Just Walk Across the Room: chapter 6 story and bad evangelism

   For me, the most valuable chapter of Just Walk Across the Room is chapter 6 "Your Own Before-and After." This chapter states the power of story and, in particular, our own stories. It highlights the fact that Jesus taught through stories. Alongside its being a Jesus-modeled technique, the significance of story is that the whole of scriptural revelation is a compelling story about how God has been at work in the world. The significance continues in the realization that our own stories are sub-plots that gain their meaning from God's compelling story; or, as Hybels puts it, "possibly the greatest realization someone can make is this: “My story fits into God’s greater story" (Kindle Locations 2076-2077).

   One of the ways that Hybel's book helps us move forward in introducing others to life in Jesus is that he begins to free us, mostly those of us who have lived in church-culture for a while, from some of the unhelpful ideas of evangelism that are deeply (deeply) entrenched in our expectations and ways of thinking about our role in the things of God.
   

   When I read the book it is easy for me to agree with his critiques. (For more helpful critiques give a read to Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel.) Even when I agree that some ideas are unhelpful, I still consider how I feel when someone asks me about my effectiveness as an "evangelist." I still find that my evaluation of my effectiveness falls back into these ideas that I really don't like. I do not know if I will ever escape the influence of these unhelpful ideas of evangelism but I do know that it will take a conscious effort not to be defeated by them. Hybels puts his finger on the "weird God story", using sequences of scripture that don't mean anything yet to your friend, using religious language (that sometimes we don't even realize that we are using), and assuming a position of superiority over those you speak to. I find that I feel a need to hear myself do or say thee things even though I don't think they are effective-and that is a problem. That problem makes it a challenge for me to see how I (and my family) have helped bring people from the edges of faith into active participation in the life that God intends for them. That problem makes it a challenge for the church to see how we have already been used by God to testify to his goodness, trust-worthy faithfulness, and his right dominion that is already present in our world.

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