I love the church calendar. I know, it is a bizarre confession, but I mean it. Perhaps I feel so strongly about it because I discovered it later in life than many others do — like those who give up the hope of a relationship after years on their own, only to be surprised when they meet their soul mate and discover a part of themselves they thought was dead has been awakened, and now adds a dimension to their life they never knew possible.

When, after many years of following Jesus, it dawned on me that some Christians observe and celebrate time according to a different rhythm, I was curious. In my world, time had always flowed according to the dictates of the civic or academic calendar. I grew up in mostly evangelical church settings; it was no different there. Christmas and Easter were holidays, not holy days pulsing at the heart of sacred seasons. That is not to say we didn’t understand or celebrate God’s miraculous activity in Christ. It’s just that it seemed isolated, disconnected from anything beyond the days themselves, and somehow muddied by the surrounding noise of a cultural narrative of consumption.

Discovering the church calendar opened me to a new way of being rooted in time, in God’s kairos and not just the culture’s chronos. Christmas and Easter no longer existed in a long line of other holidays like Labor Day, President’s Day, and the Fourth of July, but took their proper place with Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Pentecost, and something called “Ordinary Time.” How extraordinary! Since then, holidays have been transformed into holy days that locate me in a story larger than my own or even that of my particular culture. Christmas and Easter have become not just singular, isolated events in themselves, but rather joyous culminations of the whole expanse of time: God’s life and story unfolding among us.

EVENT ANXIETY

All that being said, however, I have another confession to make. As a pastor of a local church, Christmas and Easter still function like events and, as such, they create anxiety for me. It took me a while to realize that though. Initially, I was just aware of a vague sense of dread shadowing me whenever I thought about Christmas Eve and Easter morning worship services. I now think I understand why those days generated the anxiety I felt. Let me give some context.

I spent my formative years worshiping in a Southern Baptist church. I cut my ministry teeth within para-church organizations largely focused on evangelism. Both of those institutions placed a premium on “winning souls.” Within that framework, Christmas and Easter became the ultimate opportunities to win souls by presenting the “gospel.” Why? Because Christmas and Easter are those blended times, events where civil holidays and spiritual holy days overlap, when non-churchgoers might “darken the doors” of a church. Thus, the responsibility of the pastor was to “preach the gospel” in hopes that such people would be converted to “it.” Practically, that meant that a truncated version of the Christ story was told in the form of propositions. The invitation to accept Christ’s death as the sacrifice for sins was extended — the promised result being that once that sacrifice was accepted by the individual in faith, he or she would be saved and assured of eternal life in heaven. Perhaps you can sense why, despite my exploration of the wonders of God’s story unfolding in the beauty of the liturgical year, singular days like Christmas and Easter held residual anxiety for me, a pastor, framed as they had been for most of my life as evangelism events.

Reflecting on this tension I have discerned two dynamics at work — distinct, yet intimately connected. The first dynamic is the tension created by approaching evangelism in the way I have described. In a broad sense, my struggle is a methodological one. But that distinction does not hold long by itself. It quickly collapses into the second dynamic, fueling the tension I, and many others, are experiencing, both within and without leadership contexts: the theological tension of how we have understood and framed the gospel itself.

QUESTIONING METHODS

Have you ever been invited to someone’s home for what you thought was a party, only to discover that the invitation was a ruse to try and get you to buy something? Maybe it was nothing more sinister than makeup or Tupperware. Or perhaps you were aggressively recruited to be someone’s next level in a multi-level sales scheme. Either way, both scenarios leave me with a multi-level reaction.

My first reaction is to feel a little less human, somehow hollowed out by the experience of being seen as a means to another’s desired end. At least advertisers are (generally) honest about what they want from you. My second reaction is to be offended and angry on a deeper level. Why? Because such a scenario proffers something good and desperately missing in our culture: hospitality and the space it creates for relationship. Hospitality is a Christian virtue meant for the benefit of the guest. Under the guise of hospitality, what I am describing takes guests and uses them for the financial benefit of the host. It is a bait-and-switch, plain and simple. It’s not that a guest isn’t receiving some benefit, but rather that the host offers/sells the benefit knowing the whole time that it is his or her own self-interests that are being advanced.

I am afraid that such an orientation has invaded our conception and practice of evangelism, including (but not limited to) the Christmas and Easter gospel sales pitch. It’s as if the same consumer mentality that threatens to overtake our holiday celebrations has also infected our orientation to the gospel and evangelism. These “presentations” often take on the same bait-and-switch mentality as what is described above. We invite people into our spaces and they are often intrigued or even excited to be there. But why is that so? I think that most people have a sense of something sacred when drawing near to these holy times. Inasmuch as the civic calendar overlaps spiritual realities, people are often drawn to come and participate in the amazing drama that is the story of Christ. Whether or not that is always the case, they certainly have not shown up in order to become the focal point of an evangelistic sales pitch. After twenty years of Christian ministry and leadership, I have become convinced that such an evangelical baitand- switch is bad hospitality. Many may think what we present is the ultimate benefit offered freely — good manners be damned. But what is also true is that we ourselves are not neutral in the mix. We are always as invested in the outcome as the person to whom we are selling our “goods.” Our culture is rife with cynicism about this very dynamic and it doesn’t take much in the way of discernment to pick up on it.

So one aspect of my methodological wariness toward evangelism as an event (holiday or otherwise) stems from a violation of what I believe is the basic impulse of hospitality: generous space for others in our midst, created for their benefit at our expense. The other aspect behind my suspicion is far more practical: beyond the numbers of people I know who have been turned off to the gospel by being “presented” to in such a way, I know very few who have actually become followers of Christ through such means.

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