Category — Servant Evangelism

I recently connected with someone who is introducing outreach at his church and is receiving a less than enthusiastic response. Not surprising.

In general, when we start something new, we will, of course, meet resistance. I have written a bit about the power of resistance on this blog and there is much more to write on this. Let’s face it – part of the fall of Adam is the tendency of all humans to be skeptical of new ideas no matter how powerful and important those ideas may be. Our role as idea carriers is to persevere come what may. The life we carry about is too important to worry about our personal sensitivities. Our role is to focus on the outcome.

What’s true for new ideas in general is especially true for outreach. I am convinced the Enemy of the purposes of God is hard at work seeking to dissuade people from positive thoughts about outreach. There is much ungrounded fear surrounding the notion of reaching out.

“God empower us for the marathon, not the 100 meter dash.”

All I can say is “Wow!” A great time was had by all.

Some technical aspects:
We had a few dozen involved in a combination of preparing, packing and giving away the burgers and hotdogs. We cooked the product in phases, partly because our large grill could only do about 50-75 at a time, but partly because this approach allowed us to keep things warm as we made them and wrapped them in thermal packaging as soon as they came off the grill. Our system worked out well. We used medium-sized coolers for storing the burgers and dogs. Those maintain temperature whether warm or cold. Teams went out with a medium sized supply of burgers and dogs, gave those away, then either returned to home base or had someone bring them a fresh supply. Our team of four went through about 120 sandwiches between our first time out and our resupply time.

Responses & Discoveries:
At first people were a little timid. That might have been partly due to our timidity (I personally wasn’t timid since I had done things like this many times before but some of our people hadn’t done much outreach door to door like this and were intimidated). Also, we started a bit after 11:00 AM – not quite yet the lunch hour so perhaps people weren’t yet hungry. Before long our people got into their stride. We started in an area we felt led to go to that was overtly more economically depressed.
The responses we received were interesting and varied. About 80% of the houses we went to gladly received what we had to give away. I found that as soon as they opened their door, even before we said anything, the expression on their face made it clear they were “open” and pretty much determined whether they would receive from us. Those same people seemed to be spiritually open. When we asked if we could “bless” them they inevitably said yes – meaning we could pray for them momentarily. Numbers of those we prayed for emoted as we prayed – they teared up, or became choked up. It was interesting how many we ran into who were facing impending surgeries and they expressed concern about those outcomes. Those encounters became prayer times with person after person. It seems like God used our presence as an excuse to jumpstart something with those people.

One team went to a particularly challenging trailer park in the city. The first few places they came to didn’t respond to the knock on the door. When they got to the third place the door opened, then the first two places opened up and asked them to return with food. Before long they were circulating throughout the park with burgers and dogs to all the residents. The opening line was the same for everyone – “How many would you like?” – “Like what?” – “Burgers or dogs? We have plenty. We made them just for you – to show you a little bit of God’s love.” – “Well in that case I guess I’ll have a few of each. They are free aren’t they?” The conversations went from there. Literally everyone we talked to – several hundred people – was open to receiving a blessing in the form of a 10-second prayer.

Doing sometime a bit different today. Going out to serve part of the city by giving away grilled hamburgers and hot dogs to people. We are going door to door with the offer, “How many would you like?” Of course people will say, “Like what?” To that we will say, “Nicely grilled burgers and dogs. How many would you like?” Of course they will then ask, “What’s the catch?” As usual we will say, “There is no catch. We are just showing God’s love in a practical way. So how many would you like – two, three – how many could you use? They are nice and hot!” (We have them in thermal wrapping.) We are then going to ask if we can offer them a blessing. We plan to pray a generic blessing upon them in most cases – something like, “In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we bless you. Amen.” Anyone can pray that prayer. It takes almost no practice.

I’ll get back to you when we get done. We are doing 500 of these in an area of town that is not used to receiving a touch of kindness. We’ll see how it all works. We go in humility and dependence upon God for success.

I mean minimizing what can go haywire.
A lot of what I tried to do early on in the Christian life was high-risk ministry. That is, a lot could go wrong. Sometimes a lot did go wrong. There were a lot of moving parts to go haywire. It was marked with complexity so there was the great possibility that something would go wrong. The more complex we make something the more likely it is to break down.
I like cars that are cool. A friend of mine has an amazing car that has a lot of features. It is quite impressive, or at least it was impressive for its first 18 months until little things started going wrong with many of the shiny dodads. It wasn’t long after that that the manufacturer’s warranty expired, then he was stuck with a vehicle that was riddled nit picky problems that drove him crazy. It got to the point that he couldn’t even get his windows to roll down without investing $500. Ouch! There is an outreach lesson to the wise in this car story. Sometimes it’s better to stick with the basic model and steer clear of things that are the extravagant versions.

I’ve done a lot of things that have gone south, especially in the realm of outreach. I’m at the point now where I seek to minimize the risk as much as possible. Instead of going for the glitzy, I say let’s just go with the basic approach that will get us from point A to point B efficiently. Quick, easy, no one gets hurt. Let’s wash cars. Let’s clean toilets. Let’s mow lawns. Let’s knock on doors at the trailer park and give away juicy, fresh hot hamburgers by asking, “How many would you like?” There’s not a lot of room for error there. There’s not a lot that can go wrong. I like that. I think you will too. Let’s go do some damage to the powers of darkness.

It doesn’t take a large crew to make leave a big footprint. Victory in God’s kingdom has always gone to the underdogs. God nearly always anoints a miniscule group to do his bidding. I find this encouraging since all that I have started has been small – usually for a long time if not forever. What God builds usually starts (and typically stays) on the smallish side. I used to say that it started small but then would grow large, but now I see that often numbers usually only grow fat. I now see that it is almost always the case that a radical but small fringe gets the Kingdom lifestyle and message. Why does it stay small? It’s all about the offensive cost of mercy. Jesus said “Many are called but few are chosen” (Matt. 18). The context of that verse could well be restated, “Many are called but few choose” the Kingdom. The Kingdom, as God defines it, is always something that is set up according to his parameters, not ours. Most don’t like that much, so they protest, they decide it’s not for them, and vote themselves out of it like the religious people in Matthew chapter 18 (yes, it was the religious people who decided not to participate in the Kingdom once they figured out how the mercy of God works as in this story).

This Jesus story is fresh with me today. A few of us went out mixing it up with dozens of lost people who, like those in Nineveh, didn’t know their left hand from their right. We did a $1 carwash. We washed people’s cars and paid them a dollar for the privilege of serving them. We stunned many. Numbers teared up. We teared up! I’m always amazed what can happen when a few, enthused, dedicated people move in a common direction and pour their hearts into something. Do something great with God. It only takes a few.