I am what you could call an undercover evangelist. I always hated when I would feel pressured into walking up to strangers in order to talk to them about Jesus. I always felt like the street preachers scared more people away than they attracted. But I can’t knock them because they have more guts than I do.

My methods of evangelism are much more discreet and long term investment than the whack-a-mole approach. I have always been very relational in my faith. I feel that I can be more effective about sharing Jesus with others when there is an established, trusting relationship between us. In fact I can be down right sneaky about it. So here are my steps to undercover evangelism.

1. Be yourself, but don’t blow your cover right away.
   I don’t ever introduce myself as a Christian or as a member of my church when I first meet someone in a casual social situation. If you work for a church, this might be kind of difficult. If religion comes out in my first impression, it can be great or completely fatal. I have no idea what their history of religious experience is. They might associate a painful past or nothing at all based on that history.
2. Ask questions, but nothing about religion.
   I like to ask them a lot of questions to get to know them. This helps me to figure what common interests we have and I can try to connect with them on a non-religious level. If I have a lot in common with this person, I have a good shot at being good friends with them. If I can be good friends with them, my chances of sharing Jesus with them have greatly increased.
3. Invest your time with them.
   This isn’t a sniper operation. We are in this for the long term. The primary goal here is not to convert them. The goal is to plant seeds. The better the soil we plant them in, the better chance they have of survival. To get to the good soil of a relationship takes time. Most people won’t let you beyond the surface right away. You also have to be willing to let them beyond your surface a little bit too. Take the time to really get to know them and share with them too. Once you have planted enough seeds and invested enough time, you will know it is time for step 4.
4. Blow your cover.
   The charges are set and the fuse is lit. Let them have it. At this point they will listen to you because they consider you a friend. Before they might have written you off as a Jesus Freak and ignored you always seeing you in the same light. But now it just might blow their mind that you can be a follower of Jesus and be cool enough to be their friend at the same time. It can go either way at this point. They might want to learn more or they might not be interested at all. But you still have a friend and can continue to plant seeds with them.

I hope you haven’t got the idea that I am just exploiting a relationship to share Jesus. I don’t have an agenda on my mind when I meet new people. I like to meet people and make new friends no matter their religious choices. I just don’t try to start a friendship by blowing my religious trumpet.

You might be the only version of Jesus one person meets. Someone in your life might see you as the basis of their opinions on Jesus and church. To think that there are people out there who do not want to go to church because of something I said or did really irritates me. I know that I have a strong personality and that I can easily offend other people. I get excited about things and my mouth opens up before my brain thinks about it. I sometimes wonder how many people I have turned away from Jesus and church. We like to count all of the people we bring to Jesus, but what about those we scared away from Jesus.

Whether we like it not, we are a front line representative of the church. People watch everything that we say and do and will pass judgement on what we represent. Unfortunately we are severely flawed. I am not always a good representative of Jesus. I get angry at other people and the last thing I want to do is love them. I say things that I can’t take back. I stopped wearing a WWJD bracelet a long time ago because I am just not that good at representing Jesus all of the time.

Therefore, I don’t pretend to be perfect. If I act like I got it all together, then I come off as a self righteous SOB. See I told you I don’t always say the right thing. So I just put it all out there. I let people see that I am screwed up and that is part of the reason that I follow Jesus. If I was perfect, I wouldn’t need Jesus. If I am perfect, I am unapproachable and judgmental even before I open my mouth.

Jesus came to earth to experience our experience. To feel our pain and suffering. So that we can touch him and know that he feels exactly what we feel. He was the only one who could live and be perfect. He came down to our level to help us, to save us. And we should do the same. We should be using our hands and feet to help others where they are. We need to get dirty.

How are you representing? Are  you clean or are you dirty?

Last night, Faith and I began classes in Financial Peace University. I am excited like Christmas Eve excited. I was unofficially a Dave Ramsey disciple before, but now I am all in. Before, I knew only the basics, but now we are are going to go deep. I have a feeling that the next 12 weeks are going to fly by for me. I also may have found a new way for me to volunteer at church when this is over.

I am ready to learn from the master about controlling my money. I think it’s going to get a little crazy.

Today I want to talk about family discipleship. If you have children, then you have been given responsibility of not only their physical lives, but also their spiritual lives. I am tired of people expecting the church to teach their kids everything they need to know about following Jesus. I think it is great that the church is there to help, but it is not the church’s responsibility. It is yours.

I drop my kids off at the kid area at church every week and they have fun and learn stuff, but when it comes to them asking questions of the spiritual nature, who do you think they will turn to? Me of course. And maybe they aren’t asking me questions, but they see me all the time. They know my behavior. They know me better than my friends because they are always watching me. They are learning from me whether I am intentional about it or not.

I have chosen to take an intentional approach with them so that I can see what they are learning. This also opens the door for them to ask me questions about spiritual matters. I know my kids better than the church does, so I am going to know the best way to teach them about God and life. I don’t sit down every night and read the Bible and make them memorize scripture. Right now they are just toddlers, so I tell them stories and I talk to them. I am building a relationship in the best way I know how right now so that later they will see me as someone they can talk to.

I also plan on taking advantage of the resources offered by the church. If they don’t want to talk to me about something, I hope that they have someone else in their life like a youth pastor who they can talk to. I want to provide the best opportunities I can for my kids to get to know Jesus.

Have you ever thought about how you are discipling your kids? Are you doing it intentionally or unintentionally?

By nature, I am a problem solver. When presented with a problem or challenge, I begin planning a system or course of action for resolution. When presented with the challenge of following Jesus, I tried to build a system around it to help me. I learned how other people followed Jesus with their times of prayer and Bible study. I attended small groups because it seemed to work for other people. I attend church services every week and take notes about the things that I am learning. I took all that I had learned and tried to put a system together that would work for me. After 14 years of following Jesus, I have learned that I can’t build a system around following Jesus that will take into account any situation I may encounter.

Now this is just my personal experience. I know a lot of people who use the same routine to follow Jesus the same way for many years and they are learning and growing closer to him more each day. So I don’t intend to break up your routine if it is working for you now. I just want to share what I have learned about how it seems to work for me.

I have tried getting up early to pray. Its cool, but I suck at being fully present anytime before 8 AM. I have done daily quiet times where I pray and read scripture. Sometimes it was cool and sometimes I found it boring. I have read the Bible through in a year. I finished it, but most of the time I was only trying to complete the task instead of really soaking up God’s word. These are just a few examples of the many things I have tried.

Whenever I tried to make following Jesus a part of my schedule or routine, it always became something where my heart wasn’t totally in it. It’s like brushing my teeth. I don’t really think about what I am doing, I just do it. Its like when you are driving home from work the same way you do everyday and your mind is elsewhere. You realize that you don’t remember if you stopped at that light back there or not. When it becomes routine, my brain takes over and my heart is somewhere else.

I spent the first 18 years of my life following Jesus with my brain. In one weeks time, I learned how to follow him with my heart. And since then I am still learning to follow him with my heart.

Do you have a routine to follow Jesus that works, or do you find that changing things up works better?

Have you ever tried to make a viral video? I have thought about it before, but I am of the opinion that the best viral videos are the unplanned ones. It is the priceless moment that happens to get caught on video that makes it so much more viral than when someone tries to make one on purpose.

It seems to me that when people try to make a viral video, their motive is for self promotion and the hope to get another 15 minutes of fame. But what if we put that kind of effort into trying to share Jesus with others in a viral way? I was thinking to myself what would a Jesus promoting viral video look like?

Ok, so there are a lot of Jesus promoting videos out there, but they are usually clips of sermons or curriculum videos that are way too long to go viral in a short period of time. The shooting star viral videos are no longer than a music video. Wouldn’t it have been cool if one of the disciples who doesn’t get a lot of air time in the Bible was carrying around an Iphone and took video clips of when the other disciples screwed up. Jesus walking on water and Peter falling in would have made a great viral video. Anytime Jesus healed anyone would work too. Unfortunately, Andrew did not have an IPhone.

So what would that kind of video look like today? Do you know of any that I may have missed? I think this one counts. Love this video.

According to a certain group of Christians, today is rapture day. A lot of people are talking about it. Most people think they are mistaken and have Biblical evidence against their claim. I honestly don’t care if they are right or wrong. If Jesus is coming back, then I am ready to celebrate. If he is not, then that means there is a lot more for me to do on this planet.

I was thinking about this whole crazy event and realized that this is a great opportunity. It is sometimes hard to have conversations with non-believers about our faith. Not that it’s hard to discuss, but how do we work the topic into conversation without being pushy? Well, there are a lot of non-believers talking about the end of the world too. This is an opportunity for all of us to start conversations with those around us.

Will you use this opportunity to tell other believers they are wrong, or will take a chance and share with others what you believe?

I almost always find myself leading. This scares me a little bit because I don’t always know what I am doing. I have joined Bible studies to participate and found myself leading them. I volunteered once to help with Youth Ministry and next thing I knew, I was the Youth Director. I had guys in college who were trying to be a mentor to me ask me to switch roles with them so that I could mentor them. I naturally find myself willing to lead in almost everything that I do.

At times, this seemed really cool, but I have a major problem with it. Besides Jesus, I don’t have anyone committed to investing directly in me. I have had mentors who were doing a great job, but then something prevented us from continuing with the mentoring relationship. I read blogs and soak up as much as I can from people who are willing to share there lives on the Internet, but it is not the same as them knowing who I am and how to invest in my individual gifting.

So I am looking for a mentor of sorts. (Where is my Mr. Miyagi?) A one to one discipleship kind of thing. I am looking for someone to use their years of experience and wisdom to invest in me. Someone who sees the potential in me and wants to encourage and help build me up into what could be. I very much dislike asking people to invest in me because most people who I think would make good mentors are already super busy people. I promise to respect your time because I know how valuable that time is. I am cool with using Internet technologies to connect, but would also like to have the opportunity to spend some time in person. And I realize that this could take time to establish the relationship required for this to work.

If you are interested, you can contact me any any number of ways. You can comment on this blog with your email address. You can email me directly at chris@churchpunk.com. You can find me on Twitter @churchpunk. I am also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/churchpunk.

If you know somebody who might be interested, please share this post with them.  Thank you for your help.

I have been reading Visioneering by Andy Stanley and have been camping out lately on the part about casting vision for your children.  Here is a quote from that  part of the book.

The most significant visions are not cast by great orators from a stage. They are cast at the bedsides of our children. The greatest visioncasting opportunities happen between the hours of 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. Monday through Sunday. In these closing hours of the day we have a unique opportunity to plant the seeds of what could be and what should be. Take advantage of every opportunity you get.

Andy tells a story about how his dad always told him as he was growing up that God was going to do great things with his life.  And this one repeated phrase encouraged Andy throughout his life because he believed what his dad told him.  It made me think about what messages am I sending my kids.  What vision am I casting in them?  Do they hear more encouragement from me, or do they only remember me as the enforcer of toy pickup?  I want my kids to know that I believe in them so that they will believe that they will be able to do great things.

After reading through that section a few times, I have started paying more attention to how I am casting vision to my children.  I have written before about being intentional with my kids in trying to teach them about Jesus, but I think if I can cast vision into their lives, then the discipleship will happen a lot easier.  There will be a purpose behind it that is personal to them.

How are you casting vision for your kids?  What messages are you sending to them?

I have been thinking a lot about discipleship lately. When I was a part of the Navigators ministry in college, we were very intentional about discipleship. There was someone with more experience that I was following and learning from and there was someone who was following and learning from me. Everyone in leadership with Navs had a Paul and a Timothy.  Since that time, I have had a few Timothys in my life, but I have had a hard time finding a Paul to follow.

For the last couple of years, I have really taken advantage of the Internet to follow a lot of different church leaders.  This has been beneficial to me because I get to learn from a very diverse group of cool people.  I don’t have to carve time out of my schedule to meet with someone because I can read blogs when it is convenient for me.  Reading a lot of blogs is not enough though because nobody is intentionally working on me.  A blog doesn’t know my daily life, habits, and struggles.  There is no accountability at all.  Sure, I can comment, but I am just one little voice in the crowd.

I do think that online discipleship could exist if a blog or web service was intentionally setup to do so.  I keep pondering the possibilities of online discipleship because it is so hard to find someone who has time to meet with regularly.  It seems that everyone is extremely busy, but connecting online is more convenient.  Personal meetings could be setup as well, but people can connect online on a daily basis if needed.  It doesn’t have to be at the same time.  It could be as simple as trading emails, but there are so many more ways to be social online.

I have not had a true Christian mentor in a very long time.  Is anyone else experimenting with online discipleship?