Words that Don't Go Together

From Tim Keller:

For instance, our typical evangelistic presentations are effective with persons
who assume they should be good. Then the gospel-presenter tries to show them
than they are not good enough they fall short of Gods perfect standards and
therefore they need Jesus to forgive sin and help them do the right thing. This
presentation was quite appropriate for almost everyone in my parents
generation. My parents, who are evangelical Christians, and my in-laws, who are
not at all, had basically the same social and moral values. If you asked them
the questions such as, What do you think about pre-marital sex, or
homosexuality, or pornography? both sets of parents would have answered the
same. They were part of a world in which Christianity was the folk-religion even
if it was not the heart-religion of most people. They believed that the purpose
of life was to be a good person. This world no longer exists everywhere.

On the other hand, if you say to those in my kids generation, You know
you have to be good, they will say, Whos to say what good is? So what are we
to do with these post-everything persons who are increasingly dominating our
society? The traditional gospel presentations will not make much sense to many
of them.

This is a very good point, and one that bears discussion. So where does this leave us? Seemingly, with an ineffective message to a ever growing segment of the world! What are we to do?

The gospel must stay the same, but the message cannot. That is to say, the methods cannot. The one size fits all method of evangelism, and church growth for that matter, must be done with. If you look in the beginning of Acts, it says

v1. The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach,

Many people may say they teach what Jesus taught. That they believe in what the epistles say. But for Christ, His teaching was followed up by His actions. It seems to me that many churches teach what Jesus taught, but do not do what He did. The "post-everything" as Keller calls them, respond to words that are backed up by a life style. This means that this leads us down the road of relational evangelism, no more cold-calling, so to speak. It means living like Christ did, being incarnational, getting involved in peoples lives. Caring for them, weeping with them, laughing with them, being Christ to them. Black, white, asian, strait, homosexual, alcoholics, druggies, multiple tattoos, born in church, or never even seen a church. It means loving them all the same.