A Stranger, a PBR, and the Voice of God

I wasn’t quite sure what time it was, but who cared? It was a beautiful midwestern summer evening and the air was cool. As I stood outside a row of apartment buildings in Madison, WI, near the university, I chatted with a guy named Alex. We were talking about God, mostly: about what it meant to find meaning in life, about his past experiences with Christianity, about his struggles with finding joy in his work and wanting to break free, to do something new. It felt like we had been talking for hours – I don’t actually recall how long we stood and chatted – and as the conversation neared its end, I asked him if I could pray for him. He said yes. We prayed, we embraced, and he wept as we talked. There has never been any question in my mind that God met Alex that night. To what extent and with what consequence, to this day, I do not know – I was only in town for a few days, after all.

I came to Madison for a training conference. I was a new campus minister with an evangelical campus ministry group, and my organization hosted a weeklong conference for new staff: intensive Bible study, plenary sessions, practical planning times, fundraising training, and even a full day of point evangelism in the city of Madison. While some of my friends found success sharing about the good news of Jesus Christ and His Gospel to strangers in the crowded streets of Madison, my partner and I didn’t feel so successful; maybe this is another story for another day, but we somehow ended up meeting a group of folks who were about to listen to Pink Floyd LPs and do drugs (I don’t think we realized all that was entailed when the guy invited us to come ‘check out his LP collection’…?). When we walked in there, the whole apartment was full of musk. We tried to ham-handedly pivot into a Gospel-conversation. My partner, inspired by an eco-pot poster, started talking about how Jesus calls us to love the earth; as they got ready to light up, we prayed an awkward blessing over them in their living room, that the Lord would "meet them where they were at." It’s hilarious in retrospect, but that whole conversation was an awkward one, so by the end of the evening I felt like I had missed out on what our practical evangelism session was supposed to teach us.

That evening, I got ready to retire. I was in my hotel room for the conference and my roommate was already asleep – but at midnight I heard the voice of the Lord, that still, small voice that comes upon me sometimes when I pray and seek for it, and sometimes unbeckoned by me: “Go for a walk, I have someone for you to meet.”

I guess I should say a little about hearing the voice of the Lord here, because it strikes me as something from my tradition (Pentecostalism) that is viewed with the utmost skepticism from many other traditions in Christianity, especially in light of how often the “word of the Lord” gets deployed to ill effect in the public life of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians. I tend to follow A.W. Tozer’s description for the practice of listening to the voice of God:

For the average believer, the progression will be something like this: first, a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden; then a voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes an intelligible word – as warm, intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of All. (1)

Which is to say, when I speak about hearing the ‘still, small voice’ of God, I’m not speaking of a voice that shakes the firmament, or a vision, or the voice of an angel – although, as a good Pentecostal, I think those kinds of experiences can happen in our encounters with God – but I’m speaking about a personal, warm, presence of God, that silently yet with an unfalsifiable clarity conveys direction from God by the Holy Spirit directly to the believer. When I hear God speak to me this way, I have never yet heard anything about the rise and fall of nations, or the destruction of wicked people, or the like – I am not a “prophet”! – but what I hear is a Word which I find myself compelled to follow. It bears fruit, to use Tozer’s language, of “life and light.”

And so I obeyed and followed. It was midnight, but Madison at midnight in the summer was a happening place. Who knows where the person God wanted me to meet was? I mostly wandered through the city streets praying, keeping myself open for some new direction. Up State Street to the university, I didn’t discern any call or direction. From there, I began walking down a street filled with frat houses (very active this evening) and apartment buildings. It was there I came across Alex: he was standing next to some friends chatting and smoking outside an apartment building. I don’t really remember what happened next. Did I sense a tug and jump into a conversation? Or did they call out to me first? All I know is that I was suddenly in the right place, talking with the person God told me to meet, and drinking a PBR with him. And the rest unfolded naturally, beautifully, by the power of the Spirit.

I think a lot about what evangelism looks like in the 21st century. One thing I’m convinced of is that the hole in our evangelistic outreach is not the same as the lack of people waiting to hear a Word that might change their life. But folks these days seem quite rightly concerned regarding what evangelism looks like in our lives. If you look carefully at the practices of the corner megachurch, you’ll see that a lot of the so-called ‘evangelism’ is nothing more than targeted marketing: not, “how can we get the message of Christ to those who most need it?” but “how can we get our message in front of those who will most likely act upon it?” (“act upon it” here meaning something like… come to church). And my sense is that we are all pretty well aware that the old Billy Graham evangelical method of walking up to folks and asking them “if you died today, would you go to heaven?” is a fool’s errand for most modern evangelism. It’s not that folks don’t care about heaven and hell, per se, but probably that we’re more resilient to ignoring what we perceive as an advertisement. Perhaps most concerning is that even when we do pick up the ‘best practices’ for evangelism in the church – even if we adopt invitational models of ministry and practice – most of these strategies only end up applying to folks within our own circles, making evangelism in the church yet another center for patterns of our predilections, rather than actual “outreach.”

In light of all this, I keep thinking about my meeting with Alex and other conversations I’ve had like it: about the time a hippie sat down next to me in a coffee shop and asked me about my ‘aura,’ or the time I walked with Rafiq to his bus station, or any of the other times I have been able to give comfort, or a word of peace, or a word of encouragement, or prayer. I have never really thought of myself much as an evangelist, but now I’m realizing that’s because I had presumed that evangelists were folks who “saved souls.” At least, I don’t think I’ve ever baptized any of the folks who God has directed me to or brought to me. But what else can this thing I’ve found myself participating in – where I see God at work, amid strangers – be, if it’s not evangelism?

I share this story, then, to wonder aloud how might we imagine evangelism differently. What if we saw it as a response to the call of the Spirit? What is the shape of our evangelistic imagination, in other words? So often, I think, we say “evangelism” and it takes one mold: getting folks into church by an invitation. We could use more of that, I’m sure, and we could use more explicit conversations about the faith and what an invitation means. But I’m struck by the command of the Master in Jesus’ parable: “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.” (2) In my experience, the people are out there and are more than eager to come to the table. The chief question seems more like this: are we ready to hear the Spirit whisper to us, “Go; I have someone for you to meet”?

A.W. Tozer, The Purpose of Man, p. 179
Luke 14:23

Read More

Posts