Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Pub Evangelism in England

Greetings from England. All i can say is that this is one place where everything lives up to its expectations: fog, green hills, sheep crossing the road, pubs and taverns, fish and chips, etc. One of the pastures has a crashed german bomber from WW2. I'm staying in a home that was built in 1880s and the n-hood looks like the set of the Christmas Carol. Also, its within a stone's throw of where John Wesley preached to over 20,000 people.

Most researchers tell us that the UK reveals what the USA will look like in 20 yrs where today, in a country that has a cross in its flag, approximately only 7% of the people attend church. For some reason, a number of the mainline churches here chose to freeze frame their metodologies in the 18th century.

In addition to this, according to the locals perspective, sometime in the early 20th century, the churches focused the bulk of their efforts and $ on making Christians smarter.

Linear, modern era approaches of evangelism and apologetics are sooo history here. By far the best place to have spriritual discussions is in the pubs. Here's an example of some typical conversations w/different people:

Do you have any spiritual beliefs?
No, not really. So how do you think your football club will do against the Italians?

What do you think about Jesus?
I suppose he was a pretty good bloke. Have you ever seen the Stones live?

Do you believe in God?
Never really thought about it before...Do you have Green King Abbbott Ale in the States?

Do you go to church?
Why would i do that?

The kewl thing is that everyone is pretty friendly and open to talking and asking questions but basically, there's just a general disinterest in Christianity. What seems to work better is to ask questions like:

-Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
-What do you want to do with your life?

Because, in spite of the disinterest, like anywhere there's still that God shaped vaccuum that only Jesus can fill. Something is missing. I believe this may be the better place to start and I believe we need to begin to re-write and re-consider our evangelistic training methods and resources.