I’m a member of the Worship Design Team, which works together to develop a concept of how our worship gatherings will go. We talk about each series several weeks (or months) in advance, and as soon as I heard the title and theme of this one, I got scared. Honestly, I was really scared. I didn’t want to talk about sharing my faith. I didn’t want to go there, and I didn’t like what I thought I would hear.
Let me explain where I was coming from. A few years ago, God led me to take a few classes at a seminary not too far from my house. One of those classes was entitled “Dynamic Personal Evangelism,” or something like that. I should have known from the title of the class that it was going to stretch me in some way, but I had no idea going in what I was getting into. What I was getting into, though, was a very step-by-step process of introducing people to the gospel and then, by the end of the conversation, welcoming them as my newest brother or sister in Christ.
Hel-lo. That was a completely crazy idea to me. My own evolution into a full-fledged follower of Christ had taken my entire life – 23 years at that point – and I could not imagine how I could sit down with someone and, in 15 or 20 or even 90 minutes, walk them through everything I had been through before placing my faith in the Lord. What’s more, we were expected, at different points in the course, to walk up to a complete stranger somewhere. Using a diagram something like this:
I was supposed to lead them to Christ. No relationship, no background story, no nothing. I could use some of my own testimony, but it had to literally be no more than 90 seconds and had to be memorized so it came out the same every time. Um……o-kay.
Let me say here that I don’t think this particular approach is wrong. I don’t think it’s bad or the people who use it are wrong in doing so. What I do think, though, is that this approach is not right for every Christian, and it’s certainly not right for every seeker. My professor was one who worked with businessmen on this kind of thing, and those men, probably, loved the straightforward, results-oriented presentation. For me, though, and the people in my life, this was not a good idea.
That was the hardest semester of my life. I won’t lie; I did fudge a little and stretch the confines of my assignments because I discerned that the people I would likely reach out to would not relate well to the approach I was supposed to use. I really feared that the confrontational style might do more harm than good. I wasn’t given alternative methods to use, though, because the bridge diagram and 90-second testimony were ascribed as the method to use. Period.
With that background, then, you can probably see why I was more than a little hesitant about the “Beautiful Feet” faith sharing series at my church. I love my church, and I trust its theology and methodology. However, the mere mention of “faith sharing” conjured unpleasant memories and I feared being placed in similar awkward situations. I was not looking forward to it, and I was not looking forward to having to get up in front of my church (because that’s what I do) and introduce the series to everyone. I wasn’t excited about it. I was scared of the series, and I didn’t want to invite others into the scary place where I was.
(Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2.)
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