Crazy talk
I read a blog by a missionary in North America recently where they described how in all their years of discipling younger believers, they never discipled them in sharing their faith. It was a confession of sorts, a realization on their part that they’d always found it easier to encourage someone to share their faith rather than showing them to do so. Fair play, they at least now realize the mistake and are seeking to do it differently now that they are paid to be a missionary.
Sharing our faith is scary. I just spent the better part of today being scared out of my mind that some of the locals might figure out that I’m a missionary. It’s not a fun feeling. I live in a scenario where if people find out that I get paid to evangelize them, then I’m probably toast. Folks back in the US of the As might not like the fact that I don’t walk around saying I’m the Apostle Paul here on a journey, but they probably also wouldn’t like it if I blew any chance of interaction with the locals considering that they give hard earned dollars to put me here. But that’s another post.
In this post I’m thinking about what it means to share our faith, specifically some of the practical issues at hand in terms of vocabulary. I spent so much of my time in church in America using the Christian lingo to describe my spiritual journey that I often don’t know how to dump the crazy talk when I’m talking to people that don’t have the same vocabulary. In America, we’re usually afraid to share our faith because we’re afraid people will think we’re crazy. Often, they have good cause to think we’re crazy. We sound crazy! Think about it. I have joy in Jesus even when I’m not happy. God’s grace is helping me day by day. What in the world are you supposed to think that means if you don’t use the words joy and grace on a daily basis. What about the word charismatic. That word means wildly different things in and out of the Christian subculture.
I have this theory. I think we spend so much time inside the Christian subculture trying to show our Christian subculture buddies how holy we are that we use all these Christianese terms to really amp our holiness. Then, in our daily lives, we don’t go near those words. When we’re with people outside the Christian subculture, we describe ourselves and life in ways that don’t include those words and therefore we don’t talk about our spirituality to the people that might benefit most by seeing that we’re not all that shallow after all.
One time I almost threw a party, a party where all my Christan friends would meet my non-Christian friends. Almost. I froze. I freaked out. I had no idea how my Christian friends would act in front of non-Christians. I’d never seen them in the real world. What if they brought all the crazy talk out into the open with my normal friends? Don’t get me wrong, my desire was that my non-believing friends would encounter Jesus while rubbing up next to my Christian friends’ lives, but I just didn’t know if any of the parties had the right vocabularies to make such a connection happen. Maybe they did. I’ll never know. I’d like to think it would have been amazing, but if I really believed that, I would have thrown the party.
