I work at church right now that is pushes us all alot on evangelism. Which is probably a good thing in some ways. I often have to report to someone about it or in weekly prayer times I feel pressured to have some breakthrough to share about someone I’ve talked to.

The problem is I haven’t had any real deep spiritual converstations lately. I take a secular acting/drama class in Chicago and everyone knows I’m a Christian. We hang out after class and I am getting to know quite a few of them. But I don’t push the evangelism card…it doesn’t feel right. Plus my church is 1 1/2 hrs from the city, so its odd to invite any of them to anything.

But they are always saying that I need to invite more people to events and stuff…and evangelize more. Even though some events feel like they are for people twice my age.

In addition I have a trusted friend that says just being a Christian and everyone knowing it and watching me is a form of evangelism - and sometimes a good one. If I push it on people (like my church seems to want)…it just seems like it will push people away…I don’t know.

As it is this is my only real contact with anyone who is not a Christian…and I already am working way too many hours…so there’s not a lot of opportunity for new avenues of contact.

The church I work for is very similar to Willow Creek and are evangelism is kinda “consumery.”

Any comments?

The difficulty of critiquing passion is that different people express passsion in different ways. I know both of you well enough to know that you probably wouldn’t really enjoy the usual worship service at Willow Creek. However, I have no question that the people who are leading that service have a lot of passion, which comes through with a lot of polish and excellence.

Nashster might be a little bit closer with his comments on authenticity, but even authenticity is communicated in different ways to different people. Again, I think many have a lot of success connecting with the way authenticity comes across at a service at Willow Creek. However, I know that I personally don’t as much, and don’t think you guys would either.

On your Positive Comments, I don’t think that advertisers have, as you put it, “met people where they are at.” I think they’ve created a false environment, like was said in the quote. People aren’t at the place where they need to be in the middle of a highly themed Hollister store and surrounded by the sights and sounds of the supposed lifestyle of Hollister to make them by their product. No, they are placed in a highly themed (Disney-esque?) environment that encourages the response of buying these products. That said, I do not think the Church has met people where they are at. The Church, too, has created a fantasy world promoting a particular lifestyle (the clean, superior, almost Straight Edge [but with less passion] mentallity), that we look at, and then are supposed to desire, and then we are to buy into their product (in some cases…Jesus is the product).

Basically, both sides (in this case Hollister and the Church) has created an environment that we supposed to find attractive. The reason why I do not think this is as effective for the Church as it is say, Disney or Hollister, is because while neither side meets prople where they are at to begin with, the Church side is usually presented with a good deal less passion, as Tim hinted at.

I agree with Tim on saying that passion is key. But authenticity is also key. At least among the younger generation, there is a steadily growing (but slowly, in some areas), trend to reject the creation or illusion of such fantasy world: i.e., reject commercialism. This is why there is a growing movement against Abercrombie, against Starbucks, against many things corporate. It’s not because people want to be independent, it’s because people are tired of hype full of empty promises and lack of passion and just general fakeness.

I’ve said it time and again to different people, and I think I’ll continue to do so. The Church has one thing that no retail market or other commerical venue will ever have, and that’s authenticity. I think we need to focus on that and offer that to people.