the Nazis. The kingdom of God will only be fully realized in the future but it began with God's invasion of this world in the person of Jesus and exists now wherever he has freed people from sin. Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within you,” or “in the midst of you” since the “you” is plural in Greek. (Luke 17:21) So most of what Jesus tells us relates to this life.

This life is a mixed bag. Parts of it are wonderful and other parts are terrible. Why? Most of the things that negatively impact our lives have come about due to the bad choices we and others have made. And while we have little or no control over the bad choices others make, like our parents, ancestors or leaders, why don't we make better choices ourselves? Is there anyone out there who thinks using addictive drugs is a rational choice? Does adultery seem like a consequence-free choice to anyone who wants a happy marriage and trauma-free kids? In view of the financial fiasco that has put 67% of the wealth of this country into the hands of the richest 10% of households and only 2.6% in the hands of the bottom 50% of the population, can anyone, besides millionaires and billionaires, now echo Gordon Gecko's mantra that “Greed is good”? Why do we continue to repeat the bad choices that others make rather than reject them?

To be sure, we don't make our choices in a vacuum. There are all kinds of influences on us—genetic, familial, cultural. But if they could always veto our making different choices then no one could ever change their life for good or for evil. No one coming from a good situation in life could ever betray friends or cheat to win. No one in a bad situation could ever overcome addiction or succeed despite handicaps. Yet one of the most notorious bank robbers to hit L.A. was the son of a minister and had a good childhood. Jamie Lee Curtis came from a family that was blighted by addiction. Her father Tony Curtis abused alcohol, cocaine and heroin. Her brother died of an overdose at age 21. She was herself addicted to prescription painkillers for a decade. She decided to get treatment and has been sober for 25 years. Our choices, even the hard ones, are real choices. Our past need not determine our future.

Jesus spoke of the source of our bad choices: “...from within, out of the human heart, come evil ideas, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, shamelessness, envy, slander, arrogance and foolishness. All these come from within and pollute a person.” (Mark 7:21-22) If you've ever really been tempted, you know that our desires to do things we know are wrong can overrule our good sense when making certain choices. The Bible calls these desires and the actions they lead to “sins.”

They not only mess up our lives and the lives of those around us but they mess up our relationship with God. God would be justified in turning his back on all of us for all the harm we have done to ourselves and to each other, not to mention to the rest of his creation. But he loves us and wants to restore us to what we were created to be: his sons and daughters made in his image.

So in Jesus God entered into his creation to live as one of us, to announce his intentions to save us and to take upon himself the negative consequences that our sins have upon our relationship with God. And he did it at the cost of his own life. Then God raised Jesus to vindicate what Christ said about himself and about God. His resurrection also shows us how God will ultimately reboot and restore creation to what it was meant to be.

If we choose to turn from our sin-dominated lives and turn to God, he will offer us a direct connection to him through his Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus. By letting God implant his Spirit in us, he can start healing us. And by joining other people in recovery from sin, we can begin a life that is about restoration rather than destruction, forgiveness rather than retribution, reconciliation rather than polarization, helping rather than harming.

That's just one way to relate the basics of the gospel to people's everyday lives. It's about how Jesus frees those who turn to him from the things they do to sabotage themselves, their relationships with others and their relationship with God. The worst way to present the good news to others is to say, “You're evil. You're going to hell if you don't have Jesus.” The best way is to say, “I had a real problem. Nothing I did was working. The only thing that helped was Jesus.” Give your testimony. Tell how you needed peace or healing, how you were living with regret or wracked with grief, or how you had a bad relationship with someone important to you. Tell them how you asked God for help and how the help came. Tell them how following Jesus helps you on a daily basis.

People will rarely challenge your telling of your personal experience. They may not react by saying, “Oh my God, I need Jesus now!” but you will have planted a seed. Jesus frequently talked about how the gospel and the kingdom of God were like seeds. (Mark 4:26; Luke 8:11) We are not responsible for having every seed sprout and grow into a big tree and produce fruit. What we are responsible for is planting the seeds.

Of course, you can also just say, “Would you like to go to church with me this Sunday? I get a lot out of it and I think you might like it.” A 2-year study revealed that as many as 9 out of 10 unchurched people would go to church if someone would just invite them. Evangelism can be as simple as that.

Education can be thought of as nurturing the growing seeds of the gospel planted in people's minds. There's a lot more to God than the stripped down version one gets from evangelistic efforts. There's a lot more to being a Christian than going to church or following the Ten Commandments. There is a rich heritage of Christians dealing with issues and questions from the most basic to the most challenging. There is a smorgasbord of spiritual practices that the church has developed to help people who respond to different approaches in getting closer to God. By sharing them with each other, we help each other grow in Christ.

Bishop Frade, who ordained me, liked to tell this joke: What do you get when you cross an Episcopalian with a Jehovah's Witness? Someone who knocks on your door but has nothing to say. I think that's true of a lot of mainstream churches. That's why this sermon is about evangelism and education. The reason I've spent most of this time on evangelism is that most mainstream churches are quite good when it comes to education in the faith. We offer lots of information about and instructions for living with God. But that does us no good if we don't learn to get people to come to church in the first place.

Our first duty is to tell people the good news of how Jesus can free us from whatever dominates or enslaves us. And that means living lives that display that God is liberating us from our sins. Which also means being honest and repentant when we slip. It means forgiving others so that they can believe that our God is forgiving. It means reaching out and helping those who need help as if they were Jesus. If our actions match our words, and we make our words audible, we will have more success in getting people to come to church. And once they are here, we can share the wealth of knowledge and treasured wisdom that our generous God has in store for his people.

Originally preached on March 7, 2010. It has been revised and updated.