One of the issues the missional church must deal with (and any church for that matter) is how we are to faithfully pursue the conversion of those who are not “in Christ.” Do people belong before they believe (a well-worn conversation)? Is it our job to make Christianity attractive? What are we converting people to? There are many biblical episodes that can inform our discussion, but one I don’t hear used very often is how the Jesus’ first disciples came to follow him.
In the second half of John 1, we’re told of the first four who follow Christ. In that story it is striking how the commitment of the prospective followers is nurtured through an invitation to be with Jesus personally. In the words of the writer, there is an offer to “come and see.” Jesus extends this offer to Andrew and his companion, Andrew brings his brother Simon to Jesus to see, and Philip extends the invitation to the skeptical Nathanael. In each case these men base their commitment to Jesus on a personal encounter with him.
Today, Jesus does not live with us in bodily form, so we cannot invite people to “come and see Jesus” in a personal, bodily way. But the invitation for people to come and see is no less important and I believe we give this invitation in two primary ways. 1) We invite people to see Jesus in his body—us. The difficult thing with this is that we must be manifesting the true nature of our master in our actions. If we are not faithful to Christ then we invite people to see Jesus in our midst but do great damage because they do not really see him. So it is imperative that we live our lives—individually and corporately—in ever-increasing faithfulness to Christ. 2) We invite people to see Jesus in the Scriptures. The Word of God has tremendous power to allow people to have an encounter with Jesus (Isaiah 55:10-11 and Hebrews 4:12).
As the church we must invite people to “come and see” Jesus and allow him to transform them.
For some great reading in this same direction check out The Insider.
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For most of what I think, cf. Greg Boyd's sermon from Sunday entitled "Fishing with Jesus." I think it's largely relevant to this discussion, but that's probably because I try to make Boyd's sermons relevant to everything.
How do I get a link to his sermon?
check out the book "Reimagining Evangelism" for some other thoughts on the topic too... as for Boyd, why oh why don't they post when he preaches? I was up there for school, went to the church, and it wasn't him... it was still good... but come on... feed my consumerism someone!
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