Rick, a friend of mine, invited me to Texas to a meeting of the Texas Evangelism and Missions Conference. Oklahoma will hold its evangelism conference near the end of January. We shared dinner with a small group on Thursday evening listening to a young church planter from Houston. I have met and been in meetins withe Chris on a number of occasions.
On Friday Chris shared for a couple of hours and in the process used a great illustration to describe our approach to reaching the world with the gospel of Christ. He showed a few slides of bathrooms/restrooms from around the world. Teaching his five year old daughter how to avoid germs in restrooms has been a goal. He shows her how to turn on the water with your elboys and to really just, “not touch anything.”
He drew the parallel. We want to reach the world but not touch anything. Keep it at arms length. Don’t get dirty. This anesthetized approach to mission work does not accomplish the proclamation of the gospel in third world countries and it certainly won’t here in the good old USA.
Arms in or arms out? Using your elbows or your hands?