Leave the Rest to God

I have to tell you something about me. I would like for you and everybody else to like me. In college I was president of my sophomore and junior classes and my senior year, I was president of the student government. What I remember most, though, is that I didn't get all the votes. In seminary I was vice president of the student body my second year and president of the student body my third year. Do you know what I recall the most? I didn't get all the votes. Remember, my vocational aspiration was to become a minister. I was going to lead a united band of congregants as we marched together to Zion. I was in seminary finishing my second degree. I had a successful student pastorate and couldn't wait until the phone started ringing with people wanting me to come to their churches. What you hear is the sound of silence. A church in Tennessee did contact me, but when the church sent me the list of questions, I knew this would never work. Finally I was contacted by a church ...

I grew up in a church where sin (disobedience to God) was seen as a personal issue. Preachers told us that each of us had disobeyed God. If we wanted to be saved and not go to Hell, we had to accept Jesus as our personal Savior and Lord. I can look back to that kind of preaching and see how true it was to a certain extent but how limited it was in so many other ways. If there was any call to discipleship, it was not to do certain things, such as dancing. Interestingly, the people of God often danced in the Bible, but I guess it wasn't slow dancing. This type of evangelism was "transactional". You believed in Jesus so you wouldn't go to Hell, and then you stayed away from certain things, many of which seemed like fun. While the word "evangelism" has good roots in the New Testament, coming from "evangel", which means "good news", still it's an unwelcome word among some followers of Jesus. Evangelism conjures up images of manipul...