The Results Of Budge's Evangelistic Efforts

[N/A Gone]

[quote name='Budge' post='1079666' date='Sep 29 2006, 07:29 PM']
Ive already read Karl Keatings Catholicism Vs. Fundamentalism, I doubt a book of Catholic converts dicussing how the smells and bells, and "history" led them in is going to change my mind....
[/quote]

Ma'am,
I have read both. Currie is a former fundamentalist who still has respect and love for his breathen. He has the perspective that his faith grew into catholicism. He didnt convert, he reconciled. It is not like Keating, who was never(**to my knowledge) a fundi. It is an enjoyable and short read. And honestly, I would be interested to see what you thought of it. I respect you too much to suggest that reading a book with covert you, or save your soul(**whatever lingo we are using today) I believe you have a valid faith in your theology and I enjoy dialogue.but you do have an unjustified scorn for catholicism.

[cathoholic_anonymous]

Lifestyle evangelism does work, and I have a couple of stories about it that I want to share here.

My university's Christian Union (a club that is open to Christians of all denominations but has a heady evangelical flavour) states that its main goal is 'to make Jesus Christ known to students in Cambridge'. When I saw that mission statement at the Societies' Fair, I agreed with it at once and signed up for the CU. Then I discovered that 'making Jesus Christ known to students in Cambridge' involves staging evangelistic talks and lectures that are suitable for three-year-olds in terms of their academic content, and heckling people to go to these talks. I use 'heckling' for a reason. Members of the CU stand outside our college's dining hall on the evening when there is to be a talk and collar people as they come out from dinner. "Would you like to attend a talk? Free food and drinks!"

"No, thanks. I'm busy."

"It won't take long! Just forty-five minutes, not even that..."

The CU plasters the college with posters advertising these talks and sends out e-mails about them to all the students, so there really is no need to use this tactic. Now the only people who come to the talks are the ones who were too polite or too nervous to stand their ground on the cafeteria steps. A large portion of the college is now very hostile towards the CU. They see us as pushy and - thanks to the intellectual calibre of the talks - stupid.

Compare this to the methods of Warwick University's Christian Union. They also have lots of evangelistic talks and so on. They give out free Bibles and other books at the start of term, too. But one of my friends who goes to Warwick tells me that they also keep a box outside their president's door. If you or anyone you know is having a hard time, Christian or not, you write their name on a slip of paper and put it in the box. That person will be prayed for and also receive a gentle offer of practical help. (If you get the flu, for example, members of the CU are willing to take care of a few things for you while you're ill - doing your laundry, collecting your lecture notes and assignments, etc.) They don't use these opportunities to pass out a bushel of tracts, as a ream of Christian reading material (or reading material of any kind) is probably not what you want when your temperature is rocketing. They just help you for the sake of helping you. Unsurprisingly, they get a much bigger turn-out at their evangelistic talks than we do at ours. People are more likely to respond to a message if they can see it being lived out in front of them. This is Jesus alive, not Jesus on paper.

I've had the same experience with evangelism on an Internet forum for teenagers with autistic spectrum disorders. (I'm also a teen with an ASD - I helped to establish the forum in 2004.) Over the past two years, I've had in-depth conversations about faith in general and Christianity in particular with at least twenty different people. One fourteen-year-old girl, formerly an agnostic, became a Christian over the course of one of our MSN chats. (She has no particular denomination at the moment and can't go to church because her disability means that it's difficult for her to leave home unaccompanied - but at least she prays now.) One of my closest friends from that forum, aged twenty, is migrating from an evangelical church to a Catholic one. A seventeen-year-old Wiccan wrote to me to say that she was scared of becoming a Christian but she couldn't stop thinking about the Beatitudes. Could I help her? A fourteen-year-old Jewish girl came to me wanting to know more about Christianity. There have been many others.

At the moment I'm in regular contact with a boy who seems like a hardcore atheist. He's been on the brink of suicide this past week, but he is slowly responding to the Gospel - only it's not a gospel that the Christians on the forum are presenting in words. We're just being kind to him. He's not had much kindness in his life, and it shows. As I do whenever I give advice or write a message of support, I sign myself off with a quiet, unobtrusive 'I'm praying for you'. Sooner or later, that one sentence causes an e-mail to turn up in my private inbox, asking questions about my beliefs.

This method works. It works because it isn't easy for me to convey the depths of my faith in poor stumbling words. I can't do justice to the Gospel unless I move out of the way, make myself very small, and let Jesus take my place at the computer keyboard whenever I use that forum. If you do your best to live what you believe rather than talking about it, the Holy Spirit has a lot more room to breathe.

Edited September 30, 2006 by Cathoholic Anonymous

[Guest T-Bone]

[quote name='Budge' post='1079128' date='Sep 29 2006, 10:37 AM']
Mary Kathyrn,

While you are a nice lady, I am sad to see you taking the usual gambits out of the Catholic apologist handbook...

1. Claiming that everyone who leaves Rome is angry or has psychological deficients. I was well liked and had a good position at last Catholic Church. [b]I left because I left the fool's gold for the REAL THING, a relationship with Jesus Christ.
[/b]

[/quote]

So the UU "church" was the "REAL THING"? Or were you just confused over what the "REAL THING" was?

[avemaria40]

BTW, I know a bunch of Evangelical Christians who would rather LIVE their faith rather than pass out tracts and pester people about what they believe. People don't like it when someone treats them like a five-year-old because they haven't heard the gospel or being pestered for a tract when they clearly do not want one. There is A LOT to be said for living through actions rather than annoying people.

[Budge]

[quote]BTW, I know a bunch of Evangelical Christians who would rather LIVE their faith rather than pass out tracts and pester people about what they believe.[/quote]

If they refuse to past out tracts or ask people if they are born again, they have fallen into lukewarmness.

I know lots of unbelievers, and IRL I get along quite fine with them, but one has to OPEN ones mouth about the gospel, scripture and JESUS to get the message out there.

[avemaria40]

Excuse me, you don't know my friends very well if you are calling them lukewarm. Like I said, people are attracted more to someone who lives their faith rather than talks about it.


What do you think about Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott? They didn't spend time passing out tracts, they lived their faith but did not spend every moment wearing someone down about whether they believed and they both gave their lives for Christ when they were shot down at Columbine.

[dUSt]

I think passing out tracts is the reason why people reject Christianity in today's world. The tract passer-outers have turned a beautiful faith in Jesus Christ into something to be avoided. They have forced people to treat Christians as they would a telemarketer.

[CatholicCid]

They will know we are Christians by our Love.
Actions speak louder than words and tracts.

[bball33]

[quote name='CatholicCid' post='1082934' date='Oct 3 2006, 11:58 AM']
They will know we are Christians by our Love.
Actions speak louder than words and tracts.
[/quote]

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='dUSt' post='1082856' date='Oct 3 2006, 12:19 PM']
I think passing out tracts is the reason why people reject Christianity in today's world. The tract passer-outers have turned a beautiful faith in Jesus Christ into something to be avoided. They have forced people to treat Christians as they would a telemarketer.
[/quote]
Exactly.

In order to bring others to Christ, we must draw them into personal intimacy with Jesus Christ.

Had Budge read Catechesi Tradendae, to which I linked him, rather than just dismissing it as Vaticanese, he would have read the words of Pope John Paul the Great on the subject: "Accordingly, the definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity." -CT 5

[thessalonian]

[quote name='dUSt' post='1082856' date='Oct 3 2006, 11:19 AM']
I think passing out tracts is the reason why people reject Christianity in today's world. The tract passer-outers have turned a beautiful faith in Jesus Christ into something to be avoided. They have forced people to treat Christians as they would a telemarketer.
[/quote]


I have to disagree that tract passing out is the problem. St. Francis De Sales converted a whole town of Calvinists with tracts. To say that giving someone a little pamphlet with scripture on it is bad is saying the scripture is bad. Scripture cuts to the heart and that's why people reject it.

Further I don't think we should blame tracts for people rejecting and scorning Christianity. Do we blame Stephen that the Jews rejected Christinity because he used harsh words and stoned him. There is so much sin in the world that when people are confronted with Jesus they howl.

I agree that our actions must fit our message but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

Edited October 3, 2006 by thessalonian

[homeschoolmom]

I'm sure we can agree that when people feel that they are being sold something or that the tract-giver is just looking to add numbers, they are less likely to listen than when they believe the tract-giver really cares about them...

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='thessalonian' post='1083042' date='Oct 3 2006, 02:28 PM']
I have to disagree that tract passing out is the problem. St. Francis De Sales converted a whole town of Calvinists with tracts. To say that giving someone a little pamphlet with scripture on it is bad is saying the scripture is bad. Scripture cuts to the heart and that's why people reject it.

Further I don't think we should blame tracts for people rejecting and scorning Christianity. Do we blame Stephen that the Jews rejected Christinity because he used harsh words and stoned him. There is so much sin in the world that when people are confronted with Jesus they howl.

I agree that our actions must fit our message but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
[/quote]
Tracts can accomplish some things, but not when they're dealt out with no more personal effort than a telemarketer. I think that was dUSt's point. It's one thing to enter into a good conversation with a person, to show them Christ, to tell them about Him, and then to give them some reading material. That's perfectly fine. It's a totally different thing to hand out a bottle of cold water and a tract outside a baseball game and leave it at that. I'm certain that St. Francis de Sales, the very personable man that he was, did the former and not the latter.

[thessalonian]

Actually he left them at night on their doorsteps. Most certainly I think the personal approach is best but I do not condemn just handing someone something to read either and let the spirit of God work in their hearts.

[avemaria40]

I don't either, I don't condemn passing out literature. What I have a problem with is if someone offers a person a tract, the person says no, and they get bugged over and over again to take the tract. It's annoying and fruitless.

Everyone has a different style of ministry and I don't think it's fair when people get judged for being lukewarm simply because passing out tracts is not their style or their way of serving God.

[thessalonian]

I agree that not everyone is called to do it.

[Guest T-Bone]

The new Jack Chick (tm) tract:

Those people who do not pass out Chick (tm) tracts are doomed to Hell.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='avemaria40' post='1083183' date='Oct 3 2006, 05:09 PM']
and they get bugged over and over again to take the tract.
[/quote]
I read that as "they get budged over and over again..."

[homeschoolmom]