Evangelism the Uncoolest Word in Contemporary Christianity

Our word is stuck on repeat. Yet another movie remake, yet another old tune covered, yet another retro style plundered. There are precious few new things being spoken. Repeating the same things is just another way of being silent. Silence breeds sterility and barrenness. Nothing new means that things stay the same, there is no good news for tommorow because tommorow will be the same as today.  Our world is sick of words twisted into spin, of the same old rhetoric dressed up in new clothes.

Our world is desperate for fresh, new speech.

This is why when God speaks to Abram in Genesis 12 it is so stunning. Abram lived in a world of idols and brutal gods who simply took from their human slaves. Slaves who’s religious imagination was restricted to placating their capricious masters. Humanity expected that it would always be like that, because tomorrow would be like today. But then YHWH speaks and it is new.

God’s word is so fresh and vital, that it causes Abram to move, to pick up everything he knows and to leave behind his whole world. Because embedded like a benevolent virus within God’s word was a promise, an echo of how life should be, a distant memory of a forgotten life of shalom in Eden.  God was at it again, speaking newness, and potential into a formless mass. Although this time the formless mass was not a world, but a man. Abram that proto – man, so unlike the classical hero, filled with failings and fears, so much more like us. This time God does not plant a tree of life in a garden, this time God’s word’s beckon. He plants a seed in Abram’s soul. A seed that will grow into a tree of life. Afamily tree of life, which will outlive Abram’s earthly life, it’s branches and leaves reaching through millions of lives. The scent of its flowers can be smelt now, you eat its fruit all of the time and do not realize it. All of this from a word. All this from the act of speech.

God short circuits the religious logic of the day by speaking. Speaking needs listeners. God shocks by desiring conversation. Later in the story Abram will discover that God even allows debate, questioning, the kind of back and forth seen in middle eastern markets. Compared to the static and impotent idols of Abram’s world, this is a strange and intruiging God, a deity who speaks and desires to be spoken to.

Now if we are created in God’s image, if we are marked with his imprint, if we are charged to live as his ambassadors in this world, then what is the potential of our words? Could it be that we have the same ability to speak new life with our tongues?

The problem is that we no longer want to speak. We are unsure of our place as believers in a spiritually repressed culture, we have social standing to protect. We wince and recoil at the idea of wrapping our tongues around holy words, good news gets stuck in our throats. We have a million excuses, we ransack the past for examples of misspoken words, for abuses of power. Into our minds appear judgemental, biggoted street preachers, faces contorted, spitting out nuggets of truth, that get lost in Pharisaicalbile. We don’t want to be like them, so a baby hits the concrete floor as we empty our baths, we find ourseleves at the other extreme, turning away, saying nothing.  

So we remain silent, and the powers and principalities or this world slap each other on the back and cheer. We close our mouths. And the injustice rulers, those who have chosen the path of evil, all the dark spiritual muck of this world breathes a sigh of relief; charging their glasses, toasting the fact that evangelism is so passe, so uncool.

But maybe just maybe, God is calling you, the hip, the cool, the relevant, the cutting edge, the creative fringe of faith, to again open your mouths. To exhale the life giving breath that turned dust into Adam. To again tell the dangerous stories of another path, another way, another world. To dare to suggest to a flattened, tired and cynical world, that there is more good news in our cosmos than the schmaltzy human interest stories at the end of the news bulletin.

The collection of Jewish wisdom known as the Talmud, says that when someone speaks to another about God, that they ‘create again’ that person, just as God created Adam and Eve. We have forgotten that there is a strange exchange occurring when we speak words of good news, a deeper metaphysical rumbling, undetectable to the untrained ear. When we tell others of Christ, we like God speak worlds into being. When we tell people that there is more to this life than shopping and retirement plans; we create new universes of meaning, new potentials, we breath life into gasping, suffocating souls.

And so our world waits, listening in the silence waiting for you to speak out fresh, new, vital, holy, and life giving words of truth.

 Here is a Pdf of the powerpoint accompanying this entry feel free to share and use. keys-for-fresh-speech