A Sunday sermon on evangelism – Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

The sermon at church today was by a lady who works as a staff at the Singapore Youth for Christ. She is an occasional speaker at my church when she comes round to give a sermon. She gave a sermon about evangelism based on the text of Luke 10 where Jesus sent the 72 to evangelise to the towns. Regarding evangelism, it is something that I do hear a lot about from my Christian leaders, be it the pastors, or the youth workers at the Varsity Christian Fellowship.

She was saying that there are people who spend their entire lifetime trying to convert a particular someone, and that this is admirable. But she also referenced to the passage where Jesus told the 72 that if they did not succeed in their evangelism, to wipe off the dust off their feet on the household and move on. According to her, a Christian is not obliged to spend effort beyond a certain point to try to convert the nonbeliever, in so far as he has really done his reasonable best. I suppose there may be certain circumstances in which as a Christian, one would want to convert a particular nonbeliever, especially if that nonbeliever is a loved one. I don’t think my grandmother was particularly active as a evangelizer, but at least one thing that she did was try to convert my grandfather to Christianity with the best of her efforts, and she succeeded I suppose. My grandfather now attends church every Sunday, but he doesn’t seem to be particularly a religious person.

But like a fisherman trying to catch fish, or a salesman doing his sales pitch (actually, that is the awkward feeling I sometimes get when I am evangelising), it would be a waste if one focus on converting a particular person at the expense of evangelizing to many other people in the midst.

She was talking about how she reached her wits end in an evangelistic endeavor during her secondary school days. Her friend, whom she was trying to evangelise to, taunted her to prove that God really exists by praying for God to appear right in front of her. She responded that if she indeed made God appear in front of her friend, her friend would die from the sight of God, and that would defeat the purpose of her attempt at redeeming her friend. The conversation between the speaker and her friend ended off in a rather caustic manner with she pulling out the stopline argument of “If you do not believe in God, you will go to hell!”, to which her friend retorted in an off-the-cuff manner that she would be happy being in hell.

I can identify with the sentiments of the friend. Sometimes, I wish that god would just show himself to cure my doubts, in a manner that is explicit enough for me to know that god exists, but yet at the same time not to the extent that I would be condemned for being a skeptic, or to death. And it can appear to me to be sore attempts at defending God’s apparent absence by throwing out answers such as “if God appeared before you, it would remove the necessity of faith in order to believe in him and you thus can’t love him genuinely.”

The speaker said that she had a surprising encounter with her friend again long after their days in secondary school when she saw her friend at her church one day. She was pleasantly surprised to see that that friend continued attending the church regularly. When she approached that friend, the friend quite responsively replied, seemingly with the recollection of that unsightly episode in their secondary school days, “okay lah, I believe lah”

From hearing this testimony at evangelism presented in the sermon, I would say that the way evangelism works is also very much mysterious. The speaker could have indeed been an extremely bad evangelizer to her friend, causing more ire and defensiveness in her friend than convincing her in any manner. But perhaps, it could also have sown the seed in the mind of the friend, which in quite inexplicable manner, moved the friend to attend church on a particular occasion. It could be that she was somehow reminded of that event, and decided that she would give church a try. The attempt at evangelism worked after all, by tapping into some unknown, perhaps even irrational aspect of the human psychology.

I do understand the impetus for evangelism, and why the church, as well as the varsity Christian fellowship I attend pushes for their members to evangelise. It is afterall, what Christians call the Great Commission. I have heard a fellow Christian framing his evangelistic endeavor in what appears to me to be a rather incentive-oriented manner by borrowing from the verse in Matthew 6:20 to “Store you treasure in heaven.” Can’t say I am too impressed with this belief-system as a way to compel evangelism. It seems to me to run counter to the virtue of selflessness that Christianity preaches about.

I try to do my bid for Christianity as well, and to carry out this aspect of what seems to be my obligation as a Christian. I try to do so even though I am not exactly sure that God exists, or that Christianity is true. You can call me a Christian agnostic, the sort of Christian who believe it wiser to hang upon the safer side of the Pascal wager. Still, I evangelise because I am concerned about the afterlife of my loved ones such as my friends and my family members, and I believe that it is good for people to take practical and moral instructions from the Christian religion in their living. Also, I believe that Christianity is good for society if people live out the charitable values preached in the religion.

Sunday Church Sermon : God just can't keep quiet (Isaiah 62 : 1-5)

Yesterday's church sermon by Rev Soh was about how God communicates his will for the salvation of all people through his prophetic ministry of the church here on earth. Pastor Soh says that there are some things so importantt that God cannot be quiet about. What is it that could stir the heart of God so much that he simply has to say? This is the warning of God's judgement against the sinful.

In the passage of Isaiah, the message is directed at Zion. But Pastor Soh prod the question, "Who is Zion? Who is Jerusalem?" It is  the people of God which is the church. We have been forgiven and restored Ours is a glorious salvation that god does not want to keep quiet about

How does God make this evident? He speak through his word and witnesses. He speak through you and I who are called into a prophetic ministry. The prophetic ministry- what does this mean? It means to speak forth the goodness of jesus christ to all the whole world, to tell them God's demands and love. We are called to make disciples of alll nations. God does not want us to keep quiet about what jesus christ has done for us.

The problem is that this is what we are most silent about. We are not willing to risk sharing our faith against unpredictable reaction or that we might have not the answers. Belief that we must keep our faith private. But as Pastor Soh qualifies, Christian faith is personal but not private. The gospel is a public gospel.

The seeker cell group leader at the law varsity christian fellowship would be holding another series of apologetics session for non-believing people, and he has asked members to invite their non-believing friends to attend the talk. I am not much of a people's person, so I don't really have much friends to invite. I also don't think many people would be interested in attending such a talk beyond their busy study schedule, or they are simply too cool to care about religion. I think that there is a certain negative stigma with appearing too religious in society. You might be deem a faith-head or a fanatic. And I fear that I would appear a freak if I extend invitation to non-believing friends or acquaitances. But I suppose I would do my best to do my part for the Great Commission. If I do make any mistakes in my approaches and appear like a weirdo, well, I think I will try to learn from it. But the more difficult thing to do for me is to know how to approach non-believing friends in a diplomatic manner.

I would like to reach out to people i know in law school. I think that christianity can have a solid foudation in society if the future elites of society come to know about it and accept it. I think that is the way christianity can effect its ideals in society. So on my part, a christian, I would need to be a fisher of man. And my field is law school.