Coke can evangelism

Posted by Joe on: 07.14.2008 /

A local church to us has started loving our city. The concept appears to be to undertake small acts of random kindness amongst the local community, including picnics in the park, making over somone’s flat after a fire, and paying more than necessary to a local business when buying a product.

I’ve no idea if it has any relationship, but this kind of thinking appears to be linked to the notion of Servant Evangelism which grew out of the work of Steve Sjogren at Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati.  To cut a very long story short, Steve started doing deliberate small acts in his community to get the church to have a better name - such as washing people’s cars for free and distributing cold drinks in hot weather - eventually leading to exponential growth in his church.

It is a radical idea: if you are kind to people, they might not think you are just a bunch of religious freaks. And you know, I have a lot of sympathy for the sentiment. In our culture, ‘church’ is a minority sport whichever way you look at it. Whilst many people when questioned say they have some religious affiliation, the reality is that few actually interact at all with the institution on any real level. So for me, the issue is not about trying to change people’s understanding by offering a set of theology, because most people are not the slightest bit interested in Christianity. If we are to have any moral influence on society, we have to prove that we are a positive influence not a negative influence and that can only be done when people’s first thoughts of ‘church’ is positive rather than negative or neutral. For me, the only way we can do that is by costly and sacrificial service, so that people remember the after school club, holiday activities, debt counselling (or whatever) that Christians have selflessly offered their communities.

On the other hand, I’m somewhat uncomfortable about the notion of using cans of cola as a hook for evangelism, because what we do is as or more important than what we say we believe anyway.

Comments?