Out of the corner of my eye I see what looks like a stack of Benjamins. That can’t be legit. Not out in the middle of my driveway.
Sure enough, it’s a marketing trick. Small books with hundred dollar bill covers are in every driveway on our street. And it’s not just a wrapped stack of hundreds. It’s a $1,000,000 bill. Pretty clever. Gets your attention for sure.
The book? A King James Version of the Gospel of John. It’s an evangelistic effort by a group who wanted to get God’s word into every driveway in town. I can’t help but wonder: Is this what Jesus wanted his followers and his church to do?
A small shopping newspaper hits my driveway each weekend. I doubt that anyone reads them. They sit in driveways, week after week, simply disintegrating in the sun, rain, and traffic. Ironically, a cleaning company advertises their services by littering yards with zip lock bags of small stones and business cards. Few are opened, most end up in the trash.
So, lets add another small bag of trash to the landscape. Someone will open it, read it, and their life will be changed. If that happens, the verdict will be, “It was worth it.”
Really? Is that the best the church can do? Rather than engaging people in conversation, getting to know them, and talking about faith, we’ll trash up the neighborhood and hope that it makes a difference.
That’s not what the apostles did. They talked to people, helped them, and personally shared their faith with those who didn’t know about Jesus. They put themselves out there, like Jesus did, to disseminate good news.
I will never discount the power of God’s Word. But if you aren’t willing to get to know someone, care about them, and show them what love looks like, throwing a bunch of bibles at the world won’t do much good. The word of God became flesh for a reason. We need relationships much more than we need another book on the shelf or pamphlet on the street.
By the way, that weekly shopping newspaper finally went out of business. Thirty years ago, it was the place to learn about garage sales and contractors. In the last few years, it shrunk in size to just a few pages. Last week’s edition came with the announcement of it’s final printing. From now on, you could read it digitally. It also came with an envelope just in case you wanted to send money to the now unemployed delivery people.
Waite for it... 