When I look back over my time as a pastor, there are words that I would speak differently, actions I would change, decisions that would not be the same. Of course, this is also true of my time in business, as in all of life. There are things I am thankful for and things of which I am ashamed. Then there are things that I just didn’t know or realize, times I thought I was doing the right thing, the best thing, and I wasn’t.
Many times our thinking is so embedded in our particular culture, including religious and church culture and (for pastors) vocational culture, that we just don’t realize the effect of what we’re thinking and doing.
About twenty-five years ago I attended a daylong workshop with some of my key congregational leaders on witnessing. There were around two hundred attendees (as I recall) and it was a wonderful atmosphere. The presenters were upbeat, the material was positive, the lunch was good, and the attendees were excited about the material. To be among two hundred people who want to share Jesus is exciting and energizing.
The workshop consisted of an overview of a course on witnessing produced by a well-known pastor and his church. The curriculum was in the form of a book and series of short videos. The production quality of the video was high, the book was well-written, there was plenty of “how to” material, and it all seemed like a good idea at the time. The videos consisted of vignettes in which actors illustrated ways to share Jesus with others, each vignette tied to a chapter in the book. It was all so very smooth.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was no discussion about the Cross being an offence, about rejection, about if the world hated Jesus that it will hate His followers. There was nothing about John 15:18 – 16:4, nothing about Mark 8:34 – 38, nothing about 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:2, and nothing about Galatians 5:11, 12–15.
I introduced this course to our church, and later to another church. In both instances the participation was good and the folks who attended were enthusiastic. Of course, in retrospect, most people who attend such courses with a desire to share Jesus are likely to be enthusiastic, they want to learn and grow and make a difference in the lives of others.
I thought I was doing a good thing, I thought I was being a good pastor, but now I’m not so sure.
For one thing, I was unwittingly having my folks avoid the Cross and identification with Jesus Christ. As we see in John 15:18 – 16:4, Jesus is clear that we will experience rejection and persecution if we are faithful to Him. The Cross is to be our Way of Life in Jesus Christ.
In conjunction with this avoidance, I was unknowingly buying into the popular Evangelical ethos that our goal is to be “winsome” and inoffensive in sharing Jesus. We have embraced a therapeutic and sociological ethos of church and mission that requires little of us, we are more about popularity and gaining acceptance than about the Cross and living cruciform lives in Jesus.
Now please don’t misunderstand me, I absolutely subscribe to Paul’s admonition in Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to every person.”
I often use storytelling and humor when sharing Jesus with others. I believe in building bridges of communication and relationships. I am passionate about investing in people, in listening to them, in understanding them, and in serving them. I practice being all things to all people in order that someway, somehow, by Christ’s grace I may win some. I use different vocabularies and patterns of speech depending on who I am speaking with – this is natural to me since I have had a diverse life experience. I usually enjoy being with people and learning about them.
But I also realize that there will be rejection. I also realize that the Cross is an offense, it is not a candy vending machine. The Cross brings us to the end of ourselves and to the crucified Lamb of God. My goal with people is to share Jesus with them, to touch them with God’s love and grace and mercy, it is not to go along to get along. To witness to others I must always be willing to sacrifice myself – my wants, my desires, my needs, my social acceptance, my ego.
Do I want to be liked and appreciated and accepted? Of course I do. Do I realize that this will not always be the case? Yes I do. This will indeed be the case if I follow Jesus and faithfully share Him with others. In my business career I often went against the popular cultural grain in my obedience to Jesus, it is a given that this will happen if we follow Christ, we cannot help but witness to Jesus by our actions and words – if we are obedient to Him.
So as I look back on my excitement and endorsement of the course on witnessing that I introduced to my churches, I realize I could have done much better.
Paul writes that all who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). Jesus says that if the world hated Him that it will hate us, that the servant is not above his or her master, that if the world persecuted Him that it will persecute us (John 15:18 – 16:4).
Do we believe this? If so, then how can we expect to witness without experiencing rejection and persecution? To construct an ethos of winsomeness and social acceptance, what amounts to a sociological, marketing, and therapeutic framework, for sharing the Gospel amounts to an avoidance with identification with Jesus Christ and the Cross, it amounts to playing the role of Peter when he attempted to shield Jesus from the Cross. Jesus says to us, “Get behind Me Satan, you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s” (Matthew 16:21–23).
I recently read On the Incarnation by Athanasius and was struck by his description of men, women, boys, and girls gladly suffering persecution and death for Jesus Christ – gladly and with joy. Athanasius was saying, “What we have in Jesus Christ and in our testimony, our witness of Him, is not of this world.”
I am afraid that the course on witnessing that I was so excited about and which I introduced to my people, people whom I loved, was very much of this world, for it avoided the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.
If I could do it over again, I would help my folks explore what the Bible teaches about witnessing to others in word and deed, and we would spend time in John 15:18 – 16:4, 2 Timothy 3:12, Colossians 4:6, as well as in many other passages. We would consider who we are in Christ and that we are called to be the Presence and Word of Christ to those around us; at home, at work, in school, in our neighborhoods, in civic life. We would hopefully come to see that witnessing for Jesus is our Way of Life, and that as in all of life, we will have sweet times and bitter, joyful times and times of sorrow, times when we understand what is happening and times when we just don’t understand events around us – but in which we know we can always trust Jesus.
Witnessing is not so much something we do, it is who we are in Jesus Christ, we are His witnesses.
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