My Adventures with God

Ch 18: Plus all the usual methods.

Not everything we did was new. We tried the usual evangelistic methods as well.

Evangelistic Missions with a special round of meetings and activities, usually involving a guest missioner was one. It had been done, we were told many times in the parish. The congregation enjoyed these missions, which were, we were told with some emphasis, for the existing congregants, not for outsiders. The idea was, so we were informed, to re-vitalise the members.

We did do some of these, because re-vitalising is good. We did more aimed at outsiders because reaching people who have drifted away from God or who have never understood his call for them to come to him through his son is even better.

One of the first sort actually came to us. An elderly (he was actually only 74 which does not seem so 'elderly' now!) member of a congregation at the other end of the diocese contacted me. His story was that he had been a faithful Anglican all his life. He had worked hard all his adult life for “the church” and had been on vestry and other church committees. Then quite recently he had discovered a new personal relationship with Jesus. Looking back he realised that although he had gone through life thinking he was a good Christian, he had actually never taken the final step to actually become a Christian. He was now dedicating himself to going around churches in the diocese (with the bishop's blessing) telling his story.

I invited him to come. He stayed with us in the rectory, and spoke at church. He spoke simply but movingly. To those who had ears he was calling people to take the step from “churchianity” to Christianity. The elderly Lang Lang congregation heard him out with cold politeness. The Koo-wee-rup congregation heard and believed. When he made his call for people who, like him had been involved with church but now wanted to give their hearts completely to God through Christ the entire congregation leapt to their feet.

There were going to be difficult times ahead involving some of the Koo-wee-rup congregation but despite this I can say that there was a change in that church from this moment of re-commitment.

For reaching out to the general community missions were a bit of a failure. We tried them. We had a certain amount of success. Some ministers would have been delighted with that amount of success. However we found other means were far more successful.

One problem we faced I will flag for the benefit of others: Beware the gatekeepers. There are, in all social settings, people who by one means or another facilitate access for some people and deny access to others. Sometimes obviously, sometimes in very subtle ways. They are known as “gate keepers”.

If you are working to bring people to believe in Jesus and then become part of an existing community of believers you really need to beware of that community's gatekeepers. If they are being used by God they may be tremendous in facilitating the entry of tentative new believers. If they are dominated by their human nature they will hinder, and likely completely frustrate your efforts.

Let me give you some examples.

First a positive. Later in the 1980's while on holidays I visited an Anglican church in the Sydney suburb of St. Ives. It had a name for being a dynamic church. I had to park a little way off down the street. Almost as soon as I got out of the car I was gripped by an inexplicable sense of excitement. I also saw people streaming into the church building and had that affirming feeling of being part of something. The official welcomers at the church door impressed me. But I had hardly sat down with my children when the girl seated in front turned round and engaged them all in friendly conversation, and made them feel truly welcome. I made a habit of visiting churches whenever I was on holidays but I had never encountered anything which would make me want to join a congregation as much as that experience. That church understood about effective, Holy Spirit motivated gatekeepers.

The next two examples are negative, and from my church at Lang Lang.

I said we did do some evangelistic missions aimed primarily at outsiders. As one of these was about to take place I encouraged a woman who had recently come to faith in Jesus to attend the meeting, which was being held in the civic hall. I had thought that a neutral location in the community hall, rather than in the church or our own hall would be more attractive, or at least less threatening to people outside the small regular congregation. I was wrong.

The programme went well, and was well attended by some sections of the community. But the new convert did not come. I asked her why not. Her reply was this. “I did come. I got as far as the glass doors to the hall. Then I looked through them and saw who was there and I knew I could not go in with those people, so I went home again.”

Gatekeepers. She saw the gatekeepers of my congregation. She knew them and knew they knew her. They didn't have to say a word to her, they possibly never even saw her hesitate outside the glass doors. Gatekeepers get to be what they are by being very good at it, they have a vast array of social skills and psychological weapons to achieve their purpose. They can be ever so subtle. You may not pick what they are doing. Especially since you may not understand the criteria on which they will facilitate entry to the group for some people, be neutral to some, and then bar entry to others. So you may be able to add some people to your congregation and so think “I have no gatekeepers to worry about” not realising that some little “lambs” who are infinitely precious to Jesus are being turned away by them!

Of course some, possibly driven by desperation to find peace with God, will try so hard to come to church that less subtle methods are required by the gatekeepers.

This incident is from a slightly later time when our work in the local high school was having results. A young teenage girl came to the Lang Lang church. It is a small town, and Jan the churchwarden who was always on “welcoming” duty knew the girl, at least by reputation. But this girl, whatever the truth of the gossip about her morals, had come to some of our meetings at the high school and had now come to church looking for God.

It was a few minutes before the service. I was at the front of the church when I glimpsed her approaching Jan at the back to receive the necessary hymn and prayer books. I started down the isle straight away to greet her. I was just close enough to see Jan block the entrance to the church with her arms folded aggressively in front of her. Then I heard her say: “Well cheek of you coming here – wonder the church doesn't fall down!”. The girl turned and fled before I could do anything. She never came back.

And Jesus said: “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble ...” !!!!

So how to deal with your gatekeepers. I always find prayer is 90% of it. Prayer for the gatekeepers – they are indeed being used by the devil – but so is every one of us the moment we stop giving every moment over to God – so pray for their deliverance. Pray for God to thwart their moves. What they are doing is wrong. They may reject God's entreaties and chose to indulge their human instincts. They need to be stopped or circumvented. Pray for God to use a bit of his power to right the wrongs. Pray for God's protection for the people he wants to add to his community. Pray for wisdom: sometimes the quickest way through an obstacle is to go around it!

In following blogs I will describe a number of ways God provided for us to by-pass Jan and her fellow gatekeepers at Lang Lang.

Going door-to-door is another standard evangelistic method. On the whole I don't think it works very well, but we did try it with some success.

I must say I didn't just do blind calls. Well not successfully at any rate. Where it worked I had prayed about who and when to visit.

One example: I prayed every day about what to do that day. This particular time I felt I should door-knock in one section of the town. One woman opened the door and asked me in. She then burst into tears and told me that I was an answer to her prayer. She said she had been a keen Christian as a teenager, but had drifted away. The years had slipped by and she now had teenage daughters of her own. She had just been praying and asking God to help her find a way back to him.

This woman, Helen, was the one who, seeing the gatekeepers, felt she could not enter the hall where our evangelistic meeting was being held. I may have been sent in answer to her prayers, but over time we saw how much she was also sent to us as an answer to prayers we hadn't even known we needed to pray at that stage! (There is an old saying in praise of efficiency: “two birds with one stone” It continually seems to me as I see God at work that he would think that even getting two birds with one stone was monstrously inefficient!)