writing in the sand: Jesus introduces tract evangelism

I guess I just don't want to be a puppet. I don't want to just tote the company line. I don't want to be a parrot. I am (possibly inappropriately) opposed to Bible tracts. People want real people, not directions like you get in the box with your new bookcase: "Step 1- Locate bottom shelf". God can't be reduced to a formula. He isn't in the 3 page tract people give out on street corners. If God is so smart why didn't He skip the Bible and just write a tract?

I know, I know. God does use those tracts to reach people sometimes. But I really cannot imagine that if Jesus was here today he would be handing out tracts at the bus station. I believe he would be doing, well, what he did in the Bible: visiting people in their homes, eating dinner with them, giving them food, talking with them about their real issues (their life story not- 'will you please agree with these three points here on this piece of paper?'). The Bible says that God is love and that love is action and deed. I think evangelism is messy and involves knowing someone and holding their hand and asking them questions and treating them as your EQUAL. People's lives are messy. A four step tract, however well intended, can be almost offensive to those whose lives are in complete shambles. Today I met with a teenage girl in foster care who needed so much more then a tract. I met a 72 year old african refugee living in poverty who needed food, prayer, and connections. My husband spoke last night with a guy who wants to have a friend, not be someone's project. I hope I never make someone feel like a notch on my spiritual belt. I hope I will always remember that I don't have all the answers, but only that I know Who does.

I do think that God has designed us all differently and that certain people work better in certain ways and respond better to certain circumstances, tracts included. I just don't get it. Maybe if you are in another country and cannot easily communicate the gospel, a tract would be helpful. I'm sure God uses them. It's just that I, personally, out of all the Christians I know, do not know one single person who was saved by reading a tract. But this is just my own personal experience.

I was once with a friend and we were with a group of believers, many of whom I did not know. Near the end of the night my friend looked into her purse and pulled out a tract. The same tract one of the guys had been carrying around earlier. It was so embarrassing. That guy had no right to stick that in her purse. I felt that he had intruded in my friendship with her. I felt that he was trying to take a short cut- and to pressure her. That's what tracts do- they impersonalize God. They make a relationship with Him seem like a business contract or a pyramid scheme. Tracts can exploit a relationship.

God wrote the BIBLE. It has love stories, poems, wisdom, instructions, commands. Not a check list. I heard a quote once, "Of 100 men, one will read the Bible; 99 will read the Christian." Another quote, "The greatest proof of God's love is a life that needs God's love to explain it." Maybe it's time Christians entered into the world of the hurting, the lost, the confused, the hardened. Not handing out tracts by sticking our hands out of the Christian bubble like a drive-thru window. Jesus said, "Go. And make disciples." Disciples. Not converts. To make a disciple involves much time and tears and living life together.

Wow. I probably am offending people. I hope I am not. I am intending to just be opening up dialogue. I also wonder what it would feel like to have someone try to give me a tract. Actually, now that I think about it, I have. The mormons have come to my door before. It was weird, feeling like a "secularist". I felt like a task, an exercise to be completed. Like they were told, "Go to this neighborhood and collect people.

What about "Who are you? What is your story? What are your needs? How can we love you? How can we serve you? How can we show you what our Jesus is like?"