Bait and Switch?

My girls, my Bro and my wife

Several people I know make at least part of their living selling Newspaper subscriptions. The bait to try the paper is a gift card that is roughly equal to the first months subscription. In accepting the card, the person is agreeing to start a subscription to that newspaper which they can later cancel if they choose. Of course this is my simplified explanation, but the customer must be made aware that this will be an ongoing purchase until it is cancelled. It is the same way with the book, magazine and music sales pitches we hear all the time. How clear the sales person makes the continued subscription is a matter of debate but I imagine many people never hear much beyond the free gift card. It is like the TV music pitches for the oldies. Buy one at the regular price and get the second one for a penny. The fine print that you can’t read at the bottom of the screen is that now they will send you their choice for music every month for eternity if you do not cancel…in person…at their home office…in a place you have never heard of or will ever find. A lot of sales pitches work like this, including the typical pitch to receive Christ as your Savior and stay out of hell. While that is true, it is not all the truth or even the true starting point of importance. After 40 years of pastoral ministry I am becoming concerned more and more that our well meaning evangelistic efforts are at a very minimum misguided. Consider this from Andrew Murray:
“The statement we so often hear, “Make a decision for Jesus Christ,” places the emphasis on something our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him—something very different.” People still decide, not yield. I believe I have lived my life trying to do your job, going for a decision that has no need to grow as apposed to yielding that has growth as its very essence.”

It seems to me that our evangelistic zeal is to get a decision not make a disciple. Are we trying to do something only the Holy Spirit can do? Notice Jesus’ way of making disciples in his time on earth. The decision was to follow, not just make a decision. I’m thinking there is a lot of baiting going on in the Christian world today that is part innocent and part ignorant. In the long run this may be doing more damage to the kingdom than it is doing good. Statistically the churches of today are much larger than at any time in history. Why are so many people making so little difference? Why is Christianity today characterized as a mile wide and an inch deep? Could it be so simple as they made a decision but never yielded? Is there something you or I can do about it? I'm thinking there is. What do you think?

If you haven’t read He Love’s Me by Wayne Jacobsen, now might be a good time. It is a great sequel to the theology behind The Shack.

What Really Is Coming to Christ?

Today a friend told me of his four year progress in witnessing to a self proclaimed agnostic co-worker/friend. The co-worker appears to be close to understanding his need of a Savior. My friend is a newer believer and this is his first foray into seeing someone come to Christ so I asked how he planned to lead his friend to Christ. His response was "I thought I'd bring him to church" implying I could finish the work he began four years ago. I shared with him the fundamentals, gave him a copy of The Soul Winners Guide, showed him an Evangelism Explosion booklet and talked to him about The Four Spiritual Laws. I stopped before I overloaded him with the Romans Road and Casting Nets presentations. This got me thinking about what we tell people who want to come to Christ. I came to Christ as a 4 year old on May 5th, 1954. I know because I found it written in my grandfathers journal. I don't remember it, only the Bible they presented me afterward. Later, as a young teen, I remember the original Left Behind series and the movies on the rapture (Distant Thunder). I was sure glad I was not going to be left behind, but a couple times I came home to an empty house and was really scared I had been. I remember in my mid teens making a decision to share Christ with my friends after sitting most of the night alone in front of a camp fire watching a nail turn white hot and thinking I did not want my friends to go to such a place. I really did begin to try to scare my friends out of hell. I realize that is not the way people usually say that and Dee does not allow me to say it like that either. :)


A year later I went to a week long seminar with Campus Crusade and learned the Four Spiritual Laws which begins: Law One - God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. I liked that and led four people to Christ that weekend. After a while, the Four Laws came under attack because, at least in the opinion of some, it did not deal adequately with sin. I stuck with the 4 laws through the 70's and switched to Evangelism Explosion's presentation of the gospel in the 80's.

Currently I am reading a book titled "He Loves Me" by Wayne Jacobson (an absolutely wonderful book on what happened at the cross). In this book, the author points out that the EE presentation uses fear to scare people into heaven by avoiding hell. I agree it does start with “if you were to die today, do you know for certain that you would go to heaven?” but it moves on to a pretty standard presentation on putting faith in Christ alone to save us. I recall all this for anyone who bothered to read this far to ask the question, "What really is coming to Christ?".

Certainly it is avoiding hell, clearly it is finding forgiveness for sin, but is that all that God had in mind? I am wondering. If I may be so crude, how would Jesus sell himself? What would be His offer? Left behind? Believe or burn? I have a "Plan for You" I think your gonna like. All of the above? There is truth in all the above but it is not all the truth there is. They all miss to some degree the core of what I have come to understand Jesus is offering. A real life friendship/relationship with him right now….and for all eternity. I think it may be time for a relationship driven salvation presentation. It would not exclude what I grew up with but it would emphasize the fellowship and relationship that is at the heart of the gospel in the here and now, not just the (as one unbelieving friend put it) "pie in the sky by and by stuff:". If you’re interested in watching the journey unfold, log on occasionally and feel free to comment.