Proclaim

We need to get better at proclamation.

Some believe that to proclaim properly, you must take your doctrine and theology and mass produce it and distribute it everywhere so that everyone can see it and believe it like you do.  I imagine this worked well for a while. Years ago it might have been a nice surprise to have a well dressed person show up on your doorstep or hand you a pamphlet proclaiming new ideas or selling some new and exciting product but somewhere along the lines this was abused. Maybe by the Mormons or vacuum salesmen, these pleasant little encounters became unwelcome violations of privacy. 

I first became aware of this shift while colporteuring in 2002 and 2003.  I am not sure how many doors I knocked on during those two summers, but even though what I was offering at each door was good and benign, and even though I was pleasant and well dressed, I sensed that my presence at each door was most often not welcome.  When I bought a house this summer I saw another side of these visits from the other side of the door. There have been security system salesmen, curb painters, kids with cookie dough, and people from Stockton with cleaning supplies coming to my door selling things.  With the exception of the kid with cookie dough, my first thought when each of these people have walked up is that they are thieves scoping out houses, and considering the rising crime rate in Redding, I don't think I am being all that paranoid. 

So I would like to suggest that literature evangelism is no longer effective.  Not just because it's intrusive, but because it also fails to recognize the diversity in our population.  With the various cultures, religious backgrounds, and traditions, I have never seen anything written that could be blindly thrown at any random passer by with the expectation of conversion. It would not be honoring or respectful of their individual past. 

So lets throw away the GLOW tracts and stop wasting our time knocking on doors.  Lets take all those ugly pamphlet racks out of our church lobbies and bury them deep in the dumpster.  Those things are never going to really change a life.

Let's realize that we actually have to do the work of living the gospel with our lives. The only people we have any authority to affect are those who actually know us and trust us. The only opportunity we will have is one that comes from a long history of mutual love and respect.  These are the relationships of the workplace, and the community.  Not the doorstep or the street corner.