The Point

Over the semester, God has been working in my heart. Changing wrong thinking and revealing more of His heart. It seems that the theme for this semester could be narrowed down to one, simple word: Love. Loving God, Loving people, God's crazy love for me, His crazy love for other people...

Before I came to Ignite, I saw missions as a goal. The people I evangelized to were projects. In one of our classes, we had 3 evangelism projects. For the first 2, I felt like a failure. I felt I had made a fool out of myself and neither person accepted Jesus. For the third project, I had to talk to a total stranger. I ended up talking to a guy who had just converted to Catholocism. However, through the conversation, I got to hear about his conversion. I discovered that he had really had an encounter with Jesus. In that conversation, he didn't say the sinner's prayer, nor did he decide to be a Christian. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. I felt like the conversation had been succesful, because, if anything, it was confirmation of God's love for this guy.

As I thought about this, it hit me: The point of evangelism, especially on the first encounter, isn't necessarily to get them saved. The point is to love on people.

As you may or may not know, I have been in Kansas City for the past week. We volunteered at multiple places, the River of Refuge being one of them. They have a soup kitchen, and a church in Kansas City. The story behind that is in incredible. Jon Wiley, the pastor in charge of The River got together a team of people and he told them they could start a church... under one condition. Before they opened up a church, they had to live in that community and love on them and earn the right to open up a church. Before they held one worship service, before they held one prayer meeting, or one bible study; they had to live among the people and earn the right to preach.

This makes sense. This is the point: to LOVE people. Are we concerned for their souls? Yes Do we want them to go to heaven? Absolutely. But, when we see people as projects, we defeat the purpose. I can't door to door sell my Jesus. People will treat me like a telemarketer: thanks not intersted, good bye. I have to earn the right to preach. People want to know that I care about them, not that I'm out to convert them. I once heard my pastor ask this question, "If you knew that the person you're trying to convert would never convert, would you still be friends with, and talk to that person?" People are not a mission. People are not a project. People need to be loved, before I ever try to tell them about Jesus. Will I tell them? of course, I have a radical relationship with my Jesus, and people need to hear about it. But, I need to see people as people and realize that the point, the reason why I do what I do, is to Love people.

The point: To Love people, the way Jesus loves