The Traditional Method

I don't want to speak poorly of the traditional method of evangelism. I do think it is profitable. I think some of us are fortunate to have it work. When it works, those who listen to us submit to the teachings we share.

However there is, in my opinion, a growing need for evangelicals to utilize a new method (I will post on next) of evangelism, especially in a scripture-soaked society as America is.

I apologize, many of my sources and ideas are borrowed from LDS-specific issues; that's simply a reflection of where I have put in more effort to revolutionize the method. I think the ideas below are fully applicable as principles for all kinds of evangelism, though. It shouldn't be too difficult to draw them out as you read, I think.

I hope you notice, as you read below, that the author utilizes a less common methodology in how he is about to introduce a new perspective to you, as he shares the content of that message:

A Traditional Way: The Doctrinal "Warrior Saint"

By now I was getting familiar with this pattern of contact, "discussion," recoil, and shutdown, having been at it for about three years. And by this point, that stabbing feeling I got, joined like a Siamese twin to a feeling of despair, had started to intensify beyond what I considered tolerable. Frankly, though, I just did not know what else to do but shake it off, suit up with my spiritual armor, and ready myself for yet another spin at the same jousting game.

So, like most other Utah ministers with whom I compared notes, I took some refuge in putting the best face on it while proceeding full steam ahead, staying the course, making another charge. The best face we put on turned out to be some form of makeover that left us traditional Christian "warrior saints" loking pretty noble at the end of the day. After all, we were just faithfully and honestly "preaching the truth," right? We were simply called to proclaim the gospel and leave the results to God, amen? We were powerless to keep our Mormon friends from thinking we were somehow attacking them instead of their doctrine, weren't we? (Uh, by the way, we were their friends, right?) We couldn't help it if "the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers" (2 Cor 4:4), could we? Ours was not to reason why but simply to keep on keeping on and suffering those battle wounds for the Lord. Wasn't all this the plain and simple truth of the matter?

Well, a lot was plain and simple back then, but not much of it was truthful. That one could enjoy friendship with Mormons and enjoy the title "Mormon Slayer" at the same time was patently disingenuous. Proceeding as if one could "bible bash" without raising defenses and coming across as attacking amounted to gross silliness as well as flat-out cluelessness about human communication. Acting like we who evangelized by trafficking in "what's wrong with Mormonism" and "evidence against Mormonism" were really "just preaching the truth" or "simply proclaiming the gospel" bordered on self-congratulatory delusionalism. To believe our proclamation style truly created no offense but "the offense of the cross" was an offense to the truth! Even if many we met were "blinded" by "the god of this world," it now seems to me that in order to help them we had to deal with a blindness of our own, a peculiar blindness to the sinewy, pulsating, dust-and-dreams, soulful reality of the Mormon people as first and most of all, people.

In those days I was just not ready to recognize, let alone deal with, the blindness in my home court--what Jesus would call "the beam" in my own eye, which was steadily growing from telephone pole to sequoia proportions. I was not ready to face its implications. Why did I do this confrontational, warrior-mode evangelism with LDS people? Yes, for one thing it was all I knew, all I'd seen by way of modeling, and the way I'd been trained by both formal and informal mentors. But it seems to me there was something else lurking in the depths and driving this approach, something we traditional Christians didn't like to think about, something called fear. Mormons and other religious groups threaten us, in part simply because they are "other" and perhaps odd--"not us." I'm not sure why this should scare us, but sometimes it does. We revert to fight-or-flight reflexes, quite unlike Jesus, who was secure in the love of the Father for all people so that he was able to embrace with uncanny comfort the whole range of humanity, including Romans, Samaritans, Pharisees, prostitutes, and lepers. We would do well to cultivate that kind of security in the love of God for all people.

[1]

Oh, I could tell stories of the sad things I have done with the Word of God to the LDS. The people at the forum I hang out at, could tell them to you for me. I was all about apologetics and I just assumed that if I had enough scripture and research, the results would come about. I was disappointed. It took more than just the written answers, to achieve change. I, like the author of this book, started to sense the need for something more. I remember standing there in the bookstore, the dilemma over method happening right as I looked over which book about the LDS I would purchase next. I wrote about this crisis of methodology here. Somewhere at the LDS forum I confessed to them "this tender new perspective" was taking root in me and I devoted myself to nurturing it, shutting out voices from the "traditional method" camp, for a time in my life.

Here is an example of the "traditional method" I too started out with. In this specific case I published this blog entry out of frustration because our discussion in a thread was getting overheated, and I pushed them beyond their limit. The moderator broke in and deleted my post from the discussion. It was gone! I was angry about it (though I did feel guilty), so I "published" it elsewhere out of defiance. My pride got in the way. But they worked with me to work the issue out.

The next post will be Rowe's explanation of a new method.


[1] I Love Mormons, by David L. Rowe, pp. 17-18. 2005, Baker Books.