A Personal Touch

I was thinking about outreach today. This might have been because I watched a short little video on a certain type. I thought about all those times I have received flyers in the mail where it shows angels throwing people into the fires of Hell. Boy o’ boy do those make me feel compelled to join the ‘Christian cause’.

This particular clip talked about mailing out tracks. Now I am not saying this is a bad thing by any sorts BUT if this is the sole outreach strategy of your church there are some flaws in your thinking. I am sure that these handy dandy pamphlets reach people. There is no argument there. The issue is, when we sacrifice our actual reaching out for pamphlets we sacrifice a large part of our Christian mandate.

When I look at the life of Jesus I see someone whose life was dedicated to reaching people. Whether it is the disciples that followed him or the people who heard his sermons, there was this person to person connection. When I look how Jesus not only spoke to Zacchaeus but ate and fellowshipped with him I see a personal faith. It would have been easy for Jesus to have written down on Papyrus his Good News to the world and handed it out on the streets. Instead he walked and talked with the people. He spoke to the dirty and marginalize. He discussed and debated with the rich an educated. Jesus embodied the Good News.

The Apostle Paul, I am sure, could have stood on the corner and preach in Athens a second time but he realized it didn't work so well the first. He had to changed tactics. As Paul walked through the market he took in the culture, he examined his surroundings. The most important thing he did was go to where the people were. Paul went to the hangout spot where all the thinkers, philosophers and spiritual leaders met to discuss. Paul knew from his previous experience that this was the way to go. Paul learned the culture and used it to his advantage in speaking to the people. Paul personally took the personal Saviour to the people.

We live in a culture that reads less and less every year. That is why advertisers use certain words and certain fonts with certain cheesie exploding, spiky, yellow things to get their point across. There are some people out there who do read stuff from the mail… I am not one of them.

Look at other religions. Mormonism is growing like crazy and it is not because their belief system makes sense. They are present in the community, they invite themselves to your home, they will talk with anyone and they own hotels... I am not saying that we need to copy the Mormon philosophy on outreach; where the Church has sacrificed the personal touch for websites and handouts we need to find our way back to the Jesus method.

Judaism takes from the words of Moses in Leviticus 19:18 to love your neighbours. This is echoed by Jesus in Matthew 19 and 22. Jesus also called us to "go". These are commands that call for an action, a personal action.

With all the screwed up things that are being portrayed as 'Christian' on TV and the net the world needs to see that 'Christians' are not all crazy. We don't all picket at PRIDE parades’ or blow up abortion clinics. People need to know that we are not all money grabbers, schemers, pedophiles, obnoxious and sell special holy water for a donation to our ministry. If every Bible believing Christ would simple be the hands and feet of Christ we could break the stigmas that surround the faith. It is time to combine our Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy and reach people with the Good News of Christ just as Jesus and the apostle Paul did: With a personal touch.