Evangelism: The Heart of Missions (Urbana 87)

by Becky Pippert

We echo God's purpose every time we pray 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Do you realize how radical that prayer is? Do you realize how revolutionary you are when you pray that prayer? That prayer expresses your discontent with the status quo. When you look at the world, you don't like it and God doesn't like it. God wants to do something to change it, and he wants to do it through you and me.

One of the things that most amuses me as I travel is how people respond when I tell them what I do for a living. I was flying from New York to California, and I sat down next to this guy who was a quintessential Southern-California type - gold chain, open collar, everything but the feathers, and very mellow. As we were talking, all of a sudden he said, "Hey, what do you do for a living?"

And I said, "I'm in Christian work"

And he said, "Hey, that's cool. I wouldn't hold it against you." And I said, "How thoughtful, I appreciate that."

A little later I was flying back from California to New York, and I was sitting next to a quintessential New Yorker - tense. I was hanging on by my fingertips in this conversation, and he said, "What do you do for a living?"

And I said, "I'm in Christian work" He said, "That's impossible."

I asked him why he was so shocked. He responded, "You look normal!"

Soon after I was flying into Lubbock, Texas. I was in this little commuter plane, sitting next to a woman from Lubbock. Of the six people on the plane, five of them were obviously East Coast types with their Wall Street Journals and their briefcases and all. Then this woman from Lubbock asked me, "What do you do for a living?"

And I said, "I'm in Christian work." And she said, "Oh, honey, that's sweet That's the sweetest thing. You sit right here now." Then she turned to all of the New Yorkers reading their Wall Street Journals and said, "This little gal over here works for Jesus." Everybody put down their Wall Street journals and looked over at me. And I said, "Ha, ha, ha, well, what can I say? It's a living, you know what I mean?"

However, I wonder if you hear what I am hearing. As I listen to questions, as I meet people, I try to hear the question behind the question. The question I so often hear is "What difference does it make to believe in God? Does it really make a difference?"

Does It Make a Difference?

While my husband had a fellowship at Harvard, one of the faculty members whom I had gotten to know came up to me an said, "Becky, I want to tell you something. I admire your faith, I really do. But 1 want to ask you a question Do you really think it makes a difference to believe in God? Isn't life pretty much the same for all of us? Don't all of us really want to be loved? We all want to be a part of something. We don't want to be left out whether we believe in God or not. Isn't life difficult for all of us? I don't think cancer cells ask before entering a body, 'Excuse me, are you a praying man?'"

He continued, "Don't we all try to raise our children to do right and yet some go wrong and leave us brokenhearted? Don't most of us have conflict between morality and desire? Isn't life pretty much the same? Don't you fail morally as we do? Maybe Christians do better in some areas than others, but what about pride and hypocrisy and racism? Does it really make a difference?"

Does it?

There's been a lot of discussion these days about our need for mentors. The idea is that we need to see qualities that we admire demonstrated through people we see. Who are the mentors for the graduating class of 1987? In business it was Ivan Boesky, in politics it was Gary Hart, and in religion it was Jim Bakker. Now that's pretty sobering. Even more sobering is that two of these three men came from strong evangelical roots. Two of these three men, at some point in their life, proclaimed a deep faith in God. We have to ask ourselves, "Does it make a difference to believe in God?"

Furthermore, I meet many Christians who are secretly discouraged. I doubt that there's a Christian in this auditorium that doesn't long for the grace to simply live what they believe. We begin our walk with God with great enthusiasm, and then slowly we begin to see that we may not love him as much as we thought we did. We understand obedience better, but we feel less inclined to pay the price. And we begin to say, "Do my problems and temptations make a mockery of faith? Does it make a difference to believe in God?"

And even the world is aware that we've got a problem. TIME magazine did an entire issue on ethics. They entitled it, "Whatever Happened to Ethics? Assaulted by Sleaze, Scandal and Hypocrisy, America Searches for Its Moral Bearings."

Secular prophets are rising up and saying the kinds of things Christians should be saying. Gary Trudeau, who writes the cartoon strip Doonesbury, said in a commencement address, "We live in an age where men and women would rather be envied than esteemed. And when that happens, God help us." Dan Rather did a radio spot entitled, "Whatever Happened to Sin?" Ellen Goodman, the Boston Globe journalist, did a column on the goodness of guilt Meg Greenfield of Newsweek did an article on the possibility of moral absolutes. Even the secular press corps, the group everybody loves to hate, has entitled this presidential campaign, "The Campaign of Character." And perhaps the most powerful of the secular prophets was Ted Koppel in his address at Duke for his commencement. And he said:

We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. Shoot up if you must, but use a clean needle. Enjoy sex whenever and with whomever you wish; but wear a condom. No. The answer is no. Not no because it isn't cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward - but no because it's wrong. Because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human beings frying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. ... In its purest form Truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mt Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions. They are commandments.

What I am hearing from the secular prophets is "Where are you? Wake up out there! What kind of contribution are you going to make?" Now I must say that when Christians try to make a contribution, often we are immediately lectured on the separation of church and state and told to go back to the pews. We need to make a contribution that is intelligent, sensitive and not self-righteous. But the question has to be asked, "If these secular prophets are saying this, does it make a difference?"

The Difference We Make

I want to say it does. It makes a tremendous difference believing in God. But we've gotten into trouble because we have forgotten what we already know. We have forgotten what the problem is and what the solution is. The problem according to the Scriptures is the human heart. It is the problem of sin And the treatment for sin has always been grace. How did we come to forget? We live in strange times where we walk around acting as if we are basically wonderful people who occasionally do bad deeds. Even as early in our history as when the constitution was written, they understood that human nature was treacherous and so designed a gbvemment to protect us from ourselves.

The problem hasn't changed. I think we've just developed short memories. What's the problem? The problem is sin. G. K Chesterton said it as concisely as anyone I know when he was asked to respond to a magazine essay entitled, "What's Wrong with the Universe?" In what has to be the shortest essay in history, he wrote, "I am!"

The core of the problem is not psychological, emotional or spiritual: The core of the problem, rather, is spiritual. It is the problem of the heart G. K Chesterton said, "I find it amazing that modern people have rejected the doctrine of original sin when it's the only doctrine that can be empirically verified."

What's the solution? The solution is the grace of God that promises to change our heart of stone into a heart of flesh. Not overnight To be converted doesn't make you a finished product. But God will help us with his grace to become new people.

The Crucifiers and the Crucified

How can we understand the problem and the solution? We need to look at the cross. The cross, if you're going to be a witness on your campus, will help you understand what the problem is and what the solution is. When you look at the cross, you really have to keep two images in mind. And the two images are these: we crucified him, and we were crucified with him. Both are true. We crucified him, and we were crucified with him.

Several years ago, after I had spoken at a conference, a lovely woman came and spoke to me. She was beautiful, she was godly, and she was tortured. She told me her story. She said that she and her fiancé, many years ago, had been the leaders of a youth group at her church. And they had a tremendous ministry. They were to get married in June and somewhere in that year they began to have sex. Then she discovered she was pregnant. She said she felt bad enough that the very thing that she was trying to counsel others not to do she was doing, but to find out that she was pregnant was much worse. She said that she knew the church could never handle her failure. (That is a tragic statement - A hospital can't handle the patients?) And so she said they decided to have an abortion.

"My wedding day," she went on, "was the worst day of my life. Becky, I love my husband. We've had many children, but I am tortured. I do not know where to go with my guilt because I believe I have murdered an innocent life. I am haunted by the question, What have I destroyed? I know that God loves and forgives but I cannot be released from this thought, How could I have ever murdered an innocent life?"

A thought came to me; but I was afraid to say it because she was so distraught, and I realized that if this thought wasn't from God, I could destroy her. But she kept saying, "How could I have done this? How could I have murdered an innocent life?"

I took a deep breath and said, "I don't know why you're so surprised. Because this isn't your first murder; it's your second"
Then I continued, "My dear friend, all of us are crucifiers when we look at the cross. You seem to feel more guilt over killing your own child than killing God's child. All of us, religious or irreligious, good or bad, aborters or nonaborters, all of us show up as crucifiers when we look at Jesus. Jesus died for all of our sin, past, present and future. Luther says we carry his very nails in our pockets. This isn't your first murder of an innocent. It's your second. And I'm just surprised that you're so surprised that you could do it."

She looked at me in amazement and stopped crying. And she said "You're right it's true. I have done something even worse than killing my own child. It doesn't matter that Jesus died 2,000 years ago; he died for all of our sins. And I have never felt the same remorse over killing God's son as in killing my son. But, Becky, what you're really telling me is that I've done something even worse than the worst thing that I could ever imagine." I nodded. "Becky, if the cross shows me as even worse than I thought, the cross also shows me that my evil has been absorbed and forgiven. Oh, Becky, talk about amazing grace." And I saw a woman literally transformed by a proper understanding of the cross.

You see she walked into the paradox of the cross. It's a cross that insists on highlighting our badness in order to leave us absolutely no doubt that whatever we have done has been forgiven I come with remorse and guilt over one thing, and the paradox of the cross says, "You think you're bad? You're even worse off than you thought." And if the worst thing anyone could ever do, which is our sin that sent Jesus to the cross, if that's forgiven, how can what you are confessing not be forgiven as well?

The cross convinces us that we've been accepted at our worst. That is why we can face our problems without despair. That is why we can look at the darkest things in our lives without paralysis, because even the confession of sin can be seen in the context of hope and joy because God's solution is so wonderful.

There is no one who can ever say, "Well, God may love me, but if he really knew what I did ..." God says, "I know what you've done. And you've done more than you even know you've done. And I love you, and I forgive you."

The second image we need to keep in mind as we consider the cross is that we were crucified with Christ. Paul says, "I've got the most wonderful news. You're all dead?" And we say, "That guy was depressed on that day. I think he needed a Robert Schuller tape." But what does he mean? What does he mean that the cross enables us to die to something? What are we to die to? God wants us to be free from the things that destroy us. He wants us to be whole. And the cross tells us that we don't have to live under the domination of our compulsions and neuroses and sins any longer. We have been given a way out. We're not lost in enemy territory. We've come over into God's territory. We have been given a choice. And that choice is the life of the Spirit. And it is God's Spirit that will enable us, that will infuse us, that will help us to become the people that God longs for us to be. The battle of sin shall continue, I can assure you of that. But I hope you have tasted the Spirit of God and his life within you and his resources to make you new.

Evangelism and the Cross

Now what are the implications of the cross as we share our faith? I think one of the most wonderful implications of the cross is that it frees us from the pretense of innocence. We live in a world that is absolutely terrified of being discovered as being inadequate. For all of our bravado and boasting, the great secret about human beings is that we're so alike.

One of the wonderful things about the cross is that it frees us to own up to our badness and to not live in despair over it. To pretend to be innocent in light of the cross is, according to C. S. Lewis, like being a divorcé pretending to be a virgin. Integrity does not mean that we act as if we don't have a problem. Integrity means that we refuse to deny that we do have a problem. We must abandon our lust for innocence and any illusions we have about our innocence. No one can be innocent after the Fall. The sad truth is that we are all hopelessly centered on ourselves. We're self-absorbed, self-preoccupied, self-centered. There is no one's agenda that we care more about than our own. That's the disease of sin, and we've all got it.

The good news is that once we recognize we're not innocent, once we recognize we have a problem, Jesus says, "Help is on the way!" He wants to help us, and he wants to free us. The problem is that Christians seem to walk around acting as if it were a sin to admit that they were sinners.

I remember hearing a famous TV evangelist say, "People ask me, Do you struggle? Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'm not going to tell you about it; I just go to God."
"Yeah, but don't you have tiffs with your wife or problems with your kids?"
He said, "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'm not going to tell you about it; I just go to God." Then he faced the camera and he said, "Oh, people, don't share all your problems and temptations. You just be a strong champion for Jesus. Be a man about it."

Why did that man have such difficulty even acknowledging that he was tempted? I am not suggesting that he share his sins before the television viewers, as interesting as that might be to hear. But I thought Paul said "I am the chief of sinners." Wouldn't that be refreshing over the TV airwaves? I remember when Paul said he had a thorn in his flesh. And I do not recall Jesus saying to Paul, "Oh, Paul, for crying out loud, would you just be quiet and be a man! Be a man, be a man! You know, buck up!" Jesus said, "I will not take this thorn in the flesh because I am glorified in your weakness."

Our TV evangelist did what we often do. He took a secular myth and spiritualized it. Really what he had done was to take the Lone Ranger motif and became a cowboy for Jesus. He was saying, "All I need is God and my horse. If I have a problem, I'll tell my horse." And they rode off into the sunset.

This is not biblical Christianity. What does the cross mean in how we evangelize? It means that we model repentance by acknowledging that we're not innocent. We have a problem, and God is helping us, and it is this process which makes us whole people.

The Democratic Cross

A second implication of the cross is that it is very democratic. Everybody is in trouble. We all share that. There isn't anybody who's better off than someone else. We all desperately need God. Consequently, there is no room for superiority, and there is no room for inferiority.

Now what does that mean then in context of evangelism? It means that we can't look at someone in the world and say, "Oh, I could never relate to them. They're not godly; they're sinners" - as if the experience of sin is something foreign to us.

During one of my husband Wes's assignments, we became very close to a couple who were political reporters. Helen was, by even the most secular standards, somewhat shocking. She was jazzy and wore very seductive clothes. I used to tease her that I couldn't imagine she had paid money for so little material. She smoked these slim cigars and always made a statement whenever she came into a room. I got to know her and found that she was bright and sensitive and tortured. Knowing that I knew she was married and had two children, she told me she was having an affair with a man who was also married and had some children. And I loved her, and I shared my life with her. And I kept encouraging her to read the Bible.

I remember one day she came to my house and said, "Becky, I have a specific question about the Gospel of Mark". And I said, "I knew it! I've been praying for you and loving you and always telling you that you need to read the Scriptures. It's because I've been doing that."

She said, "No, actually I was with my lover last week. He is Jewish, and very unexpectedly he turned to me and said,'What do you think of Jesus?'"

And Helen said, "Pardon me?"

He explained, "Well, I'm a Jew. I know something of the Old Testament. I just decided I should know something of the New Testament, and I am so struck by Jesus. There is something very beautiful about who he is. So I thought you'd tell me."

She said, "Well, I'm very sorry, I take all my religious questions to Becky." So she had a list of all of her questions, and the parting word from her lover was, "Next week when we get together, among other things, I would like to study the Gospel of Mark!" Now, I have heard of unusual settings for a Bible study. This gets first place.

So I said, "Look, Helen, if you're really going to do a Bible study with him and you've never read the Bible, let's study it together." She said OK. So we began to read the Bible. The first time we were together, she got very nervous and uptight. And I said, "What's the matter?" "Well, excuse me, but could I ask you a personal question?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Do you think the Bible would mind if I smoked a cigar?" I said, "I think it can handle it, yeah." So she lit up her cigar and we're into the passage, and she says, "Excuse me, but can I ask you another question?" I said, "Sure." And she said, "Do you think the Bible would mind if I had a glass of wine?" I said, "You could always ask it, I don't know."

And so from that point on we met weekly to read the Scriptures, she with a glass of wine or a cigar in her hand. And we'd read about Jesus. It was amazing to see her responses. And I remember one study in particular about when Jesus was with the prostitute at Simon's banquet. Helen looked at me and said, "Becky, all of my life I have thought that I was worth a piece of dirt. And I was sure that if there were a God, and I don't think there is, that he would concur with my analysis. Nobody needs to tell me I'm lost. I know I'm lost. I know I'm groping in the dark. I thought that if there is a God, he despises my blindness and my lostness.

"What I can't get over is that if you're lost, Jesus loves you more than ever. And if you're lost, and you know you're lost, you're probably close to the kingdom of God. Can you imagine that, me, close to the kingdom of God?" And I said, "Oh, yes, I can"
And she said, "Becky, I can't get over Jesus." I put down my Bible, and I began to cry, and I said, "You know, I've been a Christian for twenty years, and I can't get over Jesus either. I don't know what's going to happen to you. I hope with all my heart you become a Christian and that you find the wholeness that God wants. But you'll never be the same."

Helen broke off the relationship with that man. She is trying to make her marriage work She and her husband were assigned overseas, and one day she called me. She said, "I haven't become a Christian yet, but I'm reading the Bible, and I'm reading the Bible to my children. I've found a minister and his wife. I don't know, Becky, they have an aroma that reminds me of you!" But she said, "Frankly, I find the church a little uptight."

I said, "Well, try wearing a few more clothes. Just a thought?"

I hope with all of my being that she comes to know God. But the question I want to ask you is, Why do I have the freedom to relate to a woman like this? Because the cross shows me that I'm no different. That is the wonder. Do you think it matters to Jesus that he went to the cross and died for one set of sins that happen to be different from another? The cross shows me I'm no different, and that's why we have this tremendous bond to the world. I need to be forgiven as desperately as Helen does. I can't put down a cup of coffee without needing someone to forgive me and love me, and that's the wonderful news - that we are loved and are forgiven. God does so much more for us than we could ever dream of doing for him. We must recognize that the cross leads us into relationships and into the world - out of joyful gratitude for all that God has done.

So what does it mean to go back to our campuses to be witnesses to the world? It means that we must refuse to feign innocence but strive for holiness. It means that we must reach out with open arms and embrace the world, embrace your roommate and your neighbor as deeply as God has embraced you. You do not need to go immediately overseas. Be a missionary on campus. Do the preparation, and love with the love of Jesus.

And lastly, the cross makes us witnesses to joy. That is the byproduct of knowing Jesus. As G.K. Chesterton says, "Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian."

Rebecca M. Pippert is an evangelist, speaker and author of the bestseller Out of the Saltshaker.

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Evangelism: The Heart of Missions (Urbana 87)

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December 27-31, 2009