Evangelism

Today I would like to ramble on about ‘Evangelism’ by drawing together various barely-connected links and trying to make it look like they are all interrelated and together make some sort of profound and grandiose statement.

“Evangelist” isn’t simply a job title. It’s a way of life. It means that the evangelist totally loves the product and sees it as a way to bring the “good news.” A love of the cause is the second most important determinant of the success of an evangelist–second only to the quality of the cause itself. No matter how great the person, if he doesn’t love the cause, he cannot be a good evangelist for it.

This is taken from The Art of Evangelism, a weblog post by Guy Kawasaki (Found via Jordon Cooper). The former isn’t a ‘Christian’ blog, as far as I am aware. In fact the word ‘evangelist’ is probably used more by the business world these days than the church.

Perhaps that is because Christian Evangelists tend to get a bad name for themselves if they aren’t careful. Remember this chap?

I was sent this page for my perusal and interest. It is about using blogs to evangelise. It made me a little wary – I always get a bit concerned about some of these sort of things as they can tend to reduce other humans as ‘a target’ to be ‘reached’. (But then again the article did link to my ‘Dullest Blog in the World‘, an action which covers over a multitude of sins.) It also makes the good point that most Christians write blogs that are only of interest to other Christians. This isn’t a good thing. I try to write the sort of nonsense that anyone would enjoy reading, but I don’t know whether I succeed.

Perhaps the Church should talk to people when they want to be talked to. Millions more people are pouring into churches at Christmas these days for instance:

More than four out of ten adults will attend church this Christmas- up by a third in the past four years.

Christmas worshippers are on the increase with more than 43 per cent of Britain’s adult population expected to attend church over the festival, according to a survey by opinion pollster ORB. The figure has been steadily rising since the turn of the millennium from the 33 per cent found by ORB in 2001, to 39 per cent in 2003 and now 43 per cent in 2005.

See also this post-Christmas report from the CofE: Churches packed for Christmas past. Well done to everyone who ran, led and helped at Christmas services. Perhaps giving out the hymn books and explaining that the toilets are down the corridor on the right past the broom cupboard was your most useful piece of ‘Evangelism’ of the year.

So – there you have it. Draw your own conclusions. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. It was a bit misty here.