Today my book Evangelism in the Inventive Age releases and I want to celebrate with my Emergent Village friends by giving you a copy of BodyPrayer.<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ws.assoc-amazon.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL110_&ASIN=1400071488&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=dougpagcom-20&ServiceVersion=20070822\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=dougpagcom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1400071488\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>There are two ways to get in on the celebration gift:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Order a copy of the book today. Mention that you bought it on your social stream (Facebook, Twitter, or blog) and send me an email (Pagitt at Gmail.com) with the receipt, link and your mailing address.<\/li>\n<li>Order the book by Feb 15 and write a review on Amazon and send me an email (Pagitt at Gmail.com)\u00a0with the receipt, link and your mailing address.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I am really excited about this book and look forward to engaging in conversations around evangelism and would love to have you join me.<\/p>\n<p>In my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/theInventiveAge\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Inventive Age Series<\/a> I contend that we are in the fourth cultural period in North America moving from the Agrarian age through the Industrial age and Information age and now we have entered the Inventive Age. These cultural shifts influence the way we think, the values we hold, the aesthetics we appreciate and the tools we use.<\/p>\n<p>It is in this context that I suggest evangelism is about resonance and not conversion.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the opening chapter of the book.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>I\u2019m An Evangelist <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m an evangelist. And I have been an evangelist since the day I became a Christian at the age of 16.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up in an intentionally non-religious home. There were churches on every corner and we didn\u2019t go to any of them. Ever. On purpose. I didn\u2019t know anyone who was interested in Christianity or even religion in general\u2014at least that\u2019s what I assumed since I never heard anyone I knew talk about faith of any kind. When I was 16, a buddy invited me to see a performance of the Passion Play and I found myself compelled to give my life to the story I saw that night.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->After that, I was eager to share this story with nearly everyone I met, whether they wanted to talk about it or not.<\/p>\n<p>In high school, I spent lunch hour talking to my friends about Christianity and wrote about my faith in my classes so I could share my faith with my teachers.<\/p>\n<p>On the weekends, my friends and I would drive around the Twin Cities looking for groups of \u201clost\u201d teenagers\u2014skate punks, gang kids, those packs of teenagers that hang out on the street corners waiting for the right adventure to come along\u2014and talk to them about our God.<\/p>\n<p>In college, I spent my Spring Break walking around Daytona Beach talking to other college students about the meaning of life.<\/p>\n<p>After I graduated, I joined a basketball ministry team that played all over the world with the hope of introducing our opponents to Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>As a youth pastor, I led training programs to help teenagers engage in evangelism with their friends and families.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve lead international trips designed to help adults and teens engage in evangelism with strangers.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve spoken at youth rallies and events where I shared the story of Jesus with hundreds of people at a time.<\/p>\n<p>I started a church with the hope of helping people find the story of God in their lives in real and practical ways.<\/p>\n<p>My evangelistic \u201cphilosophy\u201d has changed over the years, but my compulsion to urge others to see God in the world and live in harmony with God has remained.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, it is my constant engagement in evangelism in my nearly 30 years of Christian faith that has lead me to deeply reconsider many of my assumptions about evangelism.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t just been on the giving end of the evangelistic conversation. I am an evangelist, but I am also evangelized on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>I have the privilege of sharing my life with people who are constantly showing me what God is up to in the world, people who graciously invite me to join them as they figure out how to be part of God\u2019s agenda. Some of them are church professionals, some of them are farmers, some of them run camps or orphanages or coffee shops. Some of them are older than I am, some of them are quite a bit younger than I am. Some of them are dying, some of them have just been born. And I gladly welcome their invitations.<\/p>\n<p>I am also evangelized by strangers\u2013something that seems to be happening on an increasingly frequent basis. Because I talk about and write about Christianity in ways that sometimes challenge people\u2019s ideas about faith and church and community, there are people who feel compelled, even obligated to contact me by email, voicemail, even actual mail to tell me that I should repent and change my beliefs, my words, and my influence. They\u2019re worried that I\u2019m proclaiming news that isn\u2019t remotely good.<\/p>\n<p>Just this week I received a rather bizarre, handwritten letter from someone I\u2019ve never met. This person included a brochure called, \u201cShocking Truth\u2013Yahweh Decrees Punishment\u201d that went on to connect natural disasters with dangerous theology like mine.<\/p>\n<p>This week I also received an email with the subject line: <em>A Message of Warning<\/em>.\u00a0 The email listed several concerns for my eternal well-being and finished with the sentence, \u201cI can only hope that you\u2019ll repent, but I hope even more that like Paul, the scales would fall from your eyes, and that you\u2019d you see (by the revelation of God the Holy Spirit) the false\/heretical \u2018gospel\u2019 that you preach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I really do pay attention to what these people have to say. If it\u2019s possible, I try to have actual conversations with my evangelists by responding to their emails, letters, and calls.<\/p>\n<p>I know they are genuinely worried about me and about the people I might influence. I want to stay open to the ideas of others and to keep an ear tuned to the prophets among us. But our discussions rarely end with anything but frustration. For both of us.<\/p>\n<p>For me, the problem isn\u2019t that they want me to turn away from what they believe to be heresy. It\u2019s that they want me to do something that is about at unappealing to me as my ideas are to them. They want me to fear of God. And when they start talking like that, well they might as well be speaking to me in another language. Even in my earliest days of faith I found the \u201cfear God\u201d approach to be so far from the news of Jesus that I\u2019ve never given it much consideration. It just doesn\u2019t fit with how I understand the story of God.<\/p>\n<p>My evangelists don\u2019t always try the fear approach. Sometimes, my fellow Christians just want to tweak what I believe. Not long ago, I was at a conference for church leaders. I was standing in the lunch line with a nice Lutheran who wanted me to reconsider my views on baptism and the way we practice baptism at our church. He was concerned that we \u201cnot undo the promises of God\u201d by allowing people to practice both infant and what is often called \u201cbelievers baptism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For some reason, I also have a knack for attracting Mormon missionaries. Perhaps it\u2019s my willingness to make eye contact as they walk or peddle by me. These conversations usually end up with them asking me to consider building up my faith by reading the Book of Mormon and seeing if I indeed experience a \u201ca testimony.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then there are the folks who want me to convert completely. They want me to change from one faith to another.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, as a result of some growing friendships in Minnesota\u2019s Muslim community, I attended an Iftar meal with members of a Muslim Mosque as they broke the Ramadan fast. While I waited in line for the meal, a passionate, winsome, young man implored me to consider the value of the five pillars of Islam in my own life and submit to God \u201cmore completely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A dear friend asked me to \u201cconsider my inner mystic\u201d so I could become more spiritual.<\/p>\n<p>Even my friend August Birkshire, president of the Minnesota Atheists, assured me that if I would follow his reasoning I could be freed from my \u201cmythical belief systems.\u201d He offered me a small card that read \u201cSaved by an Atheist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There sure seems to be a lot of evangelizing going on, at least around me.<\/p>\n<p>Whether it\u2019s me doing the talking or someone else talking to me, I can\u2019t help but wonder what it is we\u2019re up to. Evangelistic conversations are so odd, so unlike anything else in our lives, that they seem to take on a different cast than other conversations. Whenever I become aware of that oddness, I find myself wondering if evangelism as we know it is working or if it\u2019s even appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if we should evangelize one another at all.<\/p>\n<p>It seems I\u2019m not the only one wondering about the goodness of evangelism. When I tell people what I\u2019m working on, they have one of three responses:<\/p>\n<p>The chilly response in which they assume I\u2019m telling them about this book as a means of evangelizing them and if they show too much interest I\u2019ll launch into the Four Spiritual Laws;<\/p>\n<p>Or the heated response in which they rattle off a long list of frustrations with the practice of evangelism as they know it.<\/p>\n<p>Or the please-suggest-something-that-will-make-evangelism-okay response in which people share their hopeful but not overly optimistic desire that there might be a way of sharing the story of God that is respectful and meaningful to everyone involved.<\/p>\n<p>I have yet to meet someone who is neutral on the subject.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today my book Evangelism in the Inventive Age releases and I want to celebrate with my Emergent Village friends by giving you a copy of BodyPrayer. There are two ways to get in on the celebration gift: Order a copy of the book today. Mention that you bought it on your social stream (Facebook, Twitter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":360,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Evangelism Celebration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Today my book Evangelism in the Inventive Age releases and I want to celebrate with my Emergent Village friends by giving you a copy of BodyPrayer. There\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/emergentvillage\/2012\/02\/evangelism-celebration\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Evangelism Celebration\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today my book Evangelism in the Inventive Age releases and I want to celebrate with my Emergent Village friends by giving you a copy of BodyPrayer. 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