I met Scott after I watched him walk oblong circles for an hour in the mercury-lit parking lot behind my house. I timed my trip to the dumpster to intercept his orbit. As it turned out, he was not having a mental health episode, but explained that he and some others had boarded a faded Ford van and drove all the way from Ohio to “do evangelism” in New York City.  He was pretty psyched to be in New York. His eyes glistened with the vivid sheen of hopeful good intentions.  

Talking with Scott raised a few questions. I’m glad Scott came all the way from Ohio to be with people from New York, but I really wanted to ask him if everyone in Ohio had become a Christian already. Or did he want to go to Times Square, where visitors from Ohio tend to hang out? Were the only non-Christians in Ohio currently visiting New York? Was he was the hound of heaven, pursuing them even as they waited in line at TKTS for cheap “Little Mermaid” seats?

The second thing that struck me, assuming Scott wasn’t pursuing people with Buckeye hats across state lines, was that he assumed he had achieved a level of credibility just by showing up. He was confident that he could walk up to anyone, interrupt their day, and ask them about their faith, an issue I would assume Scott believed to be a very special, important, and beautiful part of their lives. Scott could live his life in Ohio, “do evangelism” in New York, then go back to his life in Ohio. I found the disconnect from Scott’s life disconcerting.

Finally, I thought about “doing evangelism.” Why did Scott consider evangelism something that people “do?” As I look at scripture, it seems that engaging people about faith is supposed to emerge from a mutually respectful relationship. The passage many use as a proof that we need to “go out” comes from Matthew, “Go into all the world . . . .” But it doesn’t say “for evangelism,” it says to go out and make disciples, which is an entirely different venture. We are to live our lives, with talk about faith coming to us in the relationships we enjoy. We don’t have to go out and “do evangelism” to people. 

I guess this goes back to Church history. Evangelicalism developed in response to other Christian approaches by making words supreme. Words from the Bible, word from doctrinal statements, and words from famous people of faith. But words can only be spoken with meaning when they reside in an appropriate context. If evangelistic words have a relational context, they are powerful, because faith is a relational issue. Without the right context, evangelistic words only add to the media static already buzzing in our ears.

So maybe we should all think twice before we gas up 15 passenger vans and head off to parts unknown. Before we pull out of the church parking lot, let’s pull the emergency brake and find out who has been hanging out with their neighbors in the past six months. Have we really done what we are supposed to do in our own community? If we do go, can we go to serve others instead of doing something to them?  Let’s not try to “do evangelism;” let’s “live authentic lives.”