Seong Kim
G 10174396
EV 500 - Final Project
Prof. Richard Peace
Fall 2010
A Witness to Spiritual Peek-a-boo:
A Case Study on Group Bible Study Based Evangelism
A bible study group was organized with the purpose of presenting the meaning of belief in God to a few alumni of Seoul High School. Whereas none of the members has yet reached a personal conversion decision yet, the reviewer could better determine what evangelism is, and is not to these individuals, along with evaluation of the potential and urgency of evangelism. The method was an apologetic Group Bible Study (GBS) evangelism, and the meeting duration lasted from October 6, 2010 to mid December.
The Group Analyzed
a. Initiation. A deacon and D.D.S asked me to lead a GBS for several alumni that he was close to. Interestingly, the group consisted of three outsiders, one new convert, one admittedly nominal churchgoer, and one strong believer. I figured out the intention of the latter, and accepted his proposal with excitement and anxiety. He promised to open his house (Plymouth, LA) to offer light dinners for every meeting.
b. Demographics. All the GBS members are graduates from SHS (Seoul High School), arguably the top private high school in Korea. Attending the school was often a guarantee of success and fame. Four members are successful business owners, one professional, and one a retired executive of an international airliner, now running an apparel company. All are married, but one was divorced.
c. Format. We agreed to gather every Wednesday at 7 pm for study and discussion of selected Psalms.[1] Every session covered basic exposition of the texts, often passionate exchanges of thoughts, and would often incite open and vulnerability discussion. The participants were provided with questions from the leader, with simple exposition offered by John Stott.[2]
d. Material. Starting with Psalm 1, we discussed Psalm 104, 19, 51, 23, 131, and 8 respectively. We missed one session due to my unplanned trip to Korea, for which the members felt the loss.
e. Progress. As the sessions progressed, the Psalms penetrated and puzzled the minds of the participants with unique perspectives and confessions of God. The members explicitly struggled with the Infinite, Sovereign, and Intruder aspects of God. However, the participants steadily removed their ‘social masks’ one-by-one, and seriously engaged with the text.
f. Remarks. Their increasing interest and attitudes were particularly observed in a few incidents:
i. Prayer. We decided to spontaneously open every session with a participant’s prayer. This seemed to mysteriously accelerate the members’ conscience and concentration on God. [3]
ii. Enthusiasm. The host’s 92 year-old mother died near the time of the fifth session. Although the host and hostess had to participate in the funeral in Korea, one of the non-believing participants and his Christian wife offered to open their house in order to sustain the warmth and regularity of the GBS, even though she is a lung-transplant patient dependent on an oxygen tank for respiration. Her presence proved to be an uplifting spirit to our meeting.
iii. Increased invitations. The participants spread the word about the GBS, and two alumnae and one wife of an alumnus joined our Thanksgiving eve session, held November 22, 2010.
iv. Signs of Formation. Little advances were observed during the sessions.
1. Focus. The non-believers appeared to change their focus slightly from purely intellectual questions to more existential questions, such as the problem of pride and self-grangerization. Though not yet admitting that it was ultimately a problem of morality (calling for alteration of lifestyle) that hindered connection to faith in Christ,[4] it was a significant step.
2. Perspective. Realizing that Christianity respects faith-seeking understanding, not blinded by anti-intellectualism, the participants actively demonstrated their views and opinions of God, which was unusual and refreshing.
3. Precursors to Formation. one participant confessed to no longer having such a ‘testy’ posture toward God near the end of the study. Another balanced out and exhibited an uncanny sensibility to God after praying for God’s help for the first time in his life. Another expressed his disinterest in a God who punishes and pours out his wrath, but came to admit that God, of anyone, deserved to punish his wayward, wasted past. A wife addressed her feelings of spiritual motherlessness.
Challenges
Wherever the gospel of Jesus is proclaimed, there is either resistance or embrace of the message. The non-Christians showed their resistance and offered counter arguments against Christian beliefs to justify their views. Following are the main inhibitions that surfaced:
a. Credibility of the Bible. They begrudgingly questioned the historicity, authorship and some discrepancies they discovered in the Bible, though admitted that ‘the book’ seemed to have some merit; for instance, as a moral textbook.
b. Claim of supremacy. They furiously attacked the concept that there was one truthful way to God, and with diligence maintained that Christianity is nothing but ‘a way to the claim absolutes.’
c. Total surrender. Presented with the uniqueness of the Christian faith, they forcefully refused a total commitment to Christ. They held that such decision could mislead them toward depression or religious fanaticism.
d. A ‘whimsical’ God. one member particularly revealed his distrust toward the God as one who sometimes chose to bless, and other times to abandon the people. This complaint was unavoidable, according to the churchgoer in the group.
e. Clash with science. Christianity is too contradictory to cutting edge sciences such as genetic evolutionism, neuron-science and quantum physics. So much so that they did not give much credence to Christianity.
f. ‘Weird’ teachings. For example, the supposed constant focus on tithing, church attendance, and abstinence from liquor and tobacco was a very negative message in their minds. They had an impression of the church as more of an ‘AA group,’ rather than a mature, community.
g. Contradictions by believers. They carried real hurt from several Christians who were very inconsistent in their personal lives. The worst case, in their opinion, was Christians who claimed to be forgiven by God, yet habitually committed obvious sin.
Discoveries
Shaken and dispirited by their acrid critiques, I barely survived the sessions. Honestly, it was even stressful and at times I felt regret at having agreed to lead them. It was important in discerning what evangelism is not, as the sessions went on.
a. Inciting curiosity. one of the joys I sometimes experience by going to an exotic restaurant is hearing the language uttered by the host they announce my order in the kitchen. It creates curiosity in my mind and makes my mouth water. By no means should our Christian “language” inhibit the catalyzing of healthy eagerness in seekers. We must not realize that evangelism and conversion does not mean automatic conformity for an outsider coming in, but our phraseology needs to incite meaningful and attractive inter-faith dialogue, with listening and learning communicated in both directions to be effective.
b. Coercing. A prior knowledge of Christian doctrine and boastful displays also tend to inhibit the seeker from strengthening their weak faith, or can mar their infant relationship with Christ. Although conversion entails conformity to the sound doctrines in the end, we are not to coerce non-believers to adopt doctrines.
c. Witnessing. Christians hurriedly run after miraculous experiences to ‘ground’ their faith. But unbelievers regard them only as subjective religiosity. Careless testimonial evangelism will be only “giving a little, taking a lot.” Postmoderns have the ability to startle us often with illuminating theories of human experience.
d. Promising. A guilt-free life sounds like hype to non-Christians. Christianity’s demand for discipleship can elicit a degrading feeling, which is very common in churches today and results in regular painful experiences for seekers. Furthermore, this seemingly ‘cheap approach’ would not connect with the more educated and high-income seekers.
e. Socializing. Especially for immigrants, building a relational connection or social atmosphere is an important factor that evangelists can be aware of. Often lonely and isolated, immigrants are more easily drawn to the church. Even if a keen understanding of conversion is communicated, neglecting to appeal to social needs can lead to failure in evangelism.
f. Misrepresentation. We can effortlessly mislead first generation (Korean) Christians to think evangelism is the public duty of the church or a preacher, mainly because they have been reared in the culture of heroism and collectivism. However, if we neglect to stimulate a true authentic and personal faith, the effort comes to a tragic end.
Suggestions
So what then have we learned about true evangelism? The following is a compilation of what I have discovered through the sessions regarding authentic evangelism:
a. Peek-a-boo. Babies love to play Peek-a-boo. The baby tries to hide from the sight of the adult at first. But he/she becomes quickly anxious if he/she is not found. What I have observed in these sessions is the behavior on ‘God-seeking hearts.’ In essence, a non-believer is playing a peek-a-boo game with God. Evangelism can be seen as an aid to help seekers realize that they playing spiritual ‘Peek-a-boo’ with God, fearing that they are never going to be ‘found,’ yet they simultaneously wish not to be found too soon. There are no human exceptions to the innate instinct of this play.
b. Pilgrimage. The final goal of evangelism is conversion to Christ. However, we must not create a stereotype, assuming that all true conversions should be that like that of the drastic and dramatic conversion of Paul. We can discern a process to conversion, just as C.S. Lewis confessed his to be.[5]
c. Spiral Structure. The seekers jubilate in the tiny findings of God at certain moments, and duck their heads in the sand of doubt instinctually at other moments. We should take account this ups and downs. A ‘mushrooms after rain’ evangelism model is not biblical, considering a seed of the Kingdom grows gradually and steadily[6].
d. Based in reality. Not religion or religiosity, but life and reality should be the starting point of evangelism. At the base of life, everyone experiences a soul longing, sense of aloneness, and fears and wonders of life and death that only the transcendental and thoroughly immanent God can answer and meet.
Conclusion
A few principles emerge from this study. First, we must escape from the extremist approaches to evangelism, adopting a more pluralistic understanding of conversion and a personal stimulus-response style projection of gospel. People are still in search of the cosmic yet personal and caring one. This is what the ‘Emergent movement’ or Open theism might have overlooked, ironically.
Secondly, we must remember that God is omnipotent and omniscience, but we are not. We should be free to err or even be vulnerable about our ignorance with others. Humility counts much more than pretense of intelligence. In this respect, Paul is the best example, saying that he was weak, full of fear and trembling when he evangelized.[7] Non-believers do not desire to consult with ‘all-knowing’ theologians, but prefer to chat with the honest and authentic mystery-bearers of God, more open to hearing of their reason of hope.[8]
Thirdly, evangelism relates to our spiritual reorientation and health as well. Nothing is a more precise barometer to check our current state of spirituality than evangelism. It needs prayer and commitment, and reminds us of how gracious God was to save a wretch like me!
Fourthly, we can create as many fertile and relevant models and methods of evangelism as we feel obliged to. However, models and methods do not beget effective evangelism, and vice versa.
Lastly, the urgency of evangelism should be brought back to the core of our Christian walk. We have become too obsessed with efficiency and methodology of evangelism, while people are asking desperately how to seek, search and knock to find meaning in God and the possibility of the renewed life. We have to answer to ourselves what it is that currently shackles us from telling and sharing with people the restoration that God has intended in our life.
[1] The selected Psalms came from a Fuller Seminary Winter 2010course that I attended, The Psalms (Dr. John Goldingay) . My final project for the class: “Teaching the Psalms at Kor-American Churches with Theologico-Cultural Awareness.”
[2] I translated “Favorite Psalms: Growing Closer to God” (John Stott, Baker Books, 2003), held by a Korean Christian publisher, and obtained permission for the partial use of the translated texts for the GBS.
[3] They meditated and wrote a prayer at home that which they were assigned to bring to the meeting.
[4] As referred to by John Stott, Basic Christianity (Downers Groves, IL: IVP, 2006), 22.
[5] Lewis describes his conversion in Surprised by Joy, saying. “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." (New York; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) 266.
[7] 1Cor. 2:4
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