Jan
9
Sharing Christ Incarnationally
Filed Under Commentary
Does the thought of sharing your faith with someone make you feel petrified with fear? What if someone asks you a question you can’t answer? What if befriending a person whose life is “a mess” ends up dragging you down? 
Rebecca Manley Pippert wrote a book on evangelism years ago entitled, “Out of the Saltshaker and into the World.” She still travels around the globe conducting “Salt Shaker evangelism training conferences” and has found that everywhere she goes Christians feel inadequate when it comes to sharing their faith in Christ with others. In order to overcome our fear and sense of inadequacy in sharing our faith, Pippert says we should “look at the incarnation of Christ.”
We’ve just come through the Christmas season in which we’ve celebrated Christ’s incarnation, the fact that “the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). God came down to us from His lofty throne in heaven in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, and humbly took on the form of a servant. Becoming a man, Christ loved humanity, leaving us an example of how to relate to others.
Pippert says, “God doesn’t require perfection to be able to use us. In fact, His power is glorified through our weakness.” We don’t need to come across high and mighty, or have pat answers to every question. In fact, it’s a turn off to others if we do. Many are attributing Hillary Clinton’s recent comeback in the New Hampshire Primary Election to the fact that she expressed a moment of emotional vulnerability to a voter who simply asked her how she was doing. People want to see the reality of the struggle more than a polished pat answer.
Yet, John 1:14 tells us that Jesus came to earth not just “full of grace,” but “full of grace and truth.” Pippert shares how a year ago, a man came up to her at one of her conferences and said, “I fix all the cars in my neighborhood, and my wife bakes cookies - that’s our witness to our neighbors.” Pippert replied, “That’s fantastic. Demonstrating the authentic love of Christ is critical to being a witness. But have you ever expressed the source behind your love?” He said, “No, I just let my actions tell the story.” As foundational as love is in our witness to the world, Jesus also came telling the truth about the Kingdom. If we never share the source behind our love, seekers could think we’re simply “Boy Scouts.”
In the final analysis, evangelism isn’t a particular method or technique. Evangelism flows naturally out of a heart that knows God and is being transformed by His love in the confidence that God’s Word and His Spirit are powerful, life-changing resources. I love Pippert’s summary of an incarnational evangelistic lifestyle:
- Display Christ’s love
- Depend on God’s Spirit, and
- Declare God’s truth.
If you would like to read this article in its entirety go to http://www.christianitytoday.com/outreach/articles/godcamedown.html.
Comments
2 Responses to “Sharing Christ Incarnationally”
Leave a Reply
Glad to see a musing!
Christ’s example of evangelism has always struck a chord with me, but I have largely ignored the incarnational aspect of it. Pippert makes a nice observation about Jesus coming in the simple, mild, “human” form of an infant and what that means for a model of evangelism.
In thinking of Chirst-centered evangelism, my mind usually travels to the countless examples in the gospels of Jesus being relational, specifically in sharing meals (aka “really getting to know them”) with people of all stripes and reputations. A relational model of evangelism probably looked different within this culture because it was more of a communal culture. People interacted with their neighbors. People related with one another. Western individualism, which is exemplified in affluent America, is a huge obstacle in “getting to know people.”
Because of this, the neighborly gestures of a man fixing cars for his neighbors and his wife baking are indeed extraordinary. I do want to speak to your comment about the tension between letting your actions tell the story and being a “Boy Scout.” Can “sharing the source behind our love” be done in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or off-putting somehow? It seems (and this is just from some of my life experience) that sharing the source behind the love too soon can compromise the building of an authentic relationship. I am aware that the Bible talks about declaring the gospel with boldness and also that an uncomfortable reaction is often appropriate when presented with Christ or the gospel. But, if there is no trust built into a relationship, it seems like many would take their cookie or their newly rebuilt transmission, say a sincere thank you, and look for a good bakery or auto shop in their neighborhood from now on.
I suppose, if I had to quickly sum up my critique of Pippert, I would posit that evangelism is not quite so formulaic. In a pluralistic context where many are quite familiar with Christianity on different levels, evangelism is a multi-layered enterprise with many stages, hopefully with the final one being a clear presentation of the Gospel message and an invitation to accept it personally.
I know this really wasn’t the main point of your blog, but I guess that’s the beauty of this format…you can go off on a tangent! I’d be interested to read any thoughts you have in response. Thanks and keep writing!
A.C.
I enjoyed and appreciated your response, which in your critique of Pippert’s “boyscout” comment certainly reflects a sensitivity to a post-modern context. The old adage “timing is everything” would seem to summarize your concern about when to spring the “source of our good deeds,” i.e. God’s love, on an unsuspecting recipient, which is a point well taken, even though acknowledging the source of a good deed is a far cry from “dropping the gospel bomb” on somebody, in my opinion.
You’ve probably heard the quote, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, who said “Preach the Gospel at all times and if necessary use words,” which rings true in an age and culture in which talk is cheap and in which there is a significant degree of incongruence between words and actions. However, it’s worthy of note how often Paul arrived at new city, established a base of contacts and support, and then shortly thereafter began proclaiming the Gospel to those who would listen. True, Paul was extraordinarily gifted and hard-wired temperamentally for such an endeavor, yet the point is that both relational and declarative elements were included in Paul’s evangelistic methodology. I’m reminded of Paul E. Little, now deceased, who like Pippert, was an Inter-Varsity trained expert in evangelism from my generation, who made an observation similar to Pippert’s in saying that just as you wouldn’t think of flying an airplane with only one wing, neither could one engage meaningfully in the evangelistic enterprise over the long haul without a balanced attention to “word and deed.”
Pippert’s article is ultimately an appeal for balance between word and deed, relationship and proclamation. I can’t help but feel the internal struggle underlying Pippert’s writing as she attempts to hold these two poles together in tension. She lives and operates in an emerging post-modern context in which many are questioning the faith in which they were raised, while at the same time finding that fewer and fewer were raised in the faith at all. Yet, she has also experienced first hand what God can do when people authentically encounter Christ. Her thinking resonates with me by virtue of the fact that early Christianity was a grass roots movement which spread like wild fire over the then known world as converts to Christianity shared what they had seen, heard, and experienced of the saving power of Jesus Christ with people across the back fence, in the market place, along trade routes, or wherever their spheres of influence extended. People were deeply impacted by the truth of the gospel and swept up in a sense of urgency to share this message with others in a manner similar to Paul’s passionate statement in II Corinthians 5 - “the love of Christ constrains me” (puts me in a vice-grip). Reading between the lines, I sense that Pippert’s concern, and one which I share, is that in our legitimate fears about being “formulaic” in our approach and “off-putting” in our style, we will inadvertently hoard for ourselves the treasure that the world needs most, the precious gospel, which is “the power of God unto salvation.” Perhaps I can best sum up what’s on my heart by saying, “With sensitivity to the intended recipients and a proper concern for timing, a balanced approach to evangelism must ultimately include a Spirit led combination of both word and deed in which this sense of a “Spirit led movement” is somehow recaptured and revitalized in our American context that is now the third largest mission field in the world.”