A fishing story - Another sacred cow..

[Stan]

There is no shortage of those who want to teach people to fish, some even have Phd's in fishing...

Everyone wants to teach, no one wants to go fishing... but the stories make some good entertainment.

[Gail]

Funny you should mention it-

I don't know about others, but I have been praying about this and thinking about my own situation. I'm not yet busy enough to keep me totally from getting into mischief but trying!

[fccool]

The fish is usually being caught for food... not for the betterment of the fish. Probably good analogy to people who would not understand any other analogies, but what attitude does it underline?

Should we really be "fishing"? Why not be genuine friend/father/co-worker/husband/humanitarian ?

There's this compartmentalization evangelism that essentially turns the church into a club, where members get rewards for drawing in more members. The idea behind the church is building a FUNCTIONAL community. In most churches that I visited... the same handful of people carry the load of the entire church, while the pastors beg for them to get out and "spread the gospel". Why?

"Spreading the gospel" is awkward in any modern context, because one have to conform to the popular stigmata/script that already exists in minds of people. I.E. you guys are sinners in need of help, Jesus died for you even though you neglect and rebel against God every day. Repent, join us and avoid being burned up in the end/ and actually meet God while you at it.

In this context, the evangelism is like selling lottery tickets to help starving children of Ethiopia ... rather than giving a proper perspective on Biblical ideology.

If being a Christian is a pursuit to be the proper human being, then why not use the same message in the context of proper place of human relationship towards each other and towards God? It's a lot less awkward and unnatural than telling someone that "God loves them, and that they need to repent and be saved". There's an idea that shifting the weight of perspective is compromising the message? Yet, if message is more important than the people who it supposed to save... what good is it? ? Is medicine more important than the patient? Is knowledge more important that a student?

I hope you see where I'm going with this. The general attitude towards evangelism is the idea of conformity, rather than idea of unanimous arrival of common understanding. I.E. Believe first... understand later. The problem is that when the basic concepts of the "belief" fall apart logically, all we have left is people holding on to dear life to an idea that is grounded in statements of faith, rather than statements of understanding that can be clearly explained without any adamant dogmatism.

If you pause and ask what does "accepting Jesus into your heart", or whatever cliche' that sounded good at the time... means... how can you answer it in a meaningful and clear way? When we say "talking to God, and God talking to us" what context should we provide outside of the apparent discrepancies as to how God chooses to operate today as opposed to OT times?