Sharing the good news

The train approaching Springburn Station one evening in the mid-1970s isn’t over-busy – there’s about a metre of unoccupied seat between me and the next passenger. I reach into my briefcase and draw out the flimsy leaflet, and then I pause, summoning courage for what I am about to do.

Eventually, as the train comes to a halt I turn round and say hesitantly to my neighbour, proffering the leaflet. ‘Excuse me,’ would you like a gospel tract?’ ‘No,’ he replies, gruffly. ‘OK,’ I say quickly, and in that moment I feel both wounded and hugely relieved.

The word ‘evangelism’ means ‘sharing the good news.’ Evangelism, as it was described and modelled by other folk in the churches I attended as a young man, involved a constant readiness to talk about the Christian faith in general and your own faith in particular; to go into the town centre handing out leaflets and engaging people in conversations; to miss no opportunity of spreading the word on trains and buses and at work.

There were videos showing you how to befriend your neighbour, and bring conversations round to the target subject: the need for God; Jesus; his death and resurrection; the urgency of responding.

I tried to imitate this ‘sales pitch’ model, in order to do what I felt I ought to do, but also in an attempt to feel good about myself and to win plaudits from others. However, as an introvert I shrank from this form of evangelism. It simply was not ‘me’, and yet I felt guilt at my inactivity, miserable at what I regarded as my deficiencies in this respect.  I was not alone – there was even a book about evangelism entitled ‘Our guilty silence.’

For some of us, particular words cast a dark shadow because of negative experiences we associate with them. For me ‘evangelism’ is one of those words, linked with memories of compulsion and failure.

And yet there is good news!  God is there – an amazing creative being beyond our power to imagine, who inhabits the universe, as someone has put it ‘like song fills a forest, or light fills a room, or love fills a heart.’ A God who reveals God’s love for us in Jesus, summoning us to wholeness and security.

Jump forward forty years. A couple of Fridays ago I had a lunchtime haircut at a different barbers from usual. The woman cutting my hair spoke freely, and I could tell from what she said that she wasn’t looking forward to Christmas. I sensed her sadness, and felt deep empathy with her, and compassion for her. (This is unusual for me, for whom compassion is usually an act of mind and will rather than spontaneously arising in my heart.)

Even after all these years, the ‘parent’ voices of the past whispered ‘You should be evangelising!’ But what I did was to pray that I might be as Christ to this woman, and then simply went with the flow of the conversation, listening carefully, reflecting back what I was hearing while all the time hair-cuttings cascaded from her busy scissors.

In the old days it seemed to me we were expected to follow a formula in our conversations about God, passing on ideas which I believed in my head but hadn’t experienced in my heart. But for me, now, talking about the good news is simply being real about where I am at on my journey of faith, being real about the God who came among us in Jesus, being real about the many, many things I don’t understand and forever question, being real above all about the Love Who open-armed reaches out to us all.

We are all – every single being on the planet - forever surrounded by God’s song, God’s light, God’s love. If we are open to God, God sings in us, shines in us, loves in us in all our daily conversations and relationships. We don’t need to use holy words, because if at that moment we are consciously loving God however feebly, we are holy, and God will bless others through us in unexpected ways.

When I was paying my £8 after the haircut was finished, I looked at the woman and said quietly, but with emphasis ‘God bless you.’ She smiled, and I left. That was it.

But I thought to myself  ‘Mmmm! I guess that was evangelism. That wasn’t so bad.’

It’s when we are able to redeem the words we fear by associating them with good and positive experiences that we gradually realise they no longer intimidate

As Christians, we have the very best of good news to share, but we share it best when we relax, expressing it in ways unique to us, unique to our individual, God-given personalities.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 27th November 2014)