Evangelism and the Cynic
This week I attended an evangelistic event for teenagers. Kids from all over the area entered a local football stadium, walking through an impressively long line of adults who enthusiastically high fived every single student. Several kids out of this huge group of high schoolers had been asked to pray, talk about their favorite Bible verses, or give a testimony. A worship band played, and a huge early fall moon hung shockingly low over the stadium while the singers’ voices echoed into the warm night.
Sawyer, my seventeen year old, was one of the student speakers. He stood in front of that hoard of fidgety teenagers and asked them if they want to change the world. The only way to do it, he said, is to get a testimony. He talked about life before Jesus and life after. He described the beautiful exhange that took place on the cross: our sin for Jesus’ righteousness. The restless kids listened politely as he spoke.
A pastor with a long white beard preached. Toward the end of his sermon, all of those adults who had high-fived the kids as they came in walked down from the bleachers and spread out across the football field. The pastor asked everyone to bow their heads, and it came as no surprise when he led the entire stadium in a prayer for salvation. This is what this type of event is all about–urging kids to pray a prayer, asking them to come forward to proclaim salvation.
As a Gen Xer who grew up in youth group culture, this type of thing makes me cringe a little. I came of age in a time when it seemed like a person’s Christian faith was defined solely by the date that a person said those magic prayer words. It felt like what happened afterward wasn’t that important–as long as someone said the prayer, and especially if they remember the exact date or at least could retell the story of that special moment, they were clearly a Christian, no matter the lack of fruit in their lives. So I guess it was very Gen X of me in that moment under the stadium lights to feel a little cynical.
After the pastor led the prayer, he asked the kids who prayed it to make their way onto the field where the adults were waiting to counsel them. I sat and watched as the entire stadium shifted into motion. All around me, from all areas of the bleachers, kids were coming down to the field by the hundreds. I squirmed in my seat, sure that most of these kids were just doing what they felt was expected. I doubted that even a few of these kids could be serious about seeking a relationship with Christ. The cynicism ran deep in me, like poison.
It took a long time for the enormous crowd of kids to slowly make their way from their seats all the way down the field. The pastor continued to encourage them. Then, to those of us still sitting in the stands, he issued a challenge: huddle up together and pray for these kids. When he said that, it hit me that I was so busy being a naysayer and I didn’t even have a thought about the very real things that God could do in this moment, even in kids who only went to the field because all their friends went.
I turned to my friend and her teenaged daughter next to me and asked them if they wanted to pray. I bowed my head and almost instantly felt my heart begin to soften. I felt my pride and my sense of what nice, neat salvation should look like fade away as I contemplated the power of God. I realized as I bowed at the throne of the God of the universe that I was doubting what He could do in this moment. I was discounting all of the ways that He is free to work because I was afraid of what He might not do. I was sitting there, skeptical, as if God wasn’t capable of making those teenagers new creations at this very event, in this very way.
It was as if God pressed this truth into my heart as I sat there under that huge low-hanging moon: Who are you to say what I will or won’t do? Who are you to question how I will bring salvation to this generation? I felt like Job when God asked him where he was when God told the ocean where to stop. I had a strong, convicting sense that I had no business being cynical because salvation comes from God alone, no matter what I think about how it happens.
Did hundreds of students have a true encounter with Jesus at this event and go home changed? Maybe. Or maybe not. But as I sit here now, I have every confidence that God did some important things that night in the hearts of teenagers, and also in the heart of one aging youth groupie from way back: me. I know that many of us could sit here all day long and debate about decisionalism and all sorts of methods and ways. But the last thing I want to be is a cynical Christian, so proud of myself, so sure that I know how God works best. I’d rather be the greying woman in the bleachers who is praying with full hope and expectancy for what God can do anytime the gospel goes out. He does what He wants. Amen.