The strict social distancing rules were just beginning to abate, but children were still barred from public spaces. Our family’s move to a different house with a big yard in another part of town could not have come soon enough, and I was grateful to learn that there were several families with young kids in our new neighborhood.
While walking our dog in one night, I met Roula and Will*. They lived across the street from us in one of the very big houses in the fancy compound. Their children were near the ages of my two kids, and I was grateful to learn that they were willing to let them play with my kids. After four months of online learning and being confined to only our house and occasional rides in the car, my kids’ mental health was visibly suffering. The one thing they needed –playtime with other children — was the one thing we had been forbidden to give them.
The next evening, we went over to the fancy compound and let our kids play outside with Roula and Will’s children. It was the first time I had seen my son laugh uncontrollably in months, and my husband and I were relieved to commiserate with Roula, Will, and other parents in the compound about the hardships we had been facing as a result of the pandemic restrictions.
As we chatted more in the following weeks, we learned that nearly all the families in their compound shared a common faith. They all were faithful to an Eastern religion and were quite evangelistic in sharing their beliefs. After several weeks, our neighbors invited us to participate in an outdoor social group where they would talk about virtuous topics such as generosity using sacred texts from many different religions. As much as I appreciated the invitation and was willing to attend, I did not feel particularly inclined to participate in an event that might attract so many people.
Throughout the hot summer, Roula and Will’s children would come over to our house, and my kids would go play at theirs as well. Their invitations to attend religion classes and studies continued, and I always politely declined primarily because of schedule conflicts as those days were packed full of Zoom calls and a myriad of online meetings. Nevertheless, I was so grateful to have another mom to talk to about some of the painful experiences of our kids having to be so secluded and the country-wide prohibitions from taking them on outings to the mall or pool.
When the academic year started up again, children were in and out of school depending on the number covid cases in our area. Schedules were unpredictable, and the madness of directing kids through online learning brought new challenges and frustrations. I would still see Roula and Will in our neighborhood, but their invitations for tea ceased. Likewise, they also politely declined our invitations to stop by and chat. I missed talking with another mom who perfectly understood the many unique challenges of parenting in our context, but Roula was no longer available.
The correlation between my disinterest in Roula’s evangelistic efforts and the cessation of her friendship was not mere coincidence. She had shaken the dust from her feet and moved on to other neighbors. At a time when I needed friendship and camaraderie with another mom, it was painful to realize that Roula’s availability was contingent upon my receptivity to her religious invitations. But perhaps more painful than this realization was the eventual epiphany that I had been playing by the same rulebook.
In many evangelistic trainings for cross-cultural ministry, we are taught to be on the lookout for a person who is sensitive or receptive to the gospel. The hope is that this person will eventually believe in Jesus as savior and have such joy for their faith that they will share it with others who will also believe. However, if this person stops showing receptivity or is not interested in studying scripture, the evangelistic training instructs us to keep looking for others who might believe.
While this training is based on scripture and the instructions given to the disciples when Jesus sent them out, it does not account for power and socioeconomic differentials that are often features of cross-cultural ministry for Westerners. While we may successfully dress and sound like our host culture, there is no denying the socioeconomic disparities that are often present just by nature of our citizenship. Nevertheless, we are instructed to share with them and report back to organizational structures and donors on the results of our strategies and any data that could indicate how successful or “fruitful” our efforts have been.
A year later, Roula and Will moved back to their home country in Europe. As the pandemic restrictions abated and life became a bit more normal, we became acquainted with other families in our neighborhood who shared Roula and Will’s faith. I learned much more about their beliefs and community, and I was truly grateful to have such kind and gracious people as neighbors.
Getting closer to them, though, I could see the interworking of their outreach strategies. They would strike up friendships with people in the neighborhood and invite their kids to come over and play soccer. But if there was no interest in participating in the religion classes, the invitations ceased.
After sitting in on one of their kids’ English classes, I learned that they would document the names and attendance of people in their classes and events in order to report them back to their organizational headquarters in anticipation of continued funding for their endeavors. Unsurprisingly, neither the children nor the adults taking part in these events were aware of this information being documented anywhere.
Perhaps none of this would have been so disturbing if it had not been so convictingly familiar. When it dawned on me that my own name and those of my family were likely documented somewhere in the archives of this religious database, I was a bit disturbed.
But I became extremely uncomfortable when, a year later, my own sending organization introduced a tracking database to log our contacts, conversations, and gospel shares. After all, none of us was asking for consent to document and log our conversations with one another. With such systems in place, none of us could know that our names and responses to evangelistic efforts might be used to convince religious donors that their contributions were being well-spent.
Aside from the ethically questionable tactics of logging evangelistic encounters, there is the relational aspect of these strategies. When I realized how transactional my friendship with Roula had been, it was quite heartbreaking to me. At a time in my life when I desperately wanted a face-to-face friend to commiserate the plight of our bizarre situation, I became an outreach project.
To add an extra layer of reality to the complex situation, Roula and her husband were not only wealthier than our family; they also enjoyed surprisingly easy access to power structures within our host country. Gaining some perspective on the quantifiable disparities in our lives helped me to better understand how some of the people I live and work among might see me.
I still have a lot of conflicted feelings about some of the more widely used evangelistic practices in current cross-cultural ministry, but I am forever grateful for the experience of knowing Roula and her family. Despite how painful that season was, I learned some powerful lessons. Knowing what it feels like to be on the receiving end of evangelism has made me continuously ask the question, “How would I feel if someone were approaching me in this way?” This is the way Jesus instructed us to live – to treat others in the way that we want to be treated.
As we develop strategies and methods for how to share truth and love with people, we need to get honest with ourselves and ask the hard questions that deserve answers. What if someone who was in a position of greater wealth, education, and power were doing exactly this same thing to me? What if they were preaching something that I did not believe and did not agree with in hopes that I would change? Would this type of direction feel offensive or condescending? How would I want to be spoken to instead?
The answers to these questions can inform how we convey the saving love of Christ. Continuing relationships with people regardless of their willingness to accept or respond to Jesus is often at odds with the high-efficiency ethos of popular evangelism strategies. And yet, we worship a God who patiently abides with us. We seek the consolation of a gracious Holy Spirit who remains with us in the midst of our sin and shame. And we have been rescued by the violent death and stunning resurrection of a man who knew his self-sacrifice would be rejected by many.
The very nature of the God we serve is one of loving perseverance in the face of hostility. As followers of the Savior who welcomed even his betrayers to remain with him, may we be empowered by the same audacious love to befriend and welcome those who do not fit our evangelistic template.
*Names changed
