The Big Picture

I read an article recently in Christianity Today about evangelism called From Four Laws to Four Circles. It's about a guy - James Choung - who has written on evangelism and has recently developed a little visual aid to assist in sharing the gospel with his college buddies at MIT. He's now a divisional director of InterVarsity. The "napkin diagram" (he was an engineering major) is interesting, but for my purposes here is secondary to a statement he made in the article that I liked. Here's the video so you can see for yourself:


What I really appreciated, however, was his answer to this question:

How do you hope this tool will change the way Christians themselves think of evangelism?
I hope we will move from decision-oriented presentations to ones that have more to say about transformation. As we were developing the Big Story, we wanted a diagram that wouldn't just be binary—in or out—but would represent the journey that all of us are on.
We also wanted to move from an exclusive focus on the afterlife to the mission-life. Immediately after Jesus' invitation, "Follow me," he added, "I will make you fishers of men." From the outset, he gave his disciples a mission. Without the mission in our gospel presentations, we do people a grave disservice. We imply that they can be Christians without being on a God-given mission to love others in his name. And that's just not true. In Jesus' summation, we are all called to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. In Micah's version, we are called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We need to allow the reign of God to continue to grow in us and around us. That's not to say that life after death isn't important. But it's not the whole story. It's the final chapter, but there are still many chapters to be lived out.