Pilgrim Soldier

When we think about being provocative I would guess that a lot of people would see this as a negative thing. I suppose this is mainly because provocation is one of those words that seems to be a bad thing. We think of people being provoked into an argument or of someone hitting someone else after being provoked. So when a book suggests that the church should be provoking a response from people it could well get assigned to the spiritual dustbin, along with terminology such as ‘getting out of comfort zones’ and ‘taking risks’.

However, a few months ago a book that does exactly that was recommended to me. At that point I didn’t get it, but then as I was browsing the shelves of my local Christian bookshop about a month ago there it was simply begging me to buy it!

On Sunday night I finally got round to starting to read it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed. Its actually a book about evangelism, although I suspect that some reading it might not agree with the methods it suggests. What is refreshing though is that this is not a book that consigns verbal evangelism to the scrap heap, but instead elevates it to its rightful position within the church, front and centre.

By the way the book is Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. The basic premise is that unless an individual, or a congregation, live their lives in such a way as to make people start asking questions about the way they are living no amount of evangelism is ever going to make an impact. One quote that stood out on the first page of Chapter 1 was,

Sometimes Christians assume that people ‘out there’ are eager to listen to what the Church has to say. The only problem is learning how to say it louder and more clearly.”

It immediately made me think of the stereotypical ‘Brit abroad’ picture. We have a reputation for talking to people who don’t speak English ‘loudly, slowly and clearly’ so that they will understand what we are saying. Of course the real problem is that we aren’t speaking their language. The same mentality still exists in some circles of the church, including The Salvation Army. It doesn’t seem to matter that people no longer speak our cultural language. All we have to do is say the same things louder, slower and clearer and everything will be ok.

As someone who has never felt entirely comfortable in traditional evangelistic methods this book is really speaking to me and I’ve been thinking in depth about possible efforts that we could get involved in here in our location. I’m well into chapter 5 and have numerous thoughts coming out of it, so I’ll probably be posting more on this.