Transactional Christianity
How does a Christian keep from inviting others to church from being transactional?
We have started inviting people into our home for meeting to worship and discuss the Bible. Already we are feeling the rub of genuine relationship and the appearance of relationship for the sake of gaining something. We have no bad motives. We have made genuine relationship with the people in our community and we enjoy their company. We also love Jesus and the Way presented to us in the Bible. We want a space where we are free to talk to our friends on purpose about this Jesus whom we love. How that appears to some is that we only wanted to be friends to try and convince them to be Christian. While I do want them to know Jesus because of the joy it has brought my life, I also genuinely want to be friends with these folks.
There is a real tension in Olga and I. The love we have for others and the love we have for Jesus are being invited to the same table. I feel this tension is good. It reveals in us a truth that we do not want to treat people as mere projects, or hopeful future members of my own MLM. We want our friendship to remain friendship. But we also want our life to align with the Bible we read and the Jesus we have come to know, which means we must point to Christ and invite others into that journey.
In the tension, my mind floats to Jesus. He, too, ate around tables in homes with many different people. His approach, then, should be my approach. Jesus did not go into the homes of people in order to close a deal, a business transaction, he went to enjoy the presence of a friend. The Gospel was not an underlying hidden cost of the meal that was shared. The Gospel was played out naturally in the life Jesus was living in their presence.
The question that must be answered is this: am I inviting these folks into my home only that they would come to faith? Or, am I properly delighting in these image-bearers now, before anything changes?
If the intention is that we trade a meal for their conversion to the faith, then our relationship is transactional. If we continue to pursue friendship with them even if they never come to believe what we believe, then our concern for others are genuine.
We are a results-focused culture, even in the Church. We want to see more people pack the pews, budgets grow, and more buildings pop up. But it is God alone who is able to draw a person into salvation. The results, found in the spiritual life of another person, if outside our control. Our goal is to love God and love others in the most genuine way that we can. We can be faithful in living out the implications of the Gospel in our own lives, and this can be a living testimony of the goodness of God for others to see. We can be light and salt. And we can talk about Jesus. But we never need a particular response from the person. Only we will continue to love them.
Post taken from “The Spark Newsletter” by Jacob Hayward. Subscribe to the Spark https://the-spark-with-jacob-hayward.beehiiv.com
