Three Images for Evangelism (the farmer)

So in my last post, I talked about the first image that helps us understand evangelism, the fisherman. Now I wanted to talk about the second image, the farmer.

The farmer is a helpful image for evangelism, namely for his patience. The farmer understands the delicate balance between diligence and patience necessary for a seed to grow. So, with faithful regularity, the farmer waters the seed but she knows that too much poking and proding will usually do more to jeoperdize its grow than help it.

The farmers primary tool is, obviously, the seed. Our seed is the Gospel (or "Good News"). Just like the seed, the Gospel has all the potential it needs to grow inherently built into it. Christians need not "oversell" the Gospel as if we were some used car salesman trying to dupe some moron into buying a lemon. No, we should have more confidence in our message than that. The truth is that, if the Gospel is displayed and demonstrated as purely and truely as it was intended by God, it will have no problem bearing fruit. God told us in Isaiah that his Word never returns to him without accomplishing the purpose he intended for it. So, like the farmer, lets go out and diligently "plant" the Gospel in peoples' hearts and minds by demonstrating the beauty of it in our lives. Our relationships and growing friendships with those around us is the "water" the Gospel needs to grow. And if we are patient and diligent, we will in time see a harvest in the world around us.

Praise be to God for these three images! They are far to clever to have come from me alone. I am encouraged and informed by them even as I write about them - I hope you are as well. This is enough for now, I'll write more about the third images (the carpenter) soon. Till then, remember the fisher and the farmer as you live your life today.

Three Images for Evangelism (the fisherman)

Of all the concepts and terms in Christian Spirituality that get misused, abused, and misunderstood, I'd have to put my money on 'evangelism' being at the top of that list. I don't have the first delusion that I'd be able to dispell all of the misunderstanding surrounding this very volitile word but I've been thinking lately about some useful images that might help convey the true meaning of what evangelism is as best I understand it.

The images I was thinking of are the fisherman, the farmer, and the carpenter. Each of them has a method to what they do that illustrates an important point about evangelism. They each also have a primary tool that we will use as well, in a metaphorical sense. And it probably goes without saying that all I've really done is shamelessly steal images that Jesus used in his teachings 2000 years ago.

First, the fisherman. What I like about the fisherman is that he (or she) is smart enough to know that fish are not prone to simply jump into his boat without him making an effort to draw them in. The fisherman has to go where the fish are because it simply will not happen the other way around. The fisherman's primary tool is the net which he casts out and then draws back in. Whatever fish happen upon the net as its being drawn back in are drawn in with it.

Much like the fisherman, the church will starve to death if it expects the majority of people that are not yet Christian to suddenly realize their need and show up at our door. There are cases where this happens but it remains a faulty assumption. Much like a fisherman's net, we use relationship, a network of friendships, to draw people into Christian community where they can see the Gospel at work in peoples' lives.

I hope to write more before the weekend about the next two images, the farmer and the carpenter. But until then, please post your thoughts on this first image, I would really appreciate your input. This is a series of images I hope to develop into a helpful tool for teaching effective evangelism.