A few weeks before Christmas, we decided that it would be a good idea to give a small Christmas gift to the neighbors who live in our apartment building, not only to be nice but also to be mildly evangelistic (but certainly not pushy). So through our church we bought 24 daily devotional calendars (they have a Bible verse and a mediation for each day of the year), and about a week before Christmas we knocked on 23 of the 24 doors in our building (the one we didn't knock on was ours, of course). Most people answered their doors, and the various responses were quite insightful into people's mindsets here:
- One elderly lady answered the door with a puzzled look and asked us if we were Jehovah's Witnesses. After convincing her otherwise, she finally accepted the calendar.
- Several neighbors, whom we had yet to meet, seemed kind of skeptical as they asked us, '¿Cuánto vale?' or 'How much does it cost?' When we explained that we weren't selling the calendars and we just wanted to give them a small Christmas gift, they received it.
- One particular gentleman explained, 'It's just that this isn't the custom here, so I wasn't really sure what you were up to.' It seems that Spaniards are pretty skeptical of any stranger who just knocks on their door, probably due to the number of quick talking sales people going around trying to take advantage of people.
- One elderly fellow broke our hearts when he told us that he and his wife would be spending Christmas and New Year's alone because their sons don't come to visit them often. It turns out that even with loads of people around Spaniards can be quite lonely, too.
- A few neighbors whom we had met before invited us into their apartments and asked us about our plans for the holidays, and we actually had nice conversations with them before they accepted the calendars and we went on our way.
A few closing thoughts. It seems that having a relationship with people here is so central to being received by them that we cannot neglect to take the time to get to know people a bit before even thinking about sharing the Gospel with them. Perhaps we should hesitate to define evangelism so narrowly that it only means sharing the Four Spiritual Laws or the Romans Road with them. After all, Jesus spent 30 years simply living as a human, getting to know His context (how the humans of His day and culture thought and lived and worked), before He started the 'important stuff': teaching, preaching and healing. May we be willing to take the time to get to know and love people here as we seek to share the truly Good News of Jesus with them, and may a few seeds be planted by this simple Christmas gift.
4 comments:
Hi BJ!
I'm a BJ too (Brian Johnson), living in England. I love evangelism too, and have found that offering healing reaches people(and is just what Jesus did and taught the 12 and 72 to do).
See my page here:
on healing
So, do you think that after language school, you all will be moving on to what the Lord has you, or are you where you think the Lord has you. Sounds like your apartment complex is a field now, not just the next one down the pike.
Jesus did spend 30 years, he grew up in His culture, He understood the humanity around Him as we each did growing up in our particular culture.
Brian, thanks for the comment, and interesting web page. I agree that healing, on all levels (physical, emotional, spiritual, etc.) has to be integral to evangelism. How we offer that, I suppose, depends on the context and the people with whom we're working. I'll think more on that.
Simeon, we definitely realize that our apartment complex is a mission field, but the chances are quite slim that we'll be here beyond language school. Amongst other reasons, the chief one is that ECMI (our organization) focuses on work in smaller pueblos, generally of 5,000 to 30,000. But while we're here we are trying to live out the Gospel in front of our neighbors and taking advantage of opportunities to share it with words. Thanks, brother!
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