Archive: Servant Evangelism

Opening Closed Hearts to God’s Love

By Steve Sjogren

To earn the right to speak words of love, we must first willingly demonstrate deeds of love to the hurting people in our cities.

It was the Friday evening before Labor Day, and rush hour traffic was backed up for nearly a mile at the corner by our church. The temperature was 95 degrees, with matching humidity. About ten of us from the church quickly went into action to touch several hundred hot, frustrated motorists with God’s love. We iced down 400 soft drinks and set up signs just down the road: “Free Drinks Ahead!” As the cars came to the stop sign, we asked, “Would you like diet or regular?”

“Diet or regular what?” was the skeptical reply. “We’re giving away free drinks to show God’s love in a practical way.”

“Why?”

“Just because God loves you.” Reactions varied greatly—some people smiled, some shook their heads, several mouths dropped open. Most were a little stunned to receive something for free. A UPS driver drove away saying, “But I don’t even know you guys. Why would you do this for me?” In less than one hour, we spoke with about 600 people, gave away all the drinks on hand, and were even given coverage on a local radio station’s traffic report.

A slow start

I met Christ in the revival atmosphere of the “Jesus People” movement in southern California. A lot of evangelism was going on, but most of us doing it at the time were high on enthusiasm and low on understanding about how people come to Christ. We had an oversimplified picture of what bringing someone into relationship with Christ involved. Our model for evangelism worked extremely well in southern California, but it depended on highly gifted leaders doing evangelism in public meetings. Little person-to-person evangelism was going on outside of corporate gatherings. We naively thought we could use the same approach elsewhere with identical effectiveness. We joked that you could sneeze at meetings and a dozen people would accept Christ! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that God was doing his own sovereign work of evangelism. Doing evangelism during the Jesus Movement was like fishing during a salmon run. Anyone with minimal availability could “catch fish.”

Today we are no longer fishing in a salmon run.

The day of “easy evangelism” has not been with us for more than a decade. People aren’t nearly as open to listening to evangelistic appeals as they once were. In their hearts, many non-Christians say, “You have no right to tell me about your God until you have shown me you have integrity.” The scandals of prominent leaders in the body of Christ have made it more difficult than ever to share the gospel. For whatever reason, unchurched people are jaded. It’s tough sharing Jesus with skeptics.

Ten years after I came to Christ, I found myself in a very different spiritual environment than the fertile fields of the Jesus Movement era. I moved my family to Cincinnati to plant a new church. We began in a conservative, Midwestern community with five people. During my first 18 months, I shared my vision for planting a church with 1,000 people. Yet for all that effort we started our first Sunday with 35 people. That’s enough rejection to give Norman Vincent Peale a challenge. At that point we were unenthusiastic about evangelism. Mentioning the “E-word” caused us to feel guilty and reminded us of our failure at reaching out to the community.

Seeing their pain

One day while sitting in a restaurant, having just told a visitor our vision for starting a church—and being rejected again—I felt the Lord speak to me: “If you will befriend my friends then you’ll have more people than you know what to do with.”

Until that day, I wondered if there would be any people to pastor. Now God was saying I would have more people than I know what to do with if I befriended his friends.

I began to look in Scripture for the kinds of people Jesus interacted with during his short ministry. I began to see something new: though Jesus loved everyone, he apparently enjoyed spending the better part of his time with three types of people: the poor, the sick, and the lost. Even the apostles came from the hurting of society. All the apostles came from Galilee, the most hurting part of Palestine.

I began to see Jesus’ friends as the ones who are in pain from bad decisions they have made, from rejection, and from living in a fallen world that knows little of God’s acceptance, forgiveness, and love. We all have our own version of pain—those tension points that make life somewhere between difficult and impossible to live.

I realized that almost no one is having a good time in life. I went to the mall one day to go people watching. As I looked into the face of each person, I realized almost everyone is experiencing a significant level of misery. Jesus longs to touch and heal this pain. Somehow, my job was to be around and minister to those people. But how? I’m too shy to go door to door knocking. Besides, people seemed more skeptical than ever. I had already heard several hundred people tell me no to the invitation to become involved in this new church.

Then an idea began to form. If we could somehow lighten some of the pain these people are going through—even for a moment—maybe we would get their attention. By serving our way into their hearts, maybe we could gain their ears.

As the idea of servant evangelism crystallized, we organized an “absolutely free car wash.” We stationed a couple of former cheerleaders on the corner with signs to direct dirty cars to the rest of our crew. We had several who washed, some who did windows, some who vacuumed, and a couple who were “designated” evangelists, explaining to people the reason we were doing this. Amazingly, many wouldn’t believe we would do something for free—no strings attached. The first car was a station wagon driven by a single mom with six squirming kids. She cried as we shared with her and prayed for her.

The owner of the second car turned out to be a well-known Cincinnati businessman. We told him we were doing this for free. He said, “That’s nice. To whom shall I make out my check?”

“No sir,” someone replied, “we aren’t receiving any money for washing your car. We did this just because God loves you.” It was one thing to see the mother cry, but I wasn’t ready to see this powerful businessman wipe away the tears.

I believe he was touched because we went around all his established defenses that had kept people—and God—away from his life. If we were to “battle” at a philosophical or theological level, we would not have gotten through to this sophisticate. In a sense, we broke the rules and were not “fighting fair.” We sneaked in the back door of his life where he was least expecting it—his heart—and made a significant impact.

When the afternoon was over, we had washed more than 40 cars. Surprisingly, almost everyone accepted prayer when we offered it. Our group stood in a circle, prayed, and cried together. We began to feel the pain of those we had served that day.

Since that time we have tried more than one hundred creative outreaches. Almost all of them have worked extremely well—putting us in touch with the community.

Reaching out to people has been the key to the significant growth we have experienced. Last year alone we touched more than 60,000 in our community. Our fellowship has grown from 35 people nine years ago to more than 2,800 today. We have seven weekend services and have planted six more fellowships in the area. What has happened here has caused us to see evangelism with new eyes.

Seeing the ”process”

Paul’s statement in I Corinthians 3:6 transformed our view of evangelism: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” Paul saw evangelism as a process, a view unlike our American mindset that focuses mainly on “closing the deal.” According to Paul’s agricultural analogy, harvesting comes after much planting and watering. Americans naturally value the harvest aspect of evangelism. Our culture extols results and the bottom line. Paul, however, valued the early stages of evangelism groundwork, as well as the final loop of the evangelism process.

Paul states a basic farming principle: the more you plant and water, the more you will eventually harvest. Because of the American church’s credibility gap, we must first willingly demonstrate love before we’ll earn the right to share the words of love with our society. We must learn to value what I call the first 90 percent of evangelism—the planting and watering—before we begin to see significant harvesting.

I define evangelism with this simple formula:

DEEDS OF GOD’S LOVE + WORDS OF GOD’S LOVE + TIME

Deeds of kindness and love give us entrance into people’s hearts. We design our deeds to relieve their pain and cause them to ask us, “Why are you doing this for me?” The deed of love or service is the initial seed planted in the hearts of people. As we serve people we tell them of God’s love by sharing the gospel message at whatever level they are open. Then, after a season (that amount of time is different for each individual), the Holy Spirit begins to work on the hearts of those seekers.

This approach to evangelism puts the pressure squarely on God instead of people or a program. I don’t think people can take that sort of pressure. I have found that they become guilt-ridden when pressure for doing evangelism is put on their shoulders. We determine to have fun when going out to serve the community, and leave the results with God. We have adopted a motto coined by George Bernard Shaw: “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong.”

To date we have seen many come into relationship with Christ. By approaching “pre-Christians” with a desire to serve them and relieve their pain we avoid battling in a mental or verbal arena and go straight to their hearts. I haven’t seen much fruit in trying to convert people at the head-to-head level of apologetics—telling and arguing. A heart-to-heart witness is hard to resist. As we go for the hearts of people we bypass their defenses.

Paul echoed this thought in Romans 2:4, “… it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.” Kindness is a key that opens hearts. It opened one man’s heart to God when we were doing a “Free Lawn Care” outreach. We had loaded a couple of mowers and rakes into a truck and driven around until we saw long grass. We approached the house and knocked on the door to tell the owner what we were up to. Through the screen door this man barked, “What do you want?” We gave him a brief explanation and, without even looking up, his response was simply, “Yeah, whatever.”

We mowed enthusiastically and finished in about 30 minutes, then we stopped by to tell him we were done and ask if we could pray for any needs in his life. He was sitting motionless in front of the TV watching a Reds baseball game and told us he didn’t have any needs. As we stepped away from the door, one young man in our group said he was sure this man was in great emotional need and that we ought to insist on praying for him, so we turned around and prayed a simple little prayer, “Come Holy Spirit and touch this man’s pain, whatever it is.” The response was instant and surprising—he broke down in deep sobbing, grabbing the nearest person in the circle and wetting his shoulder with tears for some minutes. When his crying died down, he told us his son had been arrested the night before for stealing a car to support a drug habit.

That day God’s presence and power penetrated this man’s pain and isolation in a tangible way because we were willing to cut a little grass.

Getting started

You and your church can begin to reach out to your city in significant ways through Servant Evangelism outreaches. This approach can be condensed in the phrase: “Low Risk — High Grace” activity.

Risk has to do with the “cost” of the given outreach. Cost comes in a variety of ways other than money—emotion, time, energy. The “grace” factor has to do with how much of God’s blessing and presence is necessary for something significant to happen in the given outreach. I have done ministry that has been so heavily programmatic, there was little need for God to show up to ensure success in the ministry. We need to sponsor outreaches in which it is easy enough for the average layperson to succeed, and almost impossible to fail. If our approach to ministry requires an Olympic level of skill then we will have only a small percentage of our people reaching out.

 

GRACE

2

Low Risk

High Grace

4

High Risk

High Grace

 

 

RISK

1

Low Risk

Low Grace

3

High Risk

Low Grace

 

 

In other words, it doesn’t take much gifting, or much money, or even much boldness to begin to affect large numbers of people. But as we step out to do these acts of love, God in his mercy shows up in “high grace” ways. So how do you get started in opening closed hearts to God’s love?

1. Begin to ask the Lord to show you the pain in your city.

Ask the Lord for the gift of knowing and identifying your community’s pain. Every city is unique in its problems, hurts, and pain. What Cincinnatians feel as a need will differ from the needs of your city. Cincinnati has long and wet winters that leave road salt on cars. During the cold weather months we offer free desalting washes. Cold weather also gives us a chance to give out free coffee at grocery stores.

There’s a park in Toledo where many parents walk with their families on pleasant summer days. A pastor there has photo teams that walk about the park offering to take free pictures of the families— “just because God loves you.” They place a sticker on the back of the picture with the church name and phone number. I believe those families will save pictures taken of them for years. Every time they look at that picture they recall the kindness of the Christians that served them. One thing is for sure: As you begin to address people’s pain with the mercy and compassion of the Lord, you will draw a crowd. Few of the unchurched are looking for church. All of us are looking for relief from our pain.

2. Begin to meet the practical needs of your city.

In other words, scratch them where they itch. Robert Schuller says, “Find a hurt and heal it.” As you begin to look at the needs in each stratum of your city, you’ll begin to see some of what God sees.

A friend of mine pastors a church in a Colorado college town. Here, his church does servant evangelism by going door-to-door in the dorms, offering to clean rooms for free “just because God loves you.” They are beginning to see a lot of curious college students coming to their fellowship. They have a second outreach to the students by providing free tutoring, then praying for their success on the upcoming test.

3. You Step out First

Most pastors I know aren’t natural evangelists. However, we have all been called to do the work of an evangelist (II Timothy 4:5). Your people will listen to all you teach and talk about, but they really won’t do more than you do as their primary leader. By nature, pastors are often more Bible “studiers” than Bible “doers.” When I take personality inventories, I consistently come up as borderline introvert, but I find these low-risk outreaches feasible for me.

I look forward to mobilizing more outreaches into the community. We are now using our small groups as our primary force for doing these projects. Just think what could happen if it became commonplace for each small group to do a monthly outreach. It’s exciting to consider the sort of impact a church could make if it’s organized to serve its way into the hearts of the community.

Steve Sjogren is pastor of the Vineyard Community Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the author of Conspiracy of Kindness (Vine Books).

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