Evangelism and Truth

This guest post is by AHH, a routine reader and commenter on this blog.

Lying to Open Doors for Evangelism? (AHH)

The child of some friends went on a short mission trip recently to a country that is closed to missionaries.  I won’t name the ministry organization, but most of you would recognize it.  My wife and I gave a little financial support.

The post-trip letter arrived the other day, and we read how the group had pretended to be “potential foreign exchange students” to get access to a university and have conversations about Jesus.  This disturbed us.  If the description in the letter is correct, they lied to their hosts, using deception as a tool to enable evangelism.  Does the Great Commission override the Ninth Commandment?

I was reminded of the youth group at a local church when I was a kid, who in order to talk about Jesus on one mission trip went door-to-door under the false pretense of conducting a survey.  And of the story I heard about a group of seminarians who would enter a bar separately, with the last one coming in as a ranting street preacher until he was thrown out so the others could then talk to people about Jesus.

How common is it that evangelism becomes THE goal to such an extent that other aspects of following Jesus, like honesty, fall by the wayside?  Can deception in the cause of evangelism ever be justified?

Then I got to thinking about other cases.  What about aid workers and English teachers who are doing good work, but do not reveal their “hidden agendas” where they hope to make friends and tell people about Jesus?  What about ministry in the local community that has an underlying evangelism agenda?  Somehow these don’t bother me much; we all have mixed agendas, and it does not seem wrong to look for chances to verbally share the Gospel as one loves and serves others, especially if the service is seen as part of God’s mission in its own right rather than as only a means to evangelism.

Where do we draw the line?  Is any level of “hidden agenda” acceptable in the name of evangelism?  Is there a danger of muzzling God if we try too hard to avoid hidden agendas when serving others?

A final question: any advice for what we might say (if anything) to this student?  And/or to the parents?