Category: Discipleship

Several years ago, I remember sitting on my back porch and watching my twin boys play with, along with destroy, a newly purchased slip’n slide. For me, the simplicity of life was no where better captured than in watching them have fun on an overpriced piece of plastic.

Though we have advanced technologically beyond any of my childhood dreams (I think on my block growing up, slip’n slide was as techonoligical as we got), I don’t think it’s possible to improve on getting some kids together on a hot summer day with a water hose and a slippery piece of plastic.

Now for those who have not experienced the slip’n slide experience, you might be thinking, “What more can you do except just slide?” Well, let me inform you!

Though the basic premise of slip’n slide is to slide, it’s more than that. For instance, you don’t just slide, but see how far you can slide, how many ways you can slide (ie. frontwards, backwards, sideways, etc…), how fast you can slide, how wet you can get, how muddy you can get (don’t ask how this happens), how much water you can put on the mat, and any other game or competition anyone slip’n and slide’n can create.

The reason I believe in the beauty of a slip’n slide on a hot summer day is not just because it brings back memories for me personally, but because of the creativity and comradory that such a piece of plasctic in a backyard creates. As I watched my boys, I was amazed at how many different games and challenges that created that afternoon.

So many times in our culture, I feel that we are overly entertained. We have become numb to the simplicity of just sitting and enjoying a cool breeze on a summer day. Granted we might enjoy a cool breeze, but only as we sit with our iPhone checking email or news updates every few minutes.

I think we also can bring such overly entertained attitudes into our worship life as well. We no longer know how to be still or to be unplugged from email, text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter. I am not against any of these things. In fact, I use them daily. But I pray that I am aware of how they shape me. I sometimes wonder if technology is making us less human.

I know we can’t necessarily abandon technology, nor do I think we should. It is of great benefit to us. But for me personally, it does me good to occasionally take my Bible, along with a pen and a notebook, and find a quiet place to just sit and think and fellowship with my Creator.

My kids have video games and they enjoy playing them, but I really enjoyed watching them on the slip and slide that day. I really saw their personality and their ingenious minds at work. Though I do enjoy technology, I think for that summer day a few years ago, the slip’n slide was the best invention ever.

Mack Stiles, in a current blog post for Crossway Books, wrote about 10 Things You Should Know About Evangelism. I found a couple of his points worthy of discussion.

1. Evangelistic programs will kill evangelism.

We need to replace evangelistic programs with a culture of evangelism. Programs are to evangelism what sugar is to nutrition: a strict diet of evangelistic programs produces malnourished evangelism. So, we should feel a healthy unease with regard to evangelistic programs. We must use them strategically and in moderation, if at all.

2. Evangelism flourishes in a culture of evangelism.

Much instruction is given about personal evangelism. And that’s right and good since we’re each called to testify to our own personal encounter with Jesus. But when people are pulling together to share the gospel, when there is less emphasis on getting “a decision,” when the people of God are pitching in to teach the gospel together, a culture forms that leads us to ask “Are we all helping our non-Christian friends understand the gospel?” rather than “Who has led the most people to Jesus?”

For Stiles, developing a culture of evangelism is much better than relying upon programs. And I might add that developing a culture is much harder.

Programs tend to be events or campaigns that come and go. It is true that they can serve as catalysts for developing a culture of evangelism, but many times, when the program ends, so does the evangelism. It’s out of sight, out of mind.

A culture of evangelism however, is one which is woven into the very fabric of a body of believers. It is not a special emphasis that is announced every now and then, but is something that is as natural as breathing.

A culture of evangelism is an everyday activity. It belongs to everyone wherever they may be. And it’s not always about the spectacular, but about the ordinary. Tim Chester writes that “most people live in the ordinary, and most people will be reached by ordinary people.”

So what do you think? Programs or culture? Or is there a balance?

I would like to buy about three dollars worth of gospel, please. Not too much–just enough to make me happy, but not so much that I get addicted. I don’t want so much gospel that I learn to really hate covetousness and lust. I certainly don’t want so much that I start to love my enemies, cherish self-denial, and contemplate missionary service in some alien culture.

I want ecstasy, not repentance; I want transcendence, not transformation. I would like to be cherished by some nice, forgiving, broad-minded people, but I myself don’t want to love those from different races–especially if they smell.

I would like enough gospel to make my family secure and my children well behaved, but not so much that I find my ambitions redirected or my giving too greatly enlarged. I would like about three dollars worth of gospel, please.

–D.A. Carson, Basics for Believers, p. 13

So what do we do to get more than just $3 of gospel? First of all, I don’t think it means trying harder or doing more. Tullian Tchividjian writes that the “hub of Christianity is not ‘do something for Jesus.’ The hub of Christianity is ‘Jesus has done everything for you.'”

Second, I don’t believe getting more than $3 of gospel is just a one time fix. I think it is something we do daily by reflecting upon the truth of what God has done for us in Christ. Paul writes that he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Getting more than $3 worth of gospel therefore, is daily realizing the extravagance of the grace of God and allowing such grace to transform all of who we are.

Grace is far more powerful than law. The law only gives us a checklist of do’s and don’t’s. If we do them all, we are accepted. And many times, as our lists get longer and longer, our motivation to keep up gets weaker and weaker.

This is not so with grace. Grace is not about us living up to a set of expectations but about us trusting in one who met all the requirements for us. Grace is about being loved due to the goodness of the one who loves.

We must embrace the reality that we do not deserve salvation from God. Nor can we do anything to earn it. It is a gift. It is by grace.

Tchividjian writes that such grace “has the unique power to inspire generosity, kindness, loyalty, and more love, precisely because it removes any and all requirement to change or produce.” It is “the most dangerous, expectation-wrecking, smile-creating, counterintuitive reality there is.”

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.  

–Ephesians 2:1-5