One of the remaining barriers to evangelism that needs to be discussed, especially in my suburban context of ministry, is simply pace of life. When we run from ballgame to piano practice to Taco Bell for dinner to the swim party to the movies with friends to Starbucks for coffee to home for some sleep, it's hard to speak of your faith to anyone.
There are two reasons for that.
First, if the pace really is that frantic, you can't have a conversation with someone about anything of eternal value and substantive content. This is why suburban marriages struggle to communicate about anything more than kids' schedules. You certainly don't have time to stop long enough to answer a question about God or the Bible or the Kingdom. When you do talk, it's to your kids in the back who are being too loud or to someone on your cell phone.
Hurry and love are incompatible, dear reader. There's just no way around that.
Second, because the pace of life also takes a toll on the state of your heart, you come to the place where you don't particularly care about sharing the Gospel. If you stopped and thought about it (like you might be doing right now, unless of course you're reading this on your Google reader while driving in traffic), you'd care. You really would. You might even feel guilty that you haven't told Bob your officemate about Jesus. But the inadequacy is not in your evangelism. It's in the lack of discipline to order your time and manage your chaos.
Suburbia's mindset and worldview keeps people in a hurry, so much so they often miss Kingdom opportunities. Is that you? Will it be?
But that's just me thinking thoughts...
No comments:
Post a Comment