The worst evangelist
I came to know Jesus in one of the most unlikely of places. In direct contrast from many of my classmates, when I finished my freshman year of college at a Big Ten state school known for it’s party scene, I came to know Jesus.
In August of 2014 I stepped onto Indiana University's campus, free of my parent's home and my catholic upbringing, full of 18-year-old ego and ready to make a name for myself. Instead by the grace of God, I found a greater name to live for.
Since then I have had a burden on my heart for sharing Jesus with others who don’t yet know him. I knew that my relationship with Jesus had transformed my life for the better, and I wanted that for other people. For years, I have pursued those who don’t yet know Jesus with passion. I have intentionally organized my life around that heart, spending time with people who don’t yet know Jesus, asking questions to get to know their lives, and have spiritual conversations. I was prepared to see these people I had come to know and love, come to know Jesus and experience life transformation.
The only problem? I was no good at it. For years after coming to follow Jesus I spent so much time and energy trying to help people come to know Jesus, and rarely, if ever, saw people take steps to grow in their faith. In this time, I enrolled in seminary, took a job on staff at Calvary, leading our Young Adult Ministry. It turns out that seminary degrees, and working for a church aren’t actually the marks of what makes one an effective disciple-maker. So, even as I grew to be known as someone who helped influence our church to be more missional, few knew how little fruit I had seen from my efforts.
Now of course, some of that is because I may have been planting seeds in the lives of those around me that others would harvest, but honestly, even the seed planting felt limited. I felt like I fell short of Jesus’s Great Commission to “go forth and make disciples”.
Better Together
I think I’m not the only one who falls short on this. Sharing Jesus with those who don’t yet know Him can be difficult, full of uncertainty, and even scary. Whether it is our worry that we will be perceived as intolerant or judgmental (or for some of us, the fact that we know we are judgmental!), or maybe it’s just hard to know what to say. Or like, me, you’ve tried and without seeing much success, you’ve found yourself discouraged.
I came to a place where I felt like I was struggling with imposter syndrome, a feeling that though many looked to me as a disciple-maker, I was failing to do that effectively. This left me uncertain of what to do next moving forward.
That is, until something started to change.
Last fall our approach to ministry with Young Adults began to change in a way that would change my life, and maybe the life of our church as well.
God began to gather particular people within our Young Adult Ministry. A group of people who, like me, had a clear, vivid, and recent memory of what their lives looked like without Christ, and had hearts for seeing others transformed by Jesus’s love as they had been. We wanted God to do through us, what he had already done in us.
And as God gathered us together, something began to happen. First, as people came to join our community, they began to experience Jesus’s love in a new way. The Gospel became real to them in new ways, they grew in their faith, and because they had experienced the love of God within our community, they deeply loved our community and the people in it.
Our ministry began to become a place where when someone joined it, they began to know what it was like to know Jesus. They knew it because they experienced Jesus’s love in our community. Young adults today are a part of a community starved generation, particularly after 2020. So we love when people join our community because even though it means building trust with them, which would take time, we know it is what they need, and we want God to use us to help them fill that need, first for community and then for right relationship with God, through faith in Jesus.
But, while it was great for us to receive these new people, we knew there were so many others like them who needed community, but would never think to look to a church or a group of Christians for it.
So, we began to do something about that. We began to go, not alone, but together to places where we knew people were looking for community. And we began to see God work in incredible ways.
Our Love for One Another
We began to build deep relationships with people who didn’t yet know Jesus, we had the opportunity to practically live out the Gospel through serving, and speaking the truth of the Gospel in words to people who didn’t yet know Jesus. Suddenly we were, in smaller groups getting together and studying Scripture with people who never had, or hadn’t for years. We began to see people grow in their faith.
What changed? We stopped going alone. Instead of trying to take on the world as a lone ranger of evangelism, we went out in groups, as a community of people who had a shared mission. This seemed like such a small change, but it’s making a huge difference. It surprised me, but it probably shouldn’t have.
In John 13:35, Jesus tells his disciples that they will be able to be identified, not by their biblical knowledge, or by their leadership position, but by their love for one another. And so, as our community went together to build relationships with people who didn’t yet know Jesus, I believe people saw the way we loved one another as a reflection of Christs love and I believe that it's makes all the difference
What’s Next
Soon, what began as an organic process, grew into an intentional strategy. As we began to intentionally gather “families” (mid sized group of people who saw themselves as part of God’s family) to be missionaries and servants to specific groups of young adults. This was the next step in the Missional Community movement here at Calvary.
We officially launched Calvary’s first Missional Community last summer with 8 people who had the goal of being missionaries and servants to unchurched young adults. Since then, that community has multiplied and planted a second group.
This fall, Calvary hosted a pilot group where we trained others to launch Missional Communities of their own. These Missional Communities aren’t just meant to be another program, but a community where you can learn how to increasingly reorient your life around the mission of Jesus Chirst, and how to do that, not alone, but with a group of people. In a community where your love for one another is an apologetic for who Jesus is. In the words of my friend and one of our MC leaders, Megan Remer “Missional communities are where your passion meets God’s purpose”.
So, my challenge for you is to consider being a part of a Missional Community. For you, that might mean joining a Missional Community, where you can come alongside others who have experience living life on mission, helping a community you’re already a part of here at Calvary become a Missional Community, or even starting your own MC around reaching a people group you already have a passion for, so you can invite others to be on mission with you.
Because, imagine for a moment if we were a church that sent people out, as a community to partner with God in ensuring that every man, woman, and child within 5 miles of each of our campuses had a daily encounter with God. How would our church change? How would our community change? This is not the time for the lone ranger of evangelism, or the super evangelist up on the stage. It is time for the people of the pews to step up and into Jesus’s disciple-making movement.
