Cell Groups in March

"Excuse me, sir.  Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ?"

I was so relieved to be able to say, "Why yes I do."

Sadly, I was not so relieved at that particular moment because of the joy and peace found in the grace of Christ, or because of the eternal security that is found in salvation.  Instead, at that moment, I was simply relieved because I knew that answer would mean he would leave me alone and let me go into the grocery store in peace while he looked for his next mark.

Something about the "can I talk to you about Jesus?" method of evangelism seems so phony to me.  Maybe its just me, but I don't think so.  I am a Christian.  And by Christian, I don't mean that I have Christian parents, or that I celebrate Christmas instead of a "holiday season", or even that I go to church regularly.  No, what I mean by "I am a Christian" is that I believe wholeheartedly that Jesus is the Son of God and that he died, was buried, and raised from the dead to purify mankind of their sins.  I believe all that and put the entirety of my hope in it.  But even so, I get annoyed when some stranger on the street tries to tell me that.  I don't really know why, but I do.  If that's the case for me, I wonder about the person who doesn't believe it - or isn't sure if they believe it.  My bet is that such an approach would do more harm than good.  In his book Unchristian, David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, gives the details of an in-depth study of the attitudes that Mosaics (people born between 1984 and 2002) have of Christianity compared to what older generations think.  According to their study, one of the biggest complaints among outsiders in the younger generation is that Christians just want nonbelievers to "get saved" with no sincere concern for their actual well-being.  

The Church in the book of Acts was committed to growing.  They were committed to preaching the good news about Jesus.  If we are going to be faithful in our calling as a Church, so should we.  However, I do believe that we have to take Jesus' instructions to his disciples in Matthew 10 to heart.  In this instance, he sent his disciples out to spread the good news about the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven.  One of the things he told them was that while they were on their mission, they were to be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.  I believe by this he meant that they had to be very savvy, but also keep focused.  They needed to use methods of persuasion that would actually work.  They needed to speak in a language that could be understood.  But also, they needed to stay focused to what their message really was.  The message the disciples had for the world was that God loved them and that God was going to redeem them.  It was not a message about getting people on the right team by any means necessary.  To be as innocent as doves, they needed to remember that Jesus' most important priority was not to convert their neighbor, but that they love their neighbor.

This month, we will be looking at examples in Acts that shows the early Church's commitment to spreading the good news about Jesus.  One of the things I love about Acts is the pattern that emerges:  Something amazing happens, when people notice, the disciples use the opportunity to speak about Jesus.  When the religious leaders notice and get jealous, something bad happens to the disciples.  Then something amazing happens again, and the whole thing starts over.  I believe that if we live life the way Jesus has commanded us to do (loving our neighbor, returning hate with love, forgiving those who wrong us, having integrity, etc.) then amazing things will happen through us.  When the amazing happens, we will have the opportunity to share our faith - whether it be to thousands of people (like Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2) or to one desperate and broken person who has lost hope (like Paul and Silas with their prison guard in Acts 16).