It's Not What You Do, It's Who You (Really) Know

Just like every year, our church is preparing for yet another 'outreach' event into a local college. But as always (being the resident skeptic) I am asking, have we really changed people's lives? Have we truly forged unity with other believers in other churches? Granted, we always learn new things and gain new experience. But no matter what has been done, whatever we do always end up being just another event. Relatively little bond has been forged between our church and others, and quite very few people have been brought to a personal knowledge of Christ and have their lives changed by our efforts.

More often than not, we rely on projects and events as avenues through which God would work, and not the relationships that they build. We often assume that human beings work on the principle of mathematical formulae; if you do certain things in a certain way, then such-and-such goals will be achieved through such-and-such programs. And year in, year out, even if we do change the formulas, we stick to the same paradigm. But especially in this postmodern world, people connect more with relationships than with programs. They crave the warm, human touch of interpersonal contact, not the cold, precise nature of organized systems, including religion.

An example will help.

Our local church has for the past two years or so been trying to reach to college students by setting up a sport society at one of the international colleges in the city. The first time we tried this method of 'outreach', we were met with relatively great success at the orientation event that we used to market our club. Yet later on as the sports society went into operation, we discovered that people were beginning to lose interest. In my view this was not helped by the leadership of our church often pushing for new members of the club -especially Christian ones- to be taken to church almost immediately. After all, for most in the organizing body the club was only a front for an 'outreach'. The visits on orientation days to market the club itself is always called an 'outreach' event. In the end we operate the club only as a way to increase our church attendance and congratulate ourselves. Some real dangers lie in this.

First, we treat people not as human beings, beloved by God, but as commodities. Although a biblical word, it seems that when we use the word 'souls' to mean a people, we somehow dehumanize them. It somehow distinguishes them from ourselves, and even make ourselves sound superior to the 'unsaved souls'. This puts a distance between us lessens our chances of having a true human relationship with new- and un-believers.

The danger with this is that we do not see them as human beings with different needs, wants and pasts that being an individual comes with. We do not bother trying to find out if they have had any past difficulties with the Church. Even worse, we might find out later on that the individual is 'anti-Christian', and slip into that judgmental-mode that Christians are so well known for! A part of the reasons that we 'dehumanize' them is because we are too lazy to do our homework in building a solid, intimate friendship and find out what makes each and every person ticks. We are afraid of having to face the ugliness of humanity that we might discover underneath the surface of each of these people. In the end, they become mere 'souls' that we 'process' through our projects and programs from unbelief to baptism. It takes out the individuality of creation that God made us all with and replaces it with industrial-esque conformity.

The next danger is in great part a result of this.

Secondly, by relying on programs instead of relationships to bring changes into people's lives, we can very easily fall into the trap of insincerity, and in this postmodern world, there is no faster way to make people shut the door in our faces than the slightest stench of insincerity. And we become even more vulnerable to being insincere when we put our programs and 'mission targets' above the people we are ministering to.

A lot of the times our church leadership is in such a hurry to do outreach programs that we very seldom stop to think about why we are doing it. We claim that we are doing it for God, but we forget that God is more concerned about the people we are reaching out to than our outreach programs themselves. Our means has become, for us, the ends. As a result, after people join our sports club, they would soon be bombarded by invitations -and even insistence- to come to church, and they start thinking 'Is this why they wanted me to join this sports club? So they can get drag me to church? Forget it!'. And when this kind of approach fails to increase permanent church attendance, we either blame the outreach team or the 'stubborn, ungodly individuals' that 'refuse to know Christ'. The reason that they refuse is because we present knowing Christ as the end result of a program, and not a relagionship with a loving Individual, and thus treat those people the same way!

Based on these considerations, I have decided to push our sports club into becoming a purely secular sports club with no hidden religious agenda or Christianizing secret mission. This will then push us, the Christians who are in the club, to personally bear that mission.
I hope that by doing so I will force the club members, including myself, to establish friendships with new members instead of 'processing' them based on what they jot down in the 'religion' section of the entry form. I hope that this will change the way we view outreach, and the way we view unity and cooperation with other churches. I hope that we will stop treating unbelievers as 'souls' and start relating to them as human beings. I hope that then we will stop taking the lazy approach into sharing the Gospel, and start doing it by wanting to know each of them as individuals. I hope that by doing this we will truly follow Christ's example in relating to people. After all, my brother told me once, even when all our projects and programs fail, what we can always fall back on is our relationships.