Soul Winning and "Doing" for the Kingdom

I attend two churches where I live. First, I join my wife and kids at an evangelical church a couple of times a month. I also try to regularly attend a Greek Orthodox church. The two churches couldn't be more different, and that includes approaches to evangelism and service. 

First, as for the evangelical church, it has perhaps the most impressive outreach ministry I have ever seen. The church is significantly generous. And they have a bounty of opportunities for laity to get involved in, from Sunday school teaching to ushering to parking lot attendants. I often joke with my wife about the latter. I tell her that the church feels the need to provide everyone a slot of ministry. Surely, it may empower people toward belonging, but the parking lot is small enough that it really doesn't need attendants.

When I pastored, my colleagues and I used to throw around a claim that 80% of the ministry is done by 20% of the church, and largely that was the pastoral staff, since I served small congregations. There is this sense in Western Christianity that people must be busy for the Lord. If not serving in a church ministry, a soup kitchen, or a food pantry, then in evangelizing.

Ah, evangelizing... This is also known as "soul winning." When I was a new Christian, I accompanied my church's youth on a trip to Indianapolis. While there, the national youth ministry for our denomination had all the youth hit the streets of downtown Indy to share the salvation message with the aims of getting people to pray a prayer to get saved. In retrospect, this seems sort of Gnostic, that some prayer seals your eternal fate rather than a life in repentance. Nonetheless, this was the point of church, to grow it through rhetoric.

The Greek church I attend occasionally is also a generous church; however, their outward giving usually comes annually, where a part of the fundraiser proceeds received from their yearly Greek festival are given to a local charity. Beyond that, the church seems rather insular. So, for someone who is used to the dynamic outreach and evangelization efforts of the Protestant world, this sort of church seems stalled. 

I have come to a new thinking on the matter. Of course we want the Church to grow, but it grows through relationships, not campaigns of evangelism or servant evangelism. Surely, people might be steered toward the Kingdom through such efforts, but often times it is temporary. We have turned outreach into a sales pitch and marketing scheme.

In truth, it's OK to come to church and not do anything, because worship alone is our service. Our evangelism and charity should come through our places in the community, naturally and organically. Through our interactions with our friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors, we can grow the Kingdom because of our love and service to them. Church needs more intimate and transparent encounters, not over the top events. Church is family. Last I looked, I invite family to dinner because of my relationship with them, not because I display a billboard or bombard them with free shoes and backpacks. Is the church trying to buy affection? 

Probably the best outreach I saw from the evangelical church my family attends is that on Easter one year, they gave every family a couple hundred bucks and had them choose where the money went. It made encounters more personable and less programmatic. Even then, it was orchestrated. 

Here's my current take. Giving stuff to people ought not be a program, but a personal sacrifice made as an offering to Christ. In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about giving food, clothing, and water to the needy. Too often we view this as the Church being Jesus to the needy, but the reality is that Jesus is telling us that when we give we are giving to him. This is more an act of worship than the church being Jesus or trying to recruit. This is a challenge for Christians to see God in our fellow human beings, especially the marginalized. It is meant to humble us to see God is the least likely places. It is meant to literally bring food and water to God, through people who are his icons on earth. This humbles us and lifts others up. It is an act of equalization. 

It is in the mundane areas and encounters of life that we find Christ. When we are toiling at our dead-end job, when we do it excellently for the glory of God, someone may see our attitude and wonder about us. This is a potential for relationship and redemption. When we see that our elderly neighbor is struggling to bring groceries from her car to her home, we then have an opportunity to not simply be Christ to her, but to serve the Christ in her as we help her. 

For me, the days of big evangelism and outreach events are over. I need to be about my Fathers business and start seeing Christ in others -- even those who don't know him. Lord help me.