Early this week I received a despondent email from a woman who lives out of state. She knows a teenage boy that lives in our area. He is about to graduate from high school, hopes to go to college to study technology (though his financial situation may make it difficult), and recently fathered a child. He has no transportation, except unreliable friends. He has little support from home, and even less wisdom on how to be a father to a little boy with whom the state may allow him infrequent interaction and contact. He has little direction, few resources (monetarily, emotionally, and spiritually), and minimal hope. Yet, this woman cares for him desperately. So she turned to us. After our first phone conversation and an email that I sent her, she sent me this response. I have been thinking about it since the moment it hit my ‘inbox’.
“Thanks for the quick response. I spoke with Johnny yesterday and learned that in addition to transportation he has a need to complete 45 hours of community service to graduate at the end of the month. I gave him your number and suggested he call. He said that would be ok as long as he did not have to do any ‘god stuff’. I told him that if he respected your beliefs you would respect his. Not sure what his are but I don’t think he has been in many churches. Hopefully you will have a task for him. What a wonderful way to draw him into a larger community….”
Her response was simple, but profound. I am not sure whether she is a Christian or not, but she has called upon the church to reach out to a young man in dire straights, on the margins of society and at the brink of being pushed to further despair and disenfranchisement. Yet, they have turned to the church, to the redemptive community of hope and new creation. She laments his marginalization in society by noting his need to be drawn into a larger community. Now, we have the chance to “draw [Johnny] into a larger community,” the community of faith. Here, he can develop redemptive relationships, watch to the gospel through the lives of those who empty themselves for him, and learn to be a father from men who mentor under their Heavenly Father. (I have been amazed at the outpouring of support from our church. I sent an email to a small group of people from our community of faith. Within a couple of hours, seven men, from a college student to a grandfather, had told me that they would do whatever they can to help this young man.)
Maybe that is what evangelism needs to be today, the missional work of the redeemed drawing others into redemptive relationships as we ask them to travel with us on the journey of life and faith. Our propositions of faith are meaningless and empty unless we bear witness to the living Lord through our lives. People need to be drawn into the community of faith, to see and experience how we embody the gospel story, to be enculturated into the faith through immersion into our family, to learn our language through the living classroom of redemptive relationship. May God give us the grace to empty our lives for Johnny and see others like him in the world.
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