Street Evangelism

"Something to read in your spare time?"

That was the question I was asked by a young man of maybe 26 years as he held out a pamphlet to me. His movement was so sudden it startled me - I couldn't help but wonder if he had to operate under the guise of waiting for a bus or some such thing so that security wouldn't remove him from the parking lot of the Square One shopping centre in Mississauga. I looked at the pamphlet - "Common Questions About God" was the title on it, clearly some piece of literature intended to point people in the right direction, but I couldn't help but wonder if his methods were on target.

Some people find themselves reading whatever happens to be in their hands at the time when they're on a long trip. Since this young man was outside the GO bus terminal at Square One, he might have had the right idea, if anyone would take the pamphlet from him. My girlfriend joked to me when I told her the title, "That's what I have you for." So it seems to me that the question is really, "What do people without a significant Christian figure in their lives do with their questions about God?"

The answer, probably, is: "Not that much."

Is street evangelism a misrepresentation of Christ's message? So often, it seems as though messages of condemnation are perpetuated through the business end of a megaphone on a streetcorner, all supposedly in the name of evangelism. Yet, others are truly striving to succeed in sharing the gospel with those in our culture who desperately need it. There seems to be no answer.

Perhaps, as with some things, the act itself is neutral, but the one from whom the behaviour stems is responsible for both the method and the outcome. It is not unreasonable to say that certain street evangelists serve the Kingdom well, while others bring shame upon all of us.

This, I know for certain: when I was approached, I knew I didn't want to talk to the person speaking to me. I knew that I was uncomfortable with the way he started the "conversation", which felt more like he was speaking at me than to me, and I knew that whatever it was that he wanted to tell me, my initial impression turned me off to anything else he wanted to say.

So, how can we redeem street evangelism? Our culture is so fixated on the self and on our own personal experience of the world that we can forget at times that others even exist as people. Individual consciousnesses surround us, and we are so fixated on what we're trying to do that we forget that. It seems that this phenomenon has affected both sides of the equation when it comes to street evangelism, since the proponents of it often forget about the other person's human experience, treating them as a "body" to project the gospel into, while the recipients of this evangelistic method are so focused on their own human experience that they don't care about what the evangelist in question has to say to them.

I believe the answer must lie in relationships. When we become part of someone's human experience, they listen to us; we exist in the minds of these people, and for some, we even become recognized as other consciousnesses, instead of a loose, vague notion of descriptors and associations. When we exist in a person's mind, we can begin to share our experience and understanding of things, and we earn the right to influence their understanding as well. So, by creating relationships with people - even over little things, with people we meet in the street - we can help to correct perceptions of the gospel (and street evangelism).