How Not to Be a Christian Pest

My Cerulean Sanctum email inbox fills daily with “helpful” notes from Christian PR companies telling me about another Christian book I’m not going to read. Or a Christian movie I’m not going to see. Or some other Christian “event” that threatens to shake the pillars of heaven because of its importance in human history but which I won’t attend.

I can almost guarantee that no one sending me those emails is asking, If it were me, would I want to be on the receiving end of this spam? Is this how I want someone else to treat my inbox?

The sad truth is that those folks would probably find a way to justify a response of yes—and find Bible verses to support their position.

But they’ve simply forgotten the Golden Rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I think a lot about the Golden Rule of Jesus when I interact with other people. Anymore, I keep it ever before me. I try always to put myself in the other person’s shoes.

I wish more people did that.

And I wish more Christians did that not only in their emailing me but also in how they evangelize others.

We know that the Gospel message is the difference between life and death. Eternal death. We know.

But most people don’t get it. To them, our insistence on pressing that message only turns them off. To them, the message is spam. And we’re spamming them.

We’re not thinking the Golden Rule when it comes to evangelism.

Some people are ready to hear, and some people aren’t. The reason we’re not as effective in evangelizing as we should be is that we’re practically deaf to the Spirit. The Spirit knows which people are ready to hear. We should be listening to the Spirit. By not listening to the Spirit’s leading on who is ready and who is not, we only make the unready think we’re spamming them with the Gospel. Then they close down. Perhaps forever.

When the Spirit does alert us to someone who is ready to hear, are we remembering the Golden Rule? Are we presenting the Gospel in a way that we would want to hear it? Do we want to feel manipulated by someone else’s words or their delivery? Don’t we hate it when salesmen pull sales techniques out their bag of tricks and use them on us? Don’t we hate it when we’re made to feel like little more than one more number closer to the monthly quota?

We don’t have to come off as pests. The way to keep from being a Christian pest is to always remember the Golden Rule. In all things, how do we wish to be treated? We should then treat others the same way.

That not only applies to spammy PR emails, it applies to all interactions we have with lost people. It even applies to evangelism.

Are we pests? Or are we Spirit-attuned, empathetic bearers of the best possible news?

Five Steps to Transform Your Church in Seven Months, Guaranteed

Did that title grab your attention? Good. Because I mean it.

Rather than add some pointless setup here, I’ll go right into it:

1. Stop the sermons.

Most people can’t remember one point of the three-point sermon they heard last week. Many pastors couldn’t deliver a transformational sermon if the lives of their flock depended on it (and sadly, that is probably the case). I’ll go so far as to say that the average sermon given on an average Sunday doesn’t change the average American pew-sitter one iota. While that’s a crying shame— and shouldn’t be the case—I suspect it is.

So maybe it’s time to pack away the sermons for seven months. Discipleship is a long-haul reality, and no one will have his or her spiritual life derailed for want of seven months of so-so sermonizing.

Besides, we’re going to substitute something guaranteed to change lives.

2. Find a good orator—or three.

We put our best musicians in front of the church, right? Let’s find two or three people in our church who truly grasp the English language and can breathe life into words. This is both a gift and a talent. We should encourage those who speak the language with gusto and life. (Leaders, you are making it a priority to identify, encourage, and utilize the giftings of people in your church, aren’t you? And the best speaker in the church may not be you—or any of the other leaders.)

3. Open the Bible.

Remember the Bible? In some churches it seems as if hardly anyone does, despite its being the word of God. We’re going to open it and see what it says.

4. For that Sunday, have an orator read one book of the New Testament in its entirety before the assembled church.

Okay, so a few of those longer books may need to be split into two readings, but considering the length of the average sermon in an Evangelical church, it’s doable for most of the books.

5. Repeat for all 27 books of the New Testament.

Now enjoy the positive transformation. Your church WILL be changed.

I’m not kidding.

We’ve got our heads in the sand if we think that most Christians have experienced the Scriptures this way. Fact is, the way we Americans teach and read the Bible is a piecemeal shambles. We approach it in such microscopic bits that most Christians have no idea how it fits together. We have no vision for the wholeness of the Scriptures. Bible with cross It’s why the Bible-reading plan I advocate reinforces repetitive reading of entire books. Simply put, most Christians have never read the New Testament books as they were meant to be read.

We’re also fooling ourselves if we think that most Christians have read the entirety of the New Testament. Nearly half of all college graduates, once they step out of those ivy-covered halls, will never again read a book all the way through. This is especially true of men. For those who didn’t graduate from college, it’s certainly worse. And no, I don’t believe the Bible gets a pass on that lack. Given how little Scripture is read in the average church on Sunday, most Christians may otherwise never hear the entirety of the books that forge the backbone of all we are supposed to know and grasp.

We get all huffy about interpretation and so on, but do we trust the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures to deliver on their promise to transform lives? Faith comes by hearing the word of God, right?

How then can this plan not be an EPIC WIN for your church—or for every church in North America?

I say we start this Sunday.

Because the system we have in place for transmitting the Scriptures to people in the pews simply is not working.

And because the Word of God doesn’t need our additions to work miracles in the lives of those who hear it.

All we have to do is believe that is true.

Do you?

Feedback Wanted: Changes to Blog?

Dear Readers,

It may be hard to tell, but I’ve made extensive changes to Cerulean Sanctum in the last two weeks. Much of this WordPress-based site has been rebuilt:

1. New or revised plugins

2. New SEO features and optimization

3. Rebuilt .htaccess server file

4. Revised caching schemes

5. And on and on…

If you notice any oddities in the blog now, please let me know. With so many different browsers out there today, the chance that something won’t render correctly goes up. Your feedback is critical.

Also, if something about this blog’s operation, accessibility, or look bugs you, please let me know. Content? Well, that’s another matter. 😉

And if you’re a Web whiz, any feedback you can provide on how to get Internet Explorer to properly render the shadow for the Cerulean Sanctum title in the clouds banner would be much appreciated. I’ve tried every CSS fix I can find online and nothing works. Firefox users definitely see the proper shadowing (not sure about Chrome or Opera, though I think they work), but IE users get just plain white text, which can get lost in the banner. Thanks!