Monday, April 16, 2012
Can't Sell What You Don't Have
Justin Taylor quotes Douglas Wilson:
That said, I would use this potent metaphor to illustrate what I say in the title - we need renewal and revival becasue so often in the zeal to evangelize, we forget just what it is we are trying to convert people to. Sometimes the church makes the best salesmen in the world, problem is, they don't know the product. We sell sales.
I often wonder what would happen if we decided to spend a generation maturing what we have rather than growing? Farmers can only take their product to market in season. I wonder if we are in season?
What you practice at home is the show you take on the road. What you grow in your fields is what you load on the trucks.Ooooh, such an excellent metaphor pressed not near far enough. Wilson has a point - if you are not evangelical at home, you're not going to be evangelical in "the field."
[...]
This is why reformation and revival in our churches here is a necessary precondition for effective evangelism there. Say that someone says he has a real burden "for the lost" in Wango Bango. Say that the person at church he is speaking to suggests they spend that afternoon going door-to-door at student housing for the local university. There are lost people here too.
That said, I would use this potent metaphor to illustrate what I say in the title - we need renewal and revival becasue so often in the zeal to evangelize, we forget just what it is we are trying to convert people to. Sometimes the church makes the best salesmen in the world, problem is, they don't know the product. We sell sales.
I often wonder what would happen if we decided to spend a generation maturing what we have rather than growing? Farmers can only take their product to market in season. I wonder if we are in season?
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