This is the third and final part of a small series looking at lessons I’ve learnt from being on both sides of the door-to-door experience. The first part looked at my responses to being the recipient of the service. The second part looked at what I was like when I did door-to-door work for Jesus and learn that it’s not about method, technique and being slick, but about caring for people.
In the two stories I related both in my own personal experience of delivering door-to-door service and in being the recipient I contrasted two styles. One style took a personal approach more geared on building relationships and looking to relate to people. The second style was driven by tangible results of people taking up the offer by the power of the method and so being able to record another customer satisfied with a new product.
I don’t mean to be derogatory to the salesman approach. I just don’t think it has a place in the life of the church or when you’re looking to reach people to contribute to something of worth.
I also think that slavishly viewing things like evangelism through a sales approach does damage to the Body, rather than helps it to grow. People are not commodities to be viewed in clinical terms as to whether they’ve crossed a line or not. It is no wonder that this approach to evangelism ends up with professional evangelists doing the work of getting people over the line, and the people ticked on the box of membership and left to it.
I remain more convinced as life goes by that the gifts in the Body of Christ are given so that we can all be brought up into the full maturity of Christ-likeness. That means to me that my aim is be like Christ. If I have a focus of pastoral care I exercise that, but also engender it in my brothers and sisters. They won’t necessarily have the gift, but they’ll certainly grow in their sensitivity to pastoral care, because of me not only exercising the gift, but encouraging others to grow in Christ in that way.
What that does is it empowers all parts of the Body of Christ not just to exercise their gift, but realise the effect it has on their brothers and sisters in helping them grow more like Christ.
That’s been evident in my life. I am not naturally inclined for evangelistic stuff, so it was only knocking about with people who were passionate about evangelism that this element of Christlikeness was awakened in me. In the case of being with the partner in the last entry’s story, her gifts of compassion and mercy were endearing to me. I wanted to grow in that way as well.
I came across people who were gifted in helps and so had a desire to grow in that way as I saw how Jesus was made manifest in that lifestyle. Now does that mean it’s my gifting? Yes and no. It’s not my strength, it’s not the area that drives me most and is my passion. Yet my exposure to it and engagement in it makes me all the more sensitive to it and desirous to encourage it in others as well as myself.
That only happens as each part of the Body is functioning as it should. That also means the life of the church cannot afford to be lopsided preferring certain gifts to others. The Body is built only when we appreciate, acknowledge and are literally edified because each is using their gift as they should and we benefit from that mutually and desire to see Christ fulfilled in each of us.
The practices of some church groups don’t seem to foster that, especially when we fall into a mentality of looking to ‘ordained’ folk to do that stuff, while we chip in with the tithes and an encouraging word from time to time. As we’ve all been called into the ministry of reconciliation, and as we’ve all been called the beloved of God, then we’re all ordained to be about the business of being the Body of Christ.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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