time management

Being stuck inside for three straight days really made me think about something:

How do you spend your time evangelizing?

We're all called, at one time or another, to evangelize, no mater who we are. Some do it better than others, some do it for the wrong reasons, but before we're done on this planet, we're going to do it.

The question is, how do we go about doing it? I'm not asking are you one of those people who take a soap box, a bullhorn and stand on a corner. Nor am I asking you if you hide little pamphlets in bathroom stalls.

I'm asking about your filler. What do you say on your soap box, pamphlet, blog.

Do you tell people to repent or they're going to hell? Do you give them a step by step guide to anti-materialism? Do you just do and hope people follow by example? Do you criticize what people are doing wrong in such a general way it doesn't point any real fingers? I'm personally guilty of that last one, and I hope I keep away from that from this point on.

I guess, what I'm looking for, is how do you evangelize?

Still confused?

I've spent many of hours in my first few months as a born-again (shivers) in Yahoo chatrooms (do you remember those?) telling people they need to repent and come to Christ. What kind of rooms? Christian chat rooms. I was preaching to the choir. I never dared go into a sex chat and go "how many of you are married and are currently having an online relationship with someone other than your spouse?" That could have been awesome, at the time, but at the same time now I still wouldn't be doing much help.

We talk about "planting seeds" because that's what we're supposed to do, plant seeds. The issue is, Jesus warns us about that same thing.

The beginning lines of Matthew 13, Jesus tells us of the farmer who sows his seeds and where the seeds land. This parable warns us of where to plant the seed.

If we just randomly go around telling people about Jesus, the birds of prey will come along and quickly pick away those pieces as if we had never been there.

If we go around, telling people about Jesus and don't help them get their footing into somewhere they can learn more and flourish, when the heat of sin strikes them, they'll fall.

If we dive into the sex chat rooms, give our two cents and leave those flourished plants to their own devices, the thorns and weeds of temptation will rip down the progress and destroy the spark we started with.

We're told to use our time, wisely, and to focus, nurture, love those we tell about Jesus, to make them understand it's more than a personal relationship with Christ but a communal relationship with His Church in a Christ like way.

We're not called to bash other peoples works. We're not called to picket military funerals. We're not called to claim a natural disaster was caused by a pact with the devil. We're not called to be of this world, to use this worlds hatred against each other.

We're not here to throw mud but to plant crops. We're here to become farmers again.

In Micah 4:3, we're told "...They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. ..." showing we will all become farmers, like we were in Eden before the fall, as we're called to be now.

Fishers of Men. meh. It's been overused, and I think it's a little far fetched to think of ourselves as just fishermen.

What do fishermen do? They cast a net, grab as many fish they can and throw the small ones back to mature up more. What do farmers do? They attend to every crop, personally taking care of crops that need a little attention. They add a little more water or fertilizer to the corn if it isn't growing as fast as it did last season. It cuts back the weeds on the fruit when they start to pop through. If a fisher catches a sick fish, it's tossed out, to keep from ruining the other fish. It's not the fishers fault it got sick, but if an apple is rotten, on the tree, then the farmer is to blame.

So, how do you spend your time evangelizing? Do you spend your time fishing or plowing?