Love listens. Those were the words staring back at me from the t-shirt for sale at the Alpha Conference in January. As I thought over the last three days I had spent at the conference, those words pretty much summed up what the Lord had shown me through various speakers I had heard and conversations I had at the conference. Alpha is a course designed for people who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves Christians but are looking for a safe place to ask their questions about God and life. It is designed to provide guests an opportunity to connect with one another while providing the opportunity to share thoughts, ideas, and opinions in a safe and caring environment. The Alpha Conference was a gathering for people nationwide running the Alpha Course at their church or home. The conference provided equipping, inspiration, and prayer for everyone who attended.
In the thirty years since Alpha’s global launch in 1993, over 28 million people have attended the course worldwide. Alpha has been translated into 112 different languages, and it unites believers from many denominations around the core principles of the Christian faith. Worshiping the Lord at the conference was amazing as we all unified around the good news of The Gospel. This was a profound experience of unity for me. One of the speakers at the conference said this: “When we seek to have unity, we get division. But when we rally around The Gospel, we get unity.” I wondered if the “big C church” worldwide could lay their differences aside and come together around the truth of the Gospel. I wondered if this unity could bleed over into our interactions with people who don’t yet know Jesus. But I realized this idea runs very counter to our current social climate.
To many in the “big C church,” our Christian faith is interwoven with our stance on various political or social issues. We have gotten to a place where we can’t separate the two. This mindset leads us to argue with those who disagree with us on those issues or, even worse, to never engage with them. I would argue this puts a major barrier between us as believers and those who don’t yet know Jesus. What if we engaged with people who don’t know Jesus with love and respect, listening to them with a desire to understand? What if we didn’t put “Christian behavior” and “Christian belief” expectations on people who have not yet “passed from death to life” (John 5:24) and experienced the transformational work of the Holy Spirit (Romans 12:2)? What if we joined with Paul and “resolved to know nothing ….except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2)?
But how do we do this? How do we love people outside the church and still clearly communicate the Good News of Jesus to them? I’ve never been a big fan of the Francis of Assisi quote: “Preach the gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words.” While I agree with the “faith in action” sentiment behind this quote, I would argue that we definitely need to use words at some point! If we don’t explicitly point to Jesus as the source of the goodness they see in us, we might lead some to believe we are just really awesome people! That our goodness has its origin in ourselves. However, with that said, when we engage with the world around us, we must lead with love. We must lead with respect and a desire to understand. We must listen because love listens. Author David Augsburger says, “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”
As we listen to the person we are talking to, we also actively listen to the Holy Spirit, who a) helps us listen to understand and b) prompts us to speak at the right time and with the right words. How do we enter into these Sent Conversations? We walk through our day “in step” (Galatians 5:25) with the Spirit. Every day, we intentionally offer our days and moments to the Lord, holding loosely to our agenda and being willing to be interruptible. We ask God to help us see people we meet throughout our day the way he does, as people who need to know they are loved by the God who made them. And that God made a way, through Jesus, to put us all back into a right relationship with himself.
When we pray that prayer, the Lord will put people in our path whom he is drawing to himself; he has invited us into the work that he’s already doing. When we say yes to that invitation, we are partnering with God to bless others, and we receive a blessing as well. Our goal for our church is to have 4,000 Sent Conversations between now and July 31. Let’s join together to meet this goal as we live as people who are Called to Christ and Sent to People.
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