Benay's mom e-mailed us a link to a news column written by Doug Mendenhall. His column appears weekly in The Huntsville (Alabama) Times, and he is a professor at Abilene Christian University where Bronwyn will be going this fall. We LOVED his thoughts in the article and wanted to share them with you.
If you are on a mission team, are joining a mission team, or are mission minded (shouldn't that be all Christians?) then you need to read the article below.
Benay and I have said for a few years that every relationship with Christ starts with an "oi" or hello. True relationships begin with friendship.
I believe people don't begin to have a relationship with Christ because of a great preacher or incredible sermon, great choir or music program, great kids ministry, great singles ministry, etc. All of those things are fine but I don't believe any of those things make deep, long lasting impact on people's lives the way true friendship does. The path to Christ begins with Christians being Christ to those that don't yet know Him. No program can do more for sharing God's love than true friendship can.
We hope you get as much encouragement from Doug's words as we did. Here is his article:
Are you just a stranger knocking at the door?
The British were coming!
So, on the 18th of April in '75, a rider set out by night from Boston to warn militias all the way to Lexington that they were needed ASAP.
That rider, of course, was William Dawes.
The net result of his midnight ride was ... not much.
But maybe you learned it differently in school when you memorized the long Longfellow poem, which is about a more effective ride by a guy named Paul Revere, who saved the day for the patriots.
Truth is, there were two riders. Both Dawes and Revere set out from Boston, passing at equal speed through equal numbers of towns as they took different routes to Lexington.
However, Revere had spent a lot more prep time - in taverns, in talk, in meetings large and small - getting involved in lives of the people along his route. When he knocked on a door and howled about the British coming, people woke up, saw who it was and started pulling on their trousers.
Dawes, not as well known in the neighborhoods through which he rode, just knocked on doors at random. He had the same important message to share, but his howls resulted mostly in people rolling over and going back to sleep.
I find this fascinating because it parallels another historical truth, often overlooked because it doesn't match what we think we know.
A lot of Christians are fervent about spreading their beliefs throughout the globe. Their Christ told them to do this, they say, and they take the task seriously.
This evangelism can take the form of a Dawesian ride, with the faithful randomly knocking on doors, mailing out flyers, talking to passersby, staring with fiery eyes into a TV camera or even arriving in towns and villages halfway around the globe without a friend to their name and only a short time to translate the good news about Jesus.
In my youth I did my share of knocking on doors and feeling like a failure if the folks inside were lukewarm to my message of truth.
This truth about the message, though, has been rediscovered countless times since the days of Jesus: The most effective channel of evangelism is from one friend to another.
Jesus himself worked hard to demonstrate this, taking plenty of time to get to know people at parties, dinners, roadside stops and weddings. Not to mention the countless miles of dirt road he slogged with a dozen close friends to whom he entrusted his precious message.
I'm sure I'm not saying anything new to most mission-minded believers out there, but when I read the tale of Dawes and Revere this week, this application jumped out at me.
Remember, if you want to share Jesus with people, don't be just a short-term friend. Instead, be a long fellow.
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