A Volley from the Canon, #36

Just Do SOMETHING

The congregation may have feared “the E word,” (evangelism) for a long time. At last, a shift occurs. They are now ready (i. e. desperate enough) to consider a plan for outreach, to introduce themselves to a wider swath of their community. The question is: what to do?

Radio ads? How about a billboard or two? Newspapers! Fliers! Doorbell ringing, anyone? Sign on the city bus?

Soon, the planning group is reduced to bickering, playing one idea against the next. No matter what gets suggested, there is someone to point out its flaws. It’s too expensive. It reaches too few people. It reaches the wrong people. We tried it twenty years ago, and it didn’t reach ANY people.

What it amounts to is that the idea, whichever it might be, is no silver bullet. It fails to guarantee that, in just a few short months, the church’s pews will be filled with happy, highly committed and involved, incredibly nice, well-heeled and generous, new members.

In other words, “the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.”

What Christians must learn is that evangelism is not about packing the pews so much as it is about expressing God’s Good News, in ways varied enough to speak to various people. No one way will communicate clearly to everyone.

In the end, it may not matter so much which thing we do as an evangelical innovation. What will matter is that we do SOMETHING. Then, after that, something else, and so on, as we respond to the folks God sends us via each of those efforts.