Forget Evangelism Training...

Bring on the "How to make a friend" training. I really believe that there is a large and much over-looked reality in the church today. Many people are making the assumption that because 90% of all Christians will not share their faith this next year that:

1. They don't care about lost people, or
2. They don't know how to present the gospel (insert "feel confident", etc.)

I think a much larger reason that modern day Christians do not share the gospel is that they do not have any non-Christian friends. And, even more interesting is that the modern church system is getting exactly the results that it was designed to get. I will use my parents as a prime example.

There is something that happens in a parent-child relationship as the child moves on into adulthood. I think it was shortly after my first son was born and I turned 30 that I began hearing stories about who my parents were before I was around. I did not fully believe most of those stories as they described people completely different from my CPA dad and Kindergarten teaching mom. You see, my parents came to Christ late in life. Before their conversion they were a part of a good sized social network and attended events with these people both in their own home and other homes. These events would not be sanctioned by your average baptist church. In fact, they were strongly encouraged to break off ties with their former way of life, including the people who could "drag them down" into sinful ways. So, they obediently began breaking ties with their social circle and forming a new social circle... one comprised of friends from church, who just so happened to be Christians.

Fast forward thirty years and you have me, a Christian who has been raised in the way of the church, which is a way almost exclusively filled with Christian socials, Christian retreats, Christian sports, and so on. I believe we have an entire generation, and possibly two, of Christians who have been taught how to separate themselves from non-Christians and have lost the ability to make friends with them.

What strikes me is that as I read the New Testament and the life of Jesus I imagine that He would have had a much different response to my parent's situation some 30+ years ago. Instead of asking them to remove themselves from their social circle and make a completely new one, He most likely would have asked to join them at their next party (even though it may have had the evil alcohol in attendance!). Sure some of the friends might have decided that partying with Jesus was not their thing... but others most likely would have been intrigued. Regardless my parents would have maintained the skill of being friends with people who do not think, act, and dress exactly like they do.

That is the Evangelism Class we need today... "How to make a friend with a non-Christian 101". You might say to yourself, "But they work with non-Christians, their kids go to school with non-Christians, and they have neighbors who are not Christians!" All of those things may be true, but none of those mean that they would feel comfortable asking any of those people over to dinner just to hang out on a Friday night. And, if you can't see yourself asking someone to come eat burgers on a Friday night... how exactly are you supposed to see yourself talking to them about eternity?