Category Archives: evangelism

Evangelism in a changing world

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1138315_73143291With the great discussion on the last offering in the Kitchen, I want to continue a bit with the topic. Here are my concerns: as our society moves into postmodernism, evangelism is becoming an embarrassment. Evangelism, to some degree, involves saying, “My way is right, and your way is wrong.” Evangelism needs some absolutism, a conviction that Jesus is the way, the only way to God. Those sorts of concepts don’t fit well with a postmodern mindset that emphasizes tolerance and respect for the views of others.

In the same way, missions have also fallen in disfavor. Aren’t they merely a sign of cultural superiority, of “the ugly American”? With cultural sensitivity, won’t we come to see that the beliefs of other people also have validity? Why do we have to impose our worldview on others? The concept of “spreading Christianity” is extremely offensive in the 21st century.

In such a situation, it’s easier to focus merely on service. Not service as a part of evangelism; that’s been the norm for decades (at least; I’ll only vouch for my adult life, but in reading about great men of the past, I’m convinced that it’s been around much, much longer). What’s typically offered today is no different than what the Red Cross or UNICEF would be doing. That’s a broad generalization, one that I’d love to be wrong about. Maybe my limited experience has led me to a mistaken view of what’s going on.

Still, I’m worried about the future of the church. (Well, the church in my country, anyway; I see a lot more evangelism going on in other countries) We need to bring back the concept of taking good news to the world. I want to spend some time next week talking about what that good news looks like, but for now, I want to emphasize: we’re losing something valuable. We need to wake up and see that, or it could be gone forever. We need to teach our young people about the gospel and what it has to say to a broken world.

As the old saying goes, the church is always one generation away from extinction.

The Curse of Knowledge

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When I’m reading an interesting book, I drive my wife crazy by quoting bits and snatches to her (this is just one weapon, of course, in my drive-my-wife-crazy repertoire). Lately I’ve been doing it with the book Made to Stick.

Find this book. Read this book. Anyone who shares ideas with other people could benefit from reading this book.

One concept used throughout the book is the concept of The Curse of Knowledge. The authors illustrate this problem in the following excerpt:

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as “Happy Birthday to You” and “The StarSpangled Banner.” Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. (By the way, this experiment is fun to try at home if there’s a good “listener” candidate nearby.)
The listener’s job in this game is quite difficult. Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120.
But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why?
When a tapper taps, she is hearing the song in her head. Go ahead and try it for yourself — tap out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It’s impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that tune — all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code.

There are lots of good points in this book, but this one jumped out at me. It’s so hard to put ourselves in the shoes of those who don’t know what we know. Have you ever tried to explain the gospel to someone who knew nothing about the Bible? Have you ever tried to tell the message of salvation without using church words?

Sometimes I think we’re preaching “Amazing Grace,” but the world hears “Happy Birthday.”