Evangelism has never been my thing, then again I’ve always imagined evangelists throwing Bibles at strangers on the street corner.
Our ministry this month has a very specific context in Bar, Montenegro: Greek Orthodox; post communist country. Ninety percent of the country identifies as Greek Orthodox, and the country was part of communist Yugoslavia until its breakup in 1992(but communist officials remained in office for years). Sadly, it is a set of rules and traditions that are not very conducive to spiritual growth or freedom. Many of these traditions developed with little or no scriptural basis.
Our puny brains find comfort in rules, and the simplicity of following rules. If you break rule A, you have consequence B. Makes sense, yeah? But if you extrapolate that to the degree of spirituality, it turns into a giant set of rules which are impossible to follow. Life becomes a frivolous pursuit of trying to break the least amount of rules possible. Many times we end up feeling like we have to follow rules, not that we want to follow them. It’s also a breeding ground for a great game called Who’s the Best Christian? where nobody wins, and often spawns a collective ego mentality. I can imagine the old crones rocking in their chairs now, pitying all of us who aren’t part of the in crowd.
We go to the 8 am service… those at the 11 am are just too lazy to wake up.
Did you know Becky goes to the 11 am?
I heard she didn’t even show up last week!
It sounds ridiculous, but is closer than most of us probably realize.
I just spent time with an elderly woman today who cannot take care of herself, and because she stopped attending the Orthodox church she has been abandon and rejected by her old community.
Another Serbian man I met at our nondenominational church had his company car taken last week. His boss told him, “You can’t have this, because you drive it to that sect.”
These things are not unusual here. Communism is not far away in this country’s history, and there are undoubtedly echoes of the past.
Last year my friend, Brix, made a profoundly simple explanation of this mentality. If you imagine a spectrum, you have “Fear” and “Control” on one end, and “Love” and “Freedom” on the other. People naturally want Control, but we cannot have Love and Control, so instead of giving up Control, often we sacrifice Love. The result is a life rooted in Fear.
Christianity is not about following a set of rules(Control) out of fear of hell, a need to please God, or a need to win points with the clergy. Christianity is about living in freedom and love. It pains me to see people miserably walking to church on Sunday mornings. What’s the point? I’d rather happily go to hell than be a miserable slave of “god” (luckily God does not actually work that way, but our rules can).
Our host, Phil, has a supernatural joy. I have never seen someone who embodies “child-like faith” to the extent he does, while also carrying a deep understanding and knowledge of the Gospel. It is his mission to bless the people here with a new understanding of freedom in Christianity, and break them away from the oppression and politics of the rules in the church. We came here for this month to help his church grow and spread his message in whatever way is possible for us.
Sometimes that means having a conversation in the grocery store, grabbing coffee, or inviting people over to play cards and have dinner. Evangelism here is not shouting and throwing Bibles, but hanging out and showing people what it looks like to live a life of Love and Freedom.
