That Awkward Moment When We Speak the Gospel

Evangelism is counter-cultural. It's true everywhere on the planet, but perhaps it's especially so in our increasingly post-Christian Western society. We live in a polite culture, for the most part. Talk about religion? You just don't go there. Talk about how many tornadoes have come through, and how the team is doing, and how the city has new recycling bins. But Jesus Christ, crucified for sinners and risen from the dead? You just don't go there. So they say.

For the time being, it seems the greatest threat to gospel-telling in such a society is not that we will be hauled before the city council, beaten, and have our property taken away. What we are really dealing with is some awkwardness.

Awkwardness is perhaps the biggest threat to evangelism for far too many of us.

I've done a little research and can confirm to you that there is not one documented case of someone dying, or even being severely injured, by awkwardness. Not one.

But when I read my kids' Twitter, I see nearly half their tweets starting with "That awkward moment when… ." Awkwardness is catastrophic, and maybe especially so among the younger generation.

Awkwardness! It's as if we imagine fire and asteroids and dragons. As if people are running through the streets yelling, "Run from the awkwardness, it's going to get you! You might feel awkward. It would be terrible if you felt awkward!"

But a little awkwardness — or even a lot of it — is such a small price to pay for enjoying the power of God's Spirit using us to be his witnesses.

I write this as no super-evangelist. I'm right there with you, naturally fearful that things might be awkward. I sit on the plane thinking, "If the guy next to me doesn't like my talking about Jesus, it's going to be awkward." Oh, no, I'll have a hard life to deal with sitting next to this guy for two whole hours being awkward.

For the Christian, there is a joy and a privilege to suffer for Jesus, even a tiny little bit. Most of us can agree that when we do step out in faith, the awkwardness really wasn't that bad in retrospect. Awkwardness seems so horrible when it's in front of us. But it's not nearly as bad behind us. All my limbs are together, I'm okay, it's really not that bad.

The aim here is not to press any kind of guilt on you. But I think when we look at this issue of gospel witness, we have a tendency to do what they do in big cities when somebody is laying on the ground. Everyone walks past the victim like they didn't notice anything. Then the cops come around the corner and wonder why nobody responded. It was because nobody wanted to get involved.

Well, if you are a born-again believer, you are involved — really, really involved. The Holy Spirit lives in your heart. You cannot be more involved. You're in the middle of it. It's happening right there in you. You are the issue, you are the scene of the crime. You're involved. We cannot dance out of the way.

Why would God make something that we long to do so difficult to do?

For some Christians, it isn't that difficult to evangelize. In fact, these tend to be confused as to why so few Christians are involved in ongoing, bold evangelism. If this is you, I want to tell you, we praise God for your boldness. And you should know, you are a bit weird. For you, awkwardness is just an abstract concept. For the rest of us, awkwardness is like a plague to be avoided at all costs. But this is an example of the different parts in the body of Christ making their specific contribution to God's glory and the advance of his kingdom. So why is something so important and integral to the Christian life so difficult for so many?

Here's one answer: God gives most of us this awareness of awkwardness so that we would never, not for a second, trust in or magnify ourselves and drift away from the magnificence of the gospel. This awareness in evangelism makes the gospel tangible. It means I need the gospel right now myself. Not only does my hearer need Jesus at this moment, but so do I!

Jesus died for disciples who do a poor job of witnessing. He died for those of us who have all too often failed to commend him because we feared it might get awkward. But he also died to give us the grace to press through the awkwardness to testify to him.

May God give us the grace to rebound from our many failures and grace not to fold in the face of awkwardness in telling others the most important news in the world.

That Awkward Moment When We Speak the Gospel

Evangelism is counter-cultural. It's true everywhere on the planet, but perhaps it's especially so in our increasingly post-Christian Western society. We live in a polite culture, for the most part. Talk about religion? You just don't go there. Talk about how many tornadoes have come through, and how the team is doing, and how the city has new recycling bins. But Jesus Christ, crucified for sinners and risen from the dead? You just don't go there. So they say.

For the time being, it seems the greatest threat to gospel-telling in such a society is not that we will be hauled before the city council, beaten, and have our property taken away. What we are really dealing with is some awkwardness.

Awkwardness is perhaps the biggest threat to evangelism for far too many of us.

I've done a little research and can confirm to you that there is not one documented case of someone dying, or even being severely injured, by awkwardness. Not one.

But when I read my kids' Twitter, I see nearly half their tweets starting with "That awkward moment when… ." Awkwardness is catastrophic, and maybe especially so among the younger generation.

Awkwardness! It's as if we imagine fire and asteroids and dragons. As if people are running through the streets yelling, "Run from the awkwardness, it's going to get you! You might feel awkward. It would be terrible if you felt awkward!"

But a little awkwardness — or even a lot of it — is such a small price to pay for enjoying the power of God's Spirit using us to be his witnesses.

I write this as no super-evangelist. I'm right there with you, naturally fearful that things might be awkward. I sit on the plane thinking, "If the guy next to me doesn't like my talking about Jesus, it's going to be awkward." Oh, no, I'll have a hard life to deal with sitting next to this guy for two whole hours being awkward.

For the Christian, there is a joy and a privilege to suffer for Jesus, even a tiny little bit. Most of us can agree that when we do step out in faith, the awkwardness really wasn't that bad in retrospect. Awkwardness seems so horrible when it's in front of us. But it's not nearly as bad behind us. All my limbs are together, I'm okay, it's really not that bad.

The aim here is not to press any kind of guilt on you. But I think when we look at this issue of gospel witness, we have a tendency to do what they do in big cities when somebody is laying on the ground. Everyone walks past the victim like they didn't notice anything. Then the cops come around the corner and wonder why nobody responded. It was because nobody wanted to get involved.

Well, if you are a born-again believer, you are involved — really, really involved. The Holy Spirit lives in your heart. You cannot be more involved. You're in the middle of it. It's happening right there in you. You are the issue, you are the scene of the crime. You're involved. We cannot dance out of the way.

Why would God make something that we long to do so difficult to do?

For some Christians, it isn't that difficult to evangelize. In fact, these tend to be confused as to why so few Christians are involved in ongoing, bold evangelism. If this is you, I want to tell you, we praise God for your boldness. And you should know, you are a bit weird. For you, awkwardness is just an abstract concept. For the rest of us, awkwardness is like a plague to be avoided at all costs. But this is an example of the different parts in the body of Christ making their specific contribution to God's glory and the advance of his kingdom. So why is something so important and integral to the Christian life so difficult for so many?

Here's one answer: God gives most of us this awareness of awkwardness so that we would never, not for a second, trust in or magnify ourselves and drift away from the magnificence of the gospel. This awareness in evangelism makes the gospel tangible. It means I need the gospel right now myself. Not only does my hearer need Jesus at this moment, but so do I!

Jesus died for disciples who do a poor job of witnessing. He died for those of us who have all too often failed to commend him because we feared it might get awkward. But he also died to give us the grace to press through the awkwardness to testify to him.

May God give us the grace to rebound from our many failures and grace not to fold in the face of awkwardness in telling others the most important news in the world.

A Holy Moment

I lay in bed for quite a long time this morning, in that strange state that is somewhere between asleep and awake—that place where the mind is working but the body is not. My mind was racing back and forth and eventually settled on an old memory. It’s a memory I hate and one of those I would purge if I could.

It goes back to a conference I attended in 2006. Not long before the conference I had reviewed a book and had taken issue with the theology it taught. The book had showed up at my house unsolicited and, after reading it, I posted a review that pointed out what I considered some significant weaknesses. Here I was now, several weeks later, walking the halls of a convention center. As I moved through the crowd, a little ways ahead of me and coming directly toward me, I saw the author of that book walking, talking and laughing with a friend of mine. They hadn’t yet seen me but were heading straight toward me and I knew that if we were to pass one another, my friend would stop and introduce us.

In that moment I felt a strange flush of shame and conviction. In that moment I realized that this author was a real person. I guess I should have known that, but somehow it hadn’t really occurred to me. It was so easy for me to read a book and post a review on the Internet without thinking of the fact that this author was a real person. He was not just some cleverly-programmed computer who spat out books and he was not a one-dimensional evil heretic who was out to subdue the Christian faith. He was a believer and one much like me, but for some fairly subtle theological differences.

I saw him walking toward me and with my face burning, I turned and fled. I couldn’t face him; I couldn’t bear the thought of having to look him in the eyes. I ended up going all the way back to my hotel room where I pulled open my computer and re-read the review I had written. I felt a new conviction that I had been unfair, that I had treated this book as if it was an entirely abstract entity rather than the labor of a brother in Christ who truly believed that this was a message he ought to share with the church. I still disagreed with much of what he said, but I could see that I had not treated him with love and with respect. I had not even given him the respect I owed to an older man.

I repented in that hotel room, asking God for forgiveness. And I have always regarded this as a bit of a holy moment, a moment of real significance. I vowed that from that time on, I would seek to be fair in my critiques and that I would never forget that the people whose books I receive are real people. This was a moment that shaped my writing and shaped this blog. That’s not to say that I have done perfectly since then, and it’s not to say that I’ve been afraid to call a spade a spade when necessary. But it does mean that I’ve genuinely sought to distinguish between people who are truly sharing evil theology and people whom I may disagree with in the more minor points.

This situation was formative in making me aware of the temptations that come with this kind of electronic communication that tends to dehumanize us. Somehow the distance between us can make us all seem a little bit less than human. I’ve seen this recently when people have mistakenly tagged me on Facebook, making me aware of conversations they did not know I had been invited into. I’ve seen it through what other blogs have said about me or what they’ve assumed to be true of me, my heart or my motives. As difficult as some of these moments have been, I’ve been grateful for them, as they’ve opened my eyes again to the digital temptations and my own tendencies to act as if the people on the other end of a copper wire are not real people. That moment in that hotel room in that city at that conference was probably the genesis of The Next Story.

For the rest of that weekend I kept my eyes open for the man whose book I had unfairly reviewed, but did not see him again. After the conference came to a close I was sitting at the airport, ready to catch my flight home, when I saw him walk by. I paused for a moment and then went after him, hoping to catch him and offer an apology. I chased after him, but he disappeared into the crowd and was gone. I haven’t seen him since, but if I ever do, I know just what I’ll say to him.