Do you struggle with guilt related to evangelism?  Do you feel like you do very little as a Christian to “draw” lost people?  I sometimes struggle with this feeling–and sometimes, it’s justified.  It’s a very healthy thing to examine one’s evangelistic witness, and to push oneself out of one’s comfort zone (read: the evangelical church/parachurch bubble, oftentimes) into the pathways and patterns of lost people.

But it is also possible to carry the weight of the lostness of the world on your back.  If so, here’s a helpful text from John 3:20-21:

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Sometimes, we can think that we are repelling lost people by living a God-glorifying life.  In fact, this may be true.  People don’t want to be around the light when they live in darkness.  They want to stay in the darkness.  They are justly ashamed.  They hate the light.

This doesn’t give us a permanent excuse for not evangelizing lost people, of course.  Just as Jesus did, we need to

This term and the idea behind it caught in my filter, as the kids say nowadays.  I don’t know how it strikes you, but that term seems to me to nicely sum up biblical Christian living as a “missional” believer.  This isn’t necessarily the line of thinking that sells the most books, but it captures, I think, both the Christocentric idealism and the conscionable realism of the biblical authors.  I want to look into this below (and would commend Hunter’s To Change the World, which has stimulated my thinking).  This will be a bit lengthy–I’m warning you up front.  Adjust your goggles; set phasers to stun.

There is a need for this kind of thinking and communication in our day among young people.  Twentysomethings are notoriously and historically idealistic, of course.  This isn’t new to our day.  But it’s interesting to survey the culture at present.  Idealism–even an unnuanced idealism–is alive and well.  This despite a twentieth century marked by devastating wars, political corruption, the overturning of …