Evandalism

This video was shown to me a few... well I guess it was months ago, now. It has bothered me enough over time that I believe it's worthy of a blog post. It's from our friends at The Way of the Master. It’s a spoof on Rob Bell’s “Bullhorn”.

Now, I don’t know what you think about it but if you’ve seen Bullhorn, you might think like me. It’s so frustrating to hear this sort of approach to evangelism—totally disregarding people’s spiritual journey’s and cheapening them down to either a ticket to heaven or a walk off a cliff and nothing in between. Why do we make the gospel, the good news, into such bad news? I can’t help but feel that the viewpoint represented in the video above has hijacked the gospel of Jesus and has vandalized the sacred mission of beauty and peace from which evangelism should never be separated. Yes, there should be urgency to this mission. But in the end, the gospel that’s only about getting people out of hell and into heaven—the gospel that has everything to do with knowing where you’re going when you die and nothing to do with your hopes, dreams, and fears right here and now—isn’t the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. It’s not the good news that God hasn’t given up on the world and has plans to take up residence here. I consider myself an evangelist and I plan on being one not by starting with how evil people are but with how good the world is, how much God loves it, and how much he loves his people. But maybe I'm just being "unreasonable."