I came across this article highlighting some of the main ideas from the book Reimagining Evangelism. I haven’t read the book myself so I can’t recommend it but I do affirm a number of the ideas of the book, some of which are listed below:
Community versus individual. God is far more committed to raising up witnessing communities than to raising up witnessing individuals. Our sales model leads us to think of individual salespeople fanning out across the landscape, going door to door and person to person. Though individual witness is certainly important, the Holy Spirit fills a Christian community and uses the community as a body in witness. Each member has its own particular contribution to make, according to the gifts each person has been given. More important than each of us doing the same thing to witness to others, we each must do our particular part. Then our witness together will be much greater than the sum of our parts.
Further, today people come to Christ primarily in the context of community. Belonging comes before believing. Evangelism is about helping people belong so that they can come to believe. So our communities need to be places where people can connect before they have to commit.
Friendship versus agenda. Our old model focuses on the agenda—downloading our content and closing our deal. We easily assume that if we haven’t shared the whole ball of wax and challenged people to commit their lives, we haven’t done evangelism. But the model of conversations with spiritual friends delights in the relationship itself and rejoices
Good news about God’s kingdom versus good news about the afterlife. The old model emphasized how we could be forgiven of our sins and go to heaven after we die. But actually that wasn’t Jesus’ focus, though it was part of his message. Jesus’ main message was that the kingdom or rule of God is at hand. The rule of God is the act of God to set things right and to make people and the world work as they were intended to work. So Jesus talked much more about this life than about the next, much more about changing this world than about giving us a free pass to the next.
