From the Editor
Evangelism Doesn’t Have to Be Awkward
By Andrea Johnson
I was on my first lap around a lake trail trying to get a run in before the temperature rose any higher when I saw a woman who looked to be in her thirties coming at me, arms waving to get my attention. My first thought was that she was quite possibly a crazy person I needed to ignore, but then I surmised she could be warning me about something ahead in the path.
I halted long enough to hear what she had to say but made every visible cue I knew of to let her know I wanted to quickly move on. Apparently the cues were not obvious enough because she took her time with her prepared question: “Do you know Jesus?”
“Yes, I do, thank you,” I quickly replied and picked up my gait, trying to smile although admittedly, it was probably more of a grimace.
On my second lap around the lake, I ran into her again. She clearly didn’t remember me and waved me down again, asking the same question. I repeated that yes, I did know Jesus, and thanked her for sharing.
Unbelievably, while cooling down after my run, I was reaching into my vehicle for my water bottle when “guess who” made her way over to me for a third time. I was more than a little annoyed and let her know that she had already “hit me up” twice. Of course, as she walked away having done her “duty,” I felt guilty. After all, she was just trying to share her faith, something we all should do.
But that’s just the thing. I didn’t feel as if she were introducing me to faith in someone as amazing as Jesus Christ. I was simply one of several people she felt she had “evangelized,” not a soul she cared about.
“Yes, I do, thank you,” I quickly replied and picked up my gait, trying to smile although admittedly, it was probably more of a grimace.
Jesus’ way of evangelizing was totally different. He chose to disciple people. He lived His life among people. He didn’t just preach to the crowds from a mountaintop and then abandon them. He cared about them, so much so that even when He was drop-dead exhausted, He would still minister to them as if they were His family. He couldn’t NOT minister! Whether it was Nicodemus coming to him at night after a long day or the woman at the well when He was beyond parched, He engaged them. Since Jesus is God, He was more aware of what they needed than they were, yet He listened to them verbalize their thoughts. They needed to know their feelings mattered to Him. They mattered.
He answered their questions, sometimes with questions of His own that led to deeper insight. He healed the leper, the blind man, the lame, the demon possessed. He provided food for more than five thousand people. He calmed raging storms. He taught people how to live by His words and His actions, and He endured the monotony of everyday life. Like parents everywhere, He suffered the shortsighted, constant bickering, the incessant questions, and the all-around selfishness of those closest to Him.
Sharing our faith is more than spouting off a memorized prescription to someone we don’t really care to know, yet it does involve speaking truth. If Jesus simply preached to people but didn’t allow them to get close to Him, would they have followed Him for long? Maybe until the next eloquent rabbi came along. If He allowed for close relationships but didn’t offer sound teaching, would His followers have been any better off than before? If Jesus did miracles but didn’t lead people to repentance, would the miracles have become life-changing testimonies or would they have been explained away and simply forgotten?
Jesus was neither wishy-washy nor timid about His message. Only truth can set someone free. But He followed up His message with His lifestyle and by His commitment to those around Him. When Jesus returned to heaven, the apostles followed His lead.
Now it’s our turn to share our faith, not by doing a “good deed for the day” but by “loving our neighbor” enough to get to know them. We certainly need to be available for those times when the Holy Spirit leads us to divine encounters where we may speak a message to someone we don’t know. And we may be the person watering someone else’s “plant.” But too often evangelism can become something we “accomplish.” Discipleship is a process; it’s allowing the Holy Spirit to care for others using our bodies and our hearts. We are commanded to disciple others (Matthew 28:19).
If we are filled with God’s Spirit, we WILL share our faith (Acts 1:8). Awkward? It can be. But not if we allow the Holy Spirit to act through us. God cares about the people we meet. If we permit His Spirit to fill us, so will we.
About the Author
Andrea Johnson, a credentialed Open Bible minister, is the managing editor of the Message of the Open Bible. A graduate of Open Bible College with a major in theology/missions, she has edited and co-edited several books, including Servants of the Spirit: Portraits of Pentecostal Pioneers, We Believe: Core Truths for Christian Living, and We Believe for Kids! Her goal is to reveal Christ to those who are searching for Him. In her spare time you will most likely find Andrea enjoying time with family and friends or hiking. She and her husband, Dennis, are blessed with four children, three of whom are married, and eight grandchildren.
When my husband and I were newly married, we got super into the board game Risk. The object of the game is to achieve global domination by strategically placing your army pieces on a giant map, conquering every territory on the board and eliminating all other players. Risk has been delighting players since its inception in 1957. Unfortunately, some of us aren’t as strategic as others and have found ourselves a little less delighted.
After a few straight weeks of playing the game nightly and about as many of my losing, our marital Risk streak culminated in a moment when I (losing, again) reached forward with both hands and swept our armies off the board and across the room. Jordan and I both sat in slightly stunned silence, surrounded by our obliterated troops.
We don’t really play Risk anymore.
For much of my life I had a bad habit of quitting things prematurely. If I felt I was performing poorly or in danger of losing, I opted out before failure could occur. I gave up.
The Israelites had a similar instinct when they were on the edge of the Promised Land. Seeing the size and strength of their enemies, their response amounted to, “I can see where this is headed. I’d rather quit than lose.” Forsaking God’s plan, they gave up.
As Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, I’ve been thinking a lot about giving up. My old instinct to self-sabotage when I think I won’t measure up still hovers in high-pressure situations (hosting a big holiday gathering, buying the perfect gift, creating a beautiful service for Advent). But I’ve mainly been thinking about a different sort of giving up.
When the angel appeared to teenage Mary and explained that she’d been chosen to carry and give birth to the Messiah (the ultimate high-pressure situation), she did not opt out. Her response was simple: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38 CSB). She stayed in the game, but doing so required surrender of her plans, her reputation, and a familiar future.
Surrendering to God’s plan, she gave herself up.
This nobler version of giving up is found woven throughout the entire Christmas story: Joseph relinquishing his plan to divorce his pregnant fiancée, the shepherds giving up a night of normalcy to investigate a holy interruption, the magi surrendering time and treasure to worship an unexpectedly packaged king. Each of them gave up something personal in cooperation with God’s plan.
If you look closely, I think you’ll find that the theme of giving up is also woven throughout this issue of Message of the Open Bible. In this piece by Danielle Smith, teenagers in Nogales gave up expectations about what their mission trip would look like and discovered God was already at work in the changed plans. In our feature article about the Spokane fires, Spokane churches gave sacrificially of homes, money, time, and care when their neighbors lost nearly everything. And Jessica Sanford’s Five Things article invites us to give up what we all battle during the holidays: unrealistic expectations, overfilled schedules, and the pressure to manufacture the “perfect” Christmas.
As the holidays sneak up on us again, I invite you to join me in taking a risk (see what I did there?): give up! Not by taking yourself out of the game, but by surrendering the pieces that don’t matter in favor of the One that does. After all, when Jesus was faced with what looked like certain defeat, He knowingly and willingly stayed in the game. Like His mother Mary before Him, He put Himself on the board.
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46 NIV). Surrendering to God’s plan, Jesus gave Himself up.
God, show us what it means to give ourselves wholly to you. Let this be a season of holy surrender for us all.
About the Author
Hannah Bemis currently serves as the editor and director of Message of the Open Bible. She always wanted to do too many things when she grew up, and God has been kind enough to let her do most of them in different seasons. Those seasons have included raising little ones at home, teaching, writing, and staff pastoring, with Hannah’s most recent adventure being planting and pastoring College Street Church in Newberg, Oregon, with her husband, Jordan. After Jesus and all her favorite people, she spends the remainder of her passion on pizza and dark chocolate in equal measure.
Several years ago, I had an enlightening moment with my dental hygienist. During the course of my health history interview, Christy, to whom I was a new patient, gradually pulled out the previous seven years of my life story. “So, you moved to L.A. after having your first son, then when you were pregnant with twins you moved here to Spokane?”
“Ugnnnhhh,” I assented around her gloved fingers in my mouth.
“Wow, twins, no wonder you haven’t had time for regular dental checkups,” she said.
(Sure, that’s the reason . . .)
“So, then it was two years after having twins that you found out your daughter was diabetic?” She removed her hands and awaited my reply.
“Uh-huh . . . and then this past year is when I had my back surgery,” I said with a cringe, knowing how dramatic those years of my life sounded on paper.
“Wow,” she said as she stuck the X-ray machine in my mouth, “you guys have really had a cool life.”
What a gift life is. In every bit of its messy glory, life is nothing less than a gift, a kiss on the brow from the Father who adores us. I am learning, ever so slowly, not to wish away the chapters of my story that I didn’t write. I’m learning, as my high school English teacher taught me, never to erase because you never know what can come from the sentences in your story that seem undesirable at first glance.
… every time I’ve broken
through discomfort, there’s been
a glory-soaked moment on the other side.
I’ve come to realize that many of the most meaningful stories are ones their authors never would have chosen for themselves. That truth echoes throughout this issue of Message of the Open Bible, where story after story reveals God’s beautiful work through circumstances that were anything but easy. If I had erased all the sentences in my own story that caused me discomfort, I would have nothing of consequence left; my life would be a stack of blank sheets of paper. Every uncomfortable moment led to a revelation of reality: who I really was, who God really was, what life was really about.
I’m learning to press into moments of discomfort instead of run from them, and here’s why: every time I’ve broken through discomfort, there’s been a glory-soaked moment on the other side. The fire, the waves, the wind — they’re all worth it, and we can pass through them knowing that God is both with us and waiting for us on the other side.
“And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human…” (2 Corinthians 7:11 MSG).
We become more human, more fully ourselves after we’ve suffered some. While suffering was never part of God’s original design, He nevertheless uses it to restore us to His original design for us. As suffering draws us closer to Him, we begin to look more like the person He made us to be. Isn’t it incredible that to become “more human” means, in the truest sense, to become more like God? After all, humans were originally created in His image (Genesis 1:26). There could be no greater privilege, no sweeter gift.
We become more human, more fully ourselves after we’ve suffered some.
There is a passage in C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew when Aslan the lion (the God-character in the story) has just brought to life all of creation, including the formerly “Dumb Beasts” of the land. Once everyone and everything has been awakened to new life, Aslan says something remarkable: “Creatures, I give you yourselves” (p. 118). This line, which incidentally makes me cry every single time, captures it all: our real, God-designed selves were given to us as a gift. Like Aslan, God crafts our lives and presents them to us unapologetically, fully certain of their worth and sufficiency. If He is so certain of this gift’s value, then I pray to be also.
Aslan reminds his creatures of the shells they came from, cautioning them not to return to those shells, not to forsake the vibrant and authentic life he has blessed them with. Aslan’s reminder has become my prayer. The real life God has gifted me with is worth everything I passed through to obtain it, and I never want to give it up. May I never return to the shell from which I came.
Here, then, is my life, infused with suffering and joy, kissed by God. This is my story, and I refuse to despise it.
About the Author
Hannah Bemis currently serves as the editor and director of Message of the Open Bible. She always wanted to do too many things when she grew up, and God has been kind enough to let her do most of them in different seasons. After seasons of mothering, teaching, writing, and staff pastoring, Hannah’s most recent adventure is planting and pastoring College Street Church in Newberg, Oregon, with her husband, Jordan. After Jesus and all her favorite people, she spends the remainder of her passion on pizza and dark chocolate in equal measure.
Want some Easter grass? Tiny hands held out bright green plastic grass as a gesture of friendship from the four-year-old South Korean girl, who I later learned was named Sammy. Sammy became one of my earliest friends and was architect of one of my earliest Easter memories.
To be honest, the Easter memories from the first half of my life revolve more around Easter grass, brightly colored candy-filled eggs, and straw Easter hats than they do the resurrection of Jesus.
To be honest, the Easter memories from the first half of my life revolve more around Easter grass, brightly colored candy-filled eggs, and straw Easter hats than they do the resurrection of Jesus. Easter was my mom’s favorite holiday, and we had several traditions. After buying and wearing a special Easter church outfit, we would eat out at a nice restaurant before our annual Easter basket search commenced. Instead of hiding individual eggs, my parents would hide the entire pre-filled basket. My siblings and I have formative memories of searching for hidden Easter baskets, which my father would hide in progressively more difficult places each year of my life. One of the four siblings would inevitably end up weeping because the hiding place was just too hard and it was so unfair. Ahhh, Easter.
A few of Hannah’s favorite Easter memories with family and friends.
It wasn’t until college that I began to grasp the weight and holiness of this time of year. I remember attending a sunrise Easter service and sensing the presence of God in a way that brought tears of gratitude to my eyes; He was alive and He was right here with me. Another memory involves attending a Serbian Orthodox Good Friday service as a college class assignment. The service was an all-night candlelight vigil. At scheduled times, we marched around the perimeter of the church while speaking liturgies about how Christ had “trampled death by death.” This was my first time sitting in the darkness (literally!) of Christ’s death.
This deeper internalization of both Christ’s death and resurrection stayed with me throughout my adult years. Easter became one of my own favorite holidays as I hid my own children’s Easter baskets while also making space to sit with what Christ had done for me.
… the responsibility of Easter has at times overshadowed its holiness.
And then I became a pastor. One might assume that serving as a spiritual leader would make this holy holiday feel even holier—that my anointing would allow me to experience Easter in a more present, rich way. Maybe this is true for some pastors. For me, the responsibility of Easter has at times overshadowed its holiness. There have been holy and joyful moments, such as experiencing Christ powerfully while leading an Easter worship set or the time I watched my husband dance in a bunny suit in children’s ministry. But there have been many more moments driven by the pressure to perform: to hit the harmonies just right, to fill 1,000 more eggs, to think of a really creative service opener, and to find the perfect outfit, not because it’s fun but because it’s EASTER and first impressions matter.
I know in my head what Easter is all about. I’ve experienced Christ’s death and resurrection. But the ability to experience the truth of Easter while also planning the event of Easter has proven elusive. The struggle has been about as frustrating as looking for an Easter basket that is hidden just a little too well.
“Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he is risen, just as he said” (Matt 28:5-6).
I forget that Easter began with a search for Jesus. His resurrection was the onset of a search for His
presence …
I forget that Easter began with a search for Jesus. His resurrection was the onset of a search for His presence, a search that continued for the remainder of His disciples’ lives. He would pop in for a long walk or a fish breakfast, then would recede for a while. He would come as blinding light or in a dream, then recede again. While it is true that many of our traditions (both secular and Christian) can get in the way of experiencing Jesus, it is also true that much of life is a search for His presence—and sometimes the search is the point.
And there is always the promise of finding Him.
“He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him” (28:7).
You will see Him. Whether you are a mother filling eggs with candy for your kids, a college student internalizing your faith for the first time, a ministry leader feeling exhausted, or a pastor preparing a special service for twenty or 200 people, you will see Him. And maybe, as we relax into the truth of this promise, we can also remember that if He intends to make Himself known to us, He will do the same for those we love and lead. Maybe we can take some of the pressure off Easter, trusting that His promise of presence will hold true no matter how we choose to celebrate. As you prepare for and celebrate Christ’s resurrection this season, I hope you’ll enjoy the articles in this issue. We have stories about how Jesus is moving in new ways: in Africa, in a West Coast church plant, and in a Florida Next Gen leader with a huge heart for missions. God is also moving through old, rich traditions, as you’ll discover in this story. As you read, take a moment to recognize the familiar presence of God in each story. You will see Him!
About the Author
Hannah Bemis currently serves as the editor and director of Message of the Open Bible. She always wanted to do too many things when she grew up, and God has been kind enough to let her do most of them in different seasons. After seasons of mothering, teaching, writing, and staff pastoring, Hannah’s most recent adventure is planting College Street Church in Newberg, Oregon, with her husband, Jordan. After Jesus and all her favorite people, she spends the remainder of her passion on pizza and dark chocolate in equal measure.