I was reading a post in a different website: “When the Evangelistic Tables Are Turned” in the website: A Life Overseas. You Can read the article by CLICKING HERE.

The article speaks of how a missionary family moved into a new country and a new neighborhood and was soon befriended by a family there. The family was part of an “Eastern Religion.” However, when the (Christian) missionary family did not respond to the invitations to convert to their faith, the local family dropped pretense of friendship and moved on to new potential converts. Later on that missionary family found out that the members of that “Eastern Religion” utilized many tactics like collecting information of “hot prospects” and developing strategies to get them to convert.

Of course, it sounded familiar to the missionary family because it sounded like a lot of what Christian outreach often sounds like. Friendship Evangelism was meant to be a more organic and friendly form of evangelism— avoiding the loud bothersomeness of street preaching, and the less loud but even more bothersome door to door evangelism.

Just two days ago, I was walk on Bonifacio Street here in Baguio and saw two women clearly sharing a message of their religion— each with a person they had corralled to squint at a little blue book that each was holding. They did not dress like the more common street evangelizers we find in Baguio. Could be Christian, or some sectarian group, or some non-Christian faith. Regardless, their organizer should have given them books that could be read from at least 12-18 inches away. As I was walking, I was thinking how glad I was that these two were busy with a couple of others who sacrificed their time so that I would not be bothered by the two. Is that a bad attitude? Absolutely, but I don’t think I was alone in that opinion as people hurried past to their own destinations.

Although Friendship Evangelism was meant to be more friendly and organic (naturally developing), People who pushed it found ways to make it unappealing. One was was to systematize it— remove its natural or organic quality. Friendships were manufactured to target converts. Another way was to make it transactional. If the other person doesn’t respond in a loosely set period of time— ghost them. Try somewhere else.

Friendship Evangelism that is not friendly is not truly Friendship Evangelism. Friendship Evangelism that is not organic or natural— well that is not as critical. One can truly seek out those of other faiths or non-faiths to develop friendships… but it should be genuine.

The article is especially nice in that it helps to see how the Golden Rule really applies in our ministerial and non-ministerial relationships.