Free to Serve

Marks of the Messenger

We had a great weekend with Mack Stiles. He shared with us what it is like being in Dubai and serving as an elder at Redeemer Church. Mack always brings with him a love for people. I couldn't get him to the main service on time because he wanted to talk to everyone we passed. What a great example! 

If you haven't, please take the time to buy and read his book, Marks of the Messenger: Knowing, Living and Speaking the Gospel. Mack challenges to make the Gospel clear and to share it with great boldness. He put it this way:

Finally, we need boldness to invite response to the message once we've presented it fully. This is overcoming the fear of rejection.

Perhaps you have been studying the Gospel of Mark with a non-Christian friend. There comes a point when you need boldness to say, "You know, I think that this is an urgent matter in your life. I think that you understand the gospel, and really what is left is for you to place your complete faith and trust in Christ. What is stopping you from doing that?"

We tend to hate putting people on the spot, but the gospel is not really the gospel without letting people know that a response is required.

So remember: to be healthy evangelists requires boldness that overcomes the fear of man by replacing it with the fear of God. Healthy evangelism is cultivated by exposing our faith to others, by anticipating how to be bold in our conversations and by being willing to invite a response to the message.

Personal Memories of Senator Mark O. Hatfield (1922-2011)

In 1994 a piece of paper changed my life. I was walking down the hall of the Economics Department at the University of Oregon when I saw that Oregon's senior senator, Mark O. Hatfield, was inviting economics students to apply to intern in his office. This was the beginning of my senior year in college, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after that. Before I became a Christian, I planned to enter the business world to make as much money as I could. Becoming a Christian changed my thinking, and I began to wonder if public service was a better option. The flyer piqued my interest.

I drove up to Salem for an interview with Hatfield's State Director. My intention was to stick close to home by interning in the Salem office. I was persuaded to intern in Washington, DC instead. In September of 1994 I purchased a round trip ticket that would bring me back to Oregon in December of 1995. I never went back to stay.

Bold Chinese Christians

On July 28 the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article on the state of China's underground churches. The underground, Protestant church in China is very large. Government-backed (and therefore conservative) estimates say China has 23 million Protestants. The number is probably at least triple that. According to this article, the city of Beijing has 20 underground seminaries. 

One of the underground churches is called the Shouwang Church. It has over 1,000 members. These members were evicted from their meeting place last April. But the churches are becoming defiant. Brian Spegele, writing for the WSJ:

A vast national network of underground churches across the country promises to have staying power. No sooner was Shouwang shut down, for example, than [Beijing] Zion [Church] became more prominent.

Beijing Zion is a church of 800 with a pastor who is increasingly outspoken. The government is making statements, trying to keep the believers under control. The following excerpt is from an editorial printed in the Global Times, a newspaper run by the state:

A church should not become a power which can promote radical change . . . Otherwise, the church is not engaged in religion but in politics, which is not allowed for a church.

Such is life in Communist China. When members of Shouwang Church assembled outside, they were shut down by the police. According to Spegele, "Some have been confined to their homes while others have been expelled to their hometowns in the provinces."

Jesus knew this would happen. So he preached:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

It is hard for Americans to understand what it is like to wake up with the realization that this very day you could be banned from attending of Bible study, refused entrance into a city, or imprisoned--all because you want to assemble in the name of Jesus Christ.

I'm sure it is hard for many of these Chinese believers to understand how we can be so timid when it comes to sharing our faith when we have the freedom to do so. 

Hiding Behind Words

Tony Judt was what some call a "public intellectual." That is, of course, a funny thing to call somebody. Public intellectuals, as I understand them, are smart people who apply their analytical gifts on public issues and in a popular manner. Judt started his life in a Jewish home, and as a young man he absorbed writings of Karl Marx and argued for the re-establishment of the nation of Israel. He went on to teach European studies at New York University.

Judt died in August of last year. A few weeks before he died, he wrote a short essay entitled, "Words." He lamented the modern decline in the quality of writing and speaking. He suggested it is a sign of poor thinking: "Shoddy prose today bespeaks intellectual insecurity: we speak and write badly because we don't feel confident in what we think and are reluctant to assert it unambiguously."

In the heart of his essay, Judt wrote about how people use words today to make people think they are close when, in reality, they are miles away. Read the following paragraph carefully:

Articulacy is typically regarded as an aggressive talent. But for me its functions were substantively defensive: rhetorical flexibility allows for a certain feigned closeness--conveying proximity while maintaining distance. That is what actors do--but the world is not really a stage and there is something artificial in the exercise: one sees it in the current US president. I too have marshaled langauge to fend off intimacy--which perhaps explains a romantic penchant for Protestants and Native Americans, reticent cultures both.

Judt argued that we can speak (notice he used the fancier word, "articulate") defensively--to feign or fake closeness while "maintaining distance," like an actor. He even explained that he was tempted to use words this way. Aren't we all? But here is what I find fascinating. He says one reason he has a "romantic penchant" for Protestants (that's us!) is because they, too, use words to keep people away. (By the way, I have no idea why he lumps Protestants and Native Americans together in this regard!)

Is this true? Is Protestant Christianity unusually marked by the use of words to keep people away? Are we part of an especially "reticent" culture. If so, this should not be. Those who have experienced the Gospel, whose lives have been radically transformed, who know that their heart is an open book before the Creator of the Universe, have nothing to hide.

As you go about your day, today, consider how Paul described his speech in 1 Thessalonians 2:8:

So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our selves, because you had become very dear to us.

Paul shared more than the gospel, he shared his life. This is every Christian's calling--to share not just our words, but to share our hearts with others, too. This takes great wisdom. It will not do to sit down with someone you barely know and unleash the flood of your inner thoughts. But most of us don't struggle with being too open. I think Judt is right. Most Protestants, most of us, marshal our language to "fend off intimacy."