What to Do With a Stranger

Gordon MacDonald
Monday, July 26, 2010

He came to our church one Sunday morning accompanied by his wife and children. A friend had recommended us, and they'd come for a visit. Since I'd never seen him before, I moved quickly to introduce myself and make sure they met several other people who could make them comfortable.  First impression: late thirties, a bit reserved, comfortable in his own skin, at ease when meeting new people.


Over the next few weeks, our paths crossed several times. He and his wife not only came to worship services, but they lingered in the Commons where people drank coffee and enjoyed extended conversation. It was clear that they were soon making friends.


Where were they in terms of faith? I had no idea, so I decided to find out by inviting him to breakfast at the Egg Shell Restaurant, my usual meeting place.

When we met there, I started with my favorite question. "Would you tell me the main events in your life story in three minutes?" The crazy question always elicits laughter, but is followed by a serious attempt to do just that: summarize life's highs and lows.

In this case, the lows involved a horrific childhood only barely survived. Highs: a wise decision in finding a good wife and a business that was doing quite well.

Spiritually, the present moment was one where there were questions about life's future direction. Thus the decision to try church for the first time.

Then he turned the question on me. "So what's your life story … in three minutes?" I swallowed my own medicine and offered it. He asked me about my job, and I described what was important to me and why I liked what I did. He appeared interested in everything I was saying, and I felt that he was measuring everything I said to see if it could fit into his experience.

There were one or two further breakfasts. I came to see him as a Nicodemus: a good man looking for a better grasp of what it means to have God in his life.

My early training in evangelism—had I applied it—would have led me to immediately ask my new friend "to accept Christ." As a college student, I had been one of those many who often fanned out across the campus using clever methods to pull people into a conversation intended to culminate in their saying a prayer that led to the promise of eternal life.

In those early days, I'd seen many pray the prayer, but I'd not seen many people stick with the implications of the prayer. When told afterwards that some form of church might be involved, that Bible study might come into play, that relationships of one kind or another might be expected, they tended to drift away. Free pass to heaven, no strings attached, was one thing; this version of eternal life with all its fine print was too costly. They said, in effect, you should have told me that stuff before.

So I didn't follow this protocol at the Egg Shell Restaurant. I chose another way. One morning I said to my stranger-become-friend: "I have a thought for you. Since you're so interested in what I do, I want you to consider giving me six weeks. Meet me at church each Sunday at 7:45 a.m. and shadow me until Gail and I leave the church at about 12:45. Sit next to me on the front row, eavesdrop on every conversation unless I have to ask you to step aside, follow my sermon with a copy of my notes that I'll give you. Ask me any question you can think of during the morning. Oh, and I might occasionally ask you to do some little thing for me like getting a drink or carrying a message to someone. Let me know if you'll do it."

A day or two later he emailed me and said he would.

So that's what happened for the next six weeks. Each Sunday we would begin by my praying for the day and our opportunity to serve people. Then our morning arrangement started. I suppose he saw and heard more than a few weird things. But he also saw some beautiful occurrences in the lives and words of people.

Maybe it was the fifth Sunday when I suggested that he say a prayer for me. Call it a test. "Oh, good grief, no," he said laughing. "I couldn't do that. Never with you anyway." I rolled my eyes, laughed with him, and did the prayer myself.

Periodically, I'd ask my friend what his impressions were, and in his answers, I saw that his vocabulary and his sensitivities were adjusting because of what he observed in the world of a pastor. It was fun to watch.

When the six weeks ended, he suggested that he continue our deal for a while longer. I agreed. So for several more months, he remained with Gail and me on the front row through two worship experiences.

His scope of observation increased. He noted Gail's efforts to encourage me throughout the morning. He became aware of the difference between those who were really seeking after God and those who simply came along for the ride. He watched some of us pray for the sick and the suffering, lay hands on those who needed a blessing, and intercede for those whose lives were ruptured by the cruelties of life in the larger world.

Throughout this time he (and his wife) became acquainted with others in the church. They began to accept invitations to get together with others. This happened because people saw him (and her) becoming involved in the church's interior life. Everyone simply assumed the two of them were followers of Christ and one with everyone else who claimed faith.

I never asked my friend if he'd yet given his life to Jesus. I just created the circumstances in which he began doing it: giving his life to Jesus, I mean. I have no idea when he (or his wife) completed the faith transaction. I just know that everything about these two wonderful people over a period of a year began to show the "Christian!" brand, in the best sense of that word.

Rather than making him jump through doctrinal and ceremonial hoops before saying he belonged, we declared from the get-go: be family with us, discover what we're about. At the center of it all, you'll findJesus.

There came times when he began to call certain people or certain situations to my attention and suggest what I might do. I thought that interesting. On some occasions I suggested he take care of whatever it was himself. He did.

In one sense his and his wife's view of the Christian life—my opinion—was not that of joining an organization but rather a choice to immerse themselves in the Jesus way, whatever that meant. They liked what they were learning; they were drawn to emulate certain people and attracted to a community of real, not perfect, people who all shared a similar struggle to be faithful to the Lord. A community that fits the description of Jesus, who said, "where two or three gather together in my name, I am there in the midst."

I was never conscious that I was implementing some evangelism method. But I suppose it was a method of sorts. It was evangelism by first belonging. Rather than making him jump through doctrinal and ceremonial hoops before saying he belonged, we declared from the get-go: be family with us, and in the process you'll discover what we're about, and you'll find what you're looking for in Jesus.

Some will say it's a new way of looking at the offer of salvation, but I think not. St. Patrick seemed to think this was the way to do things many centuries ago when he and his disciples set up camp adjacent to some Irish villages and simply lived a more attractive way than the folks in the older neighborhood. Soon the curious villagers were visiting Patrick and his people, and lingering longer and longer in Patrick's camp rather than returning to their own digs. In this simple way, the love of Christ lived in community won them. Result: the evangelization of Ireland.

In the tradition of Christianity that I was raised in, we used to bring people to Christ through direct evangelism using barely disguised sales techniques. We participated in mass evangelism meetings and saw people flow forward in droves. But those were days when many in our population had a general awareness of biblical thought and a notion of God and the sin that separated us all. The all-important "decision for Christ" was everything, and almost all energies were expended convincing someone to make that climactic decision, usually in the form of a sinner's prayer.

I'm reluctant to be foolishly critical about the old processes. In their time they worked impressively … at least in certain places. But it was a gospel mainly cloaked in words and proposition, and the results lately aren't as impressive. Now we have a large and younger population that has no idea what the Bible says, no idea what it means to intersect with an invisible God, no idea what sin means, no idea how one could ever live a life following Someone last seen 2,000 years ago. It's not easy to inform them in a 15-minute presentation. The words are hollow unless authenticated by a process in which the saving love of Christ is lived out by people in genuine community.

Today's popular, churchless religion is not about sin but rather about disorders, addictions, attachment problems, and social maladies. Today society's pastors are not people in the pulpit but advice-givers like Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Judge Judy. Today's version of abundant life is not about discipline, service, worship, and devotion, but medications, stuff, and Caribbean cruises.

One more bothersome thing. To the extent that our movement still knows how to call people to declare themselves to follow Jesus as Lord and Savior, we can be glad. But what we seem to be discovering is that we aren't moving that many people past the initial declaration and into what might be called a growing state of Christian maturity.

I wonder what the message is if a person has been doing church for ten years and shows no evidence of spiritual development (Christlikeness) beyond the first year.

And—here it gets sticky—why are church researchers discovering that those who do get into the flow of spiritual maturation often find the church less than useful in spurring on their growth? Why do they end up leaving the church? Something wrong here?

Suggestion: something could be wrong with the way we talk "gospel" and with the way we're doing church. That's a sweeping comment or two, I admit. But I think we'll agree, there's something to think about here.

The letter St. Paul wrote to the Colossians suggests that he shared this present concern. Writing to people he'd never met, he urged them to avoid false religious teaching (on the inside) and debauched life (on the outside).

His challenge: "be rooted, built up, and strengthened in the Lord." And he adds: "abound in thanksgiving." This seems a strange addition—about thanksgiving—until you note over in the Roman letter that honoring and thanking God are the twin pillars of anyone's relationship with the Creator. For that matter our relationship with anyone.

The fact is that the Colossians appear not to have sustained a life of Christian maturity. Colossae and Laodicea were sister villages, and it's fairly safe to surmise that the congregations in both towns had similar problems. Remember that Revelation 3 tells us that Laodicea became lukewarm, meaning a paucity of Christian maturity.

The man who shared a year of Sundays with me was never taught that faith's only big event was a moment of decision. Because he was "romanced" into faith by the hospitality of the community, he saw the notion of being a Christian as that of continuous growth in mind and lifestyle—as Paul once wished for the Colossians.

When it is all said and done, my friend has not only accepted Jesus Christ in this process, but he has also accepted Jesus' people … and, in addition, Christ's call to go forth and serve in the world in the name of Jesus. I add this third idea because it's biblical and because at this very moment of writing, my friend and his family are headed for a month in Central Africa where they will work in an orphanage.

In October of this year, a large crowd of Christian influencers will gather in Cape Town, South Africa, for the latest chapter of a 50-year conversation that comes under the name of Lausanne. Their agenda, very simply put: how can the present world hear the gospel?

While I will not be among those in attendance, I can wish that somebody will ask some edgy questions.

What do you do, for example, about a Christian movement—at least in the western world—that collectively appears less than attractive to the people of the larger world? What did the first Christian generations know about loving one another and loving the stranger that made their sense of the gospel so irresistible?

What can be done to reframe the substance of the gospel so that it includes the invitation to a rich and maturing life marked by the evidences (or fruits) of the Holy Spirit? My concern for a conference on evangelism is that it not ignore the process that follows so-called conversion and leads to uncontested change. Let's not have a conference on "weddings" that ignores the challenge of "marriage."

How can western people—seduced by the destructiveness of extreme individualism—be awakened to the power of community wherein people discover the genius of life together? Is it not time to explore what it means to stop saying, "Jesus spoke to me," and rather say, "Jesus spoke to us"?

Some of the most startling words St. Paul ever wrote were, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it is the power of God unto salvation" (or uncontested life-change). I would like to share Paul's brimming confidence. But I'm struggling at the present moment because I think we may have abandoned those elements that made the gospel so powerful in his time.

I hope that Lausanne, Cape Town, will face these kinds of questions.

In the few years since my friend and I had that first breakfast at the Egg Shell, I have seen in him and his family what I believe the gospel was designed by God to do in, potentially, every life. He long ago became an "unstranger." He is my son in faith, my brother in the Lord, my fellow citizen in the glorious kingdom.

A while ago he drove me to the airport. And when he said goodbye, he prayed for me.