Next Step Evangelism

I’m nearing the end of a LONG process of doctoral study. If all goes well, I’ll be submitting my thesis (dissertation in American lingo) by late fall. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, light a candle…

The roots of my dissertation can be seen in a little blog I wrote back when Next Step first got off the ground. At the time I was reading a little book of essays I received from my husband John called, A Writer’s Paris: a Guided Journey for the Creative Soul by Eric Maisel. There’s a particularly meaningful section in which he talks about the footbridges of Paris. Bridges in Paris aren’t miles long & clogged with traffic, although there are some that are purely functional – all steel and cement. Most of them, however, are short & sweet, inviting a lingering stroll with a relaxed stop to watch the world go by. Many have been there for hundreds of years, evolving from footbridges, to heavily trafficked pathways & back to pedestrian walkways.

Looking back, I believe this little essay by Maisel crystallized my thinking about evangelism & faith sharing – a fact that I’m sure would completely surprise him. It started me thinking about bridges – they’re fascinating things. I remember seeing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, for the first time.  What an awesome construction! And the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, with all its lights. The awesomeness of these bridges reminded me of the awesomeness of the task of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with others. The gulf we need to cross can seem so great – a huge gap between our experience of the love & acceptance we receive in Jesus Christ & the experience of suspicion & rejection we often experience in the world.

Pont Saint Louis

But then I returned to Maisel’s words about the bridges of Paris & that was when it seemed to fall together for me somehow because he taught me something about scale. Speaking of writers he says, “You want to show a war, but you must show a battle instead. You want to prove the greatness of a great love, but you can’t do it through hyperbole – you can only do it by a careful noticing of the way your lovers hold hands.” He goes on to recount a time when he found himself on the Pont Saint Louis near a thirty year old man & his sixty year old mother. The son was pouring out his heart to his mother. After describing their conversation, Maisel says, “The setting has allowed him to speak. This conversation never could have occurred in their living room, at the supermarket, or at the Louvre. This bridge creates a place safe enough for a boy to speak to his mother.”

Maisel is right.  It’s not about the awesomeness of the bridges. It’s about the intimacy. It’s about the way the footbridge subtly draws you to the middle to stop & absorb what’s going on around you, to see how the water flows, how the streets lead to & from, how the buildings grow up & out. In reading Maisel, I realized the direction I needed to go with my own work & writing. I realized that we don’t make connections between our experience of being in relationship with Jesus Christ & the experience of the rest of the world through massive efforts & structures.  I realized that it’s about the intimacy of crossing a footbridge to meet another in the middle. It’s not about creating grand strategies & programs – it’s about making connections of love & trust in the individual relationships we encounter in our daily lives. It’s not about proving the great love God has shown in Jesus Christ through hyperbole, but by noticing the way Jesus comes to us as a lover – holding our hand, easing our fears, forgiving our faults & shortcomings – loving us anyway. And more than anything else, it’s about creating places like the bridge where the son was able to talk with his mother, places that are safe enough for us to talk about our faith, the meaning that it has brought to our lives, the difference Jesus Christ has made in our experience of the world.

The questions are as real now as they were back when I wrote that original little blog. What bridges are we able to create in our lives? What next step do we need to take to create places that are safe enough for us to talk about the deep things of our heart? What person in your life is quietly awaiting an opportunity to meet you in the middle of a bridge, to make a connection, to deepen a relationship, to hear or speak a word of faith & hope & love?