The Kerygma of Reality TV

Up late watching trashy Bravo TV. I've written before on here how I'm oddly, shamefully caught by those reality TV series like Tabitha's Salon Makeover, Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, or even Millionaire Matchmaker. Beyond showcasing a particular skill set (hairstyling/salon magement, cooking/restauranteering, dating/marriage), each of these programs tends to run on moments of Professional Truth-Telling, where Expert X (i.e., the star of the show) tells Wannabe Y what's what about their salon, entree, or romance skills.

To be sure, the experts Bravo and other such networks choose to focus on aren't merely experts; they're personalities--typically flamboyant, eccentric-bordering-on-unpleasant personalities. They are the harsh, drill sergeants of their particular profession, grinding their subjects down into nothing so that (ideally) they may be rebuilt, rehabilitated, made stronger and better. And episodes do end with the Wannabe eventually submitting to the Expert, overcoming bad habits, and improving. The shows' punch, however, comes from those "come to Jesus" scenes of prideful singles, salon owners, or chefs being told these Harsh Truths in no uncertain terms.

Inevitably, show producers/editors (even writers in some cases) follow these scenes with breakaway reaction interviews with those who have just been taken down a few notches. Reactions range from rage ("I can't believe that #&%@ said that! What does he/she know?") to chastened acceptance ("It was really hard to hear what so-and-so said, but I know it's true"). Sometimes--rarely--the reaction is so extreme that the person simply stalks off, never to be seen again. But the Expert is fine with that! "He/She couldn't take the truth," sighs the Expert, "and now s/he'll be a failure."

I wrote originally that my attraction to such scenes of putting-people-in-their-place stemmed from my own lack of self-assertiveness. These personalities seem simultaneously off-putting and admirable to me, I reasoned, largely because they are unafraid of presenting their opinions and experience as the textbook truth of their particular profession, and they brook no suggestion to the contrary. They know the truth, they know their skills, and--this is a biggie--they all prioritize presenting that truth bluntly over maintaining a relationship with the Wannabe to whom they present it. They establish truth as a standard to which the Wannabe must rise--or else--and they do so with unapologetic forcefulness.

To a degree, I recognize that I myself do something similar from time to time as a teacher. Indeed, I wonder if my fascination with these scenes has to do with how they play out a kind of pedagogical power-trip fantasy. Many's the time when I've felt the need to have a "come-to-Jesus" meeting with my students. "Here is standard X," I'd say, "and you are failing to meet it." Sometimes I want to--I have to--shock my students into a realization of their own ignorance or inexperience, forcing them to see the gap between where they are and where they need to be.

But in practice, I've rarely found that such moments play out like the truth-telling sessions on TV. Harsh truth-telling, in my experience, doesn't work as well as patience and persistence, meeting students half-way and helping them gradually gain more knowledge/expertise. Beyond a few specific instances, those times where I've attempted harsh conversations, tended to generate more problems than they solved.

Why? The difference is this: I am obliged as a teacher to be in relationship with my students in a way that TV Experts aren't with their Wannabes. My investment in my students transcends the space of a single episode. I can't afford do subsume maintaining the student-teacher relationship to the presentation of X or Y Truth about the subject I'm teaching. I have to balance the need for students to learn the skills/knowledge I teach with the fact that they will learn at different paces and in different ways than I did.

It strikes me that the distinction between TV Truth-Tellers and real-world pedagogues provides a way of thinking about a divergence of evangelicalism over the philosophy of Christian witness to the world. Evangelism, after all, involves a degree of truth-telling to an audience of people in need of that truth; it isn't coincidental that hard truth-telling sessions are known as "come to Jesus" meetings.

For some evangelists, the imperative of evangelism is simple proclamation--kerygma (Greek for "proclamation, teaching"). In this view, the evangelist is charged with proclaiming the truth of the Gospel without accommodation or compromise. Anything beyond that (e.g., winning converts) is God's work, not humans'. If the hearers receive and (through God's grace) submit themselves to the saving Gospel--great! If they don't, then all the evangelist can do is pray for them, shake the dust off their sandals (so to speak), and move on. Truth trumps relationships, for (within this understanding) no healthy relationship can obtain between those who know the Truth and those who will not accept the truth.

Other evangelists, while not discounting kerygma, focus more specifically on proselytism--making converts. Proclaiming the word, in this view, is necessary but not sufficient. One must speak the truth, yes, but speak it in ways that listeners hear and may be inspired by or attracted to it. For some within this view, kerygma can only occur effectively within the context of an established relationship of trust between believer and non-believer, a kind of prevangelism that prepares the soil of non-believer's heart to receive the seed of the Gospel. Here a relationship must precede and provide the support for Truth-telling.

While the TV fan in me finds the smackdown kerygma of "nothing but the truth" fascinating, the pedagogue in me causes me to prefer the relationship-first form of truth-telling. It's less dramatic, to be sure, and it often lacks the spectacle of ultimatum. But it seems, in the long run, more effective, more loving.

More later,

JF

Friendship Evangelism: Skepticism and Defense

It's uncomfortable for me to speak in positive terms about evangelizing. As I've written before, my early experiences in the Southern Baptist Church--where "evangelizing" meant "constantly asking strangers whether they had given their lives to Christ"--left me cold toward the idea of inflicting my faith on others.

Listening to Ira Glass interviewing Jim Henderson on this week's This American Life, I found myself agreeing with Glass's incredulity about the efficacy of Henderson's "doable evangelism." A variety of "friendship evangelism," Henderson's technique seeks to avoid the confrontational approach--the "urgency" approach--of the Way of the Master. Rather, friendship evangelism's focus is on cultivating authentic relationships with non-believers, letting faith convictions emerge naturally as part of the relationship rather than artificially as part of some "bait and switch" sales pitch.

I can see the appeal. Ideally, a Christian's life should be legitimately distinct enough that any close friend of a Christian would note it. Moreover, one would hope that the Christian's loving attitude would on its own attract new converts or at least provoke people to wonder, "What's up with that person? I want what she has..." People are more apt to listen and learn from someone if they ask of their own accord. The confrontational, if-you-died-right-now-would-you-go-to-heaven questioning of the urgency evangelists presents a face of Christianity that is at best little more than a get-out-of-hell-free card and at worst a shrill, judgmental harangue.

Glass's criticism--his honest confusion, I should say--was this: What if Christianity never comes up? It's perfectly possible to co-exist with people of other faiths, or of no faith at all, and never broach the subject of Things Eternal. Or, as is more often the case, friends practice mutual awareness of and respect for their colleagues' beliefs without needing to know everything about them or feeling like they have to make an issue out of that difference.

What's the difference, in other words, between being a friendship evangelist and just plain being nice? If the goal of the evangelist is to spread the good news, then can you really call a technique that doesn't involve sharing the good news evangelism at all?

The pro-friendship response (and I should emphasize that I have not read Henderson's own work--this is my guess) would likely acknowledge and embrace the risk of the difference-with-no-difference. But that's the point--if your Christianity co-exists seamlessly with non-Christianity, perhaps (as the LOLcats say) "ur doin it wrong." The challenge of friendship evangelism--life evangelism--is to not confine your "ambassador for Christ" identity to discrete, on-the-street encounters where you're in "evangelist mode." Rather, you pattern your entire life after an awareness of your status as Christ's representative on earth. You are aware at all times--not just when "soul winning"--that you are to embody the loving-grace-kindness (chesed) of God for all people.

The challenge is to make this practice of all-the-time-chesed so authentically interlaced into your daily life that people take notice. In a way, this is a deeper challenge, a harder discipline, than even the stage-fright-defying tactics of the Way of the Master. And there's a good amount of scriptural support for this approach.

The life-evangelism approach also highlights the fact that urgency evangelism can at times present a distinctly un-loving and un-Christian face.

Now, Way of the Master folk would (and do) counter that they are the ones showing true love. If someone's blithely walking toward a cliff edge, is it loving to do nothing to warn them, hoping perhaps that they simply see your behavior and follow your example of not-going-toward-the-edge? No! The loving thing to do when you know a saving truth is to shout, scream, plead, challenge--do everything you can to get the person to stop, to turn around, to be saved.

The problem is that in the urgency scenario the love is often only obvious to the evangelists. To the people they're trying to save--the people to whom they're showing real love--the evangelists can seem not loving but annoying, pushy, and hateful. In theatre, we warn young actors that it matters less about whether they think they're communicating X emotion or Y subtext; it only matters if the audience gets it. If the actor (or director or designer or playwright) has to explain that the audience didn't get it but that it's really there, trust me!--then the message effectively doesn't exist.

In other words, love between two people that only one party recognizes as such is at least suspect. True, parents often have to discipline their children ("don't touch that hot stove!" "don't run into the street!"), which is unpleasant for children. The children may not in the moment of discipline feel love per se, but the parent is nonetheless showing love by setting and enforcing healthy boundaries. But even that logic has limits. Abusive parents exercise unhealthy discipline; calling physical violence against a child "love" does not make it so.

Moreover, the child-parent relationship feels wrong when transferred to the evangelistic relationship. For the evangelist to treat nonbelievers as children--they don't know I'm being loving, but I really am!--is a dubious tactic at best. As friendship/life evangelism techniques argue, if it looks like un-love, sounds like un-love, and feels like un-love--well, it's probably un-love.

More tomorrow,

JF

All Bait, No Switch

Every scholar in academia has a secret fear that just as she is about to start or complete a new research project, someone else will publish a similar project, thus destroying any hope for originality.

Just such a fear struck my heart today as I drove to my coffee shop to do work for today. My radio, tuned as always to NPR, had the peerless radio program This American Life on it. For those who may not know, TAL chooses a weekly theme and produces three to five short segments about that theme. The segments are typically stories about some small-scale, personal situation--a feud between neighbors, a local band's struggle to become famous, a girl's attempt to work out her feelings for her ex--but the interviews, straightforward narration, a light production notes combine so deftly as to make for a riveting hour of programming. It's dangerous to turn on the radio when TAM is on and you have something else to do; it'll suck you in.

Today, wouldn't you know it, the topic of the story I tuned into was new techniques for personal evangelism--the very thing I'm writing about. Dagnabbit! I think, Beaten to the punch!

In fairness, I should admit that I've stolen--ah, been inspired by that radio show on a number of occasions. Much of my research (Hell Houses, flash mobs) I started or sharpened after hearing a show about that topic. So I have no real ground to complain that a show like this got to some fascinating topic before I did.

Besides, as I listened to the segment, it became clear that the show's theme wasn't evangelicalism per se but "bait and switch." Specifically, the host (Ira Glass) was interviewing one Jim Henderson, an evangelical author who champions what he calls "Doable Evangelism." His thesis is that most personal evangelism takes the form of a "bait-and-switch"--you start to strike up a conversation and then--inevitably--turn the talk toward Christ. Most non-church-going people, he argues, don't care much for that bait-and-switch. It feel manipulative.

"So," asks Glass, "what do you offer instead?"

Henderson then outlines his approach, which involves watching, praying (he speaks of "unauthorized praying"--praying for people without their knowing), and listening. "You ask them how they're doing," he explains, "and you just listen without interrupting."

"That's it?" asks Glass, "When do you give them the pitch?"

Henderson explains that the focus for his ministry isn't creating converts. "Christ said to go forth and make disciples, not converts," he argues. He says the first step is to get Christians out into culture, to detoxify (not his word) them in the eyes of the world.

Glass at this point seems incredulous. He shares how he and his wife have a number of deeply religious friends, but nothing about his friendship with them does anything to pull him towards church away from his "staunch atheism." "What does it matter?" he challenges Henderson, "It doesn't sound like your approach does anything. It's all bait and no switch."

Henderson accepts the criticism amiably, noting that that's just what his "ideological opponents in evangelicalism" would say. "But consider the alternative," he says. If you as a Christian turn every friendship with non-Christians into a sales pitch for church, you'll likely lose the friendship. Which is better: to preserve a friendly relationship with people or to alienate people in the name of Christ?

The segment ended soon after (and I breathed a sigh of relief to learn that the show had left my research area relatively unexplored). But I'm caught by the idea of Christianity as all bait and no switch.

Now, from my work I recognize that Henderson isn't doing something all that novel. "Friendship evangelism" of various sorts has been around for quite a while, emphasizing the need to create authentic and lasting relationships with people prior to broaching the subject of heaven, hell, and Things Eternal.

The obvious competitor strategy is what Michael Spencer calls the "wretched/urgency evangelism" of people like Ray Comfort or Todd Friel and their Way of the Master (about which I've written extensively here). Comfort would dispute the idea that the task of making disciples can begin with any other step than conviction and conversion through a presentation of the Law and Grace. People could die and spend eternity in Hell at any moment, and it's the Christian's job to do anything and everything to make people aware of that grim fact. It's not a lifetime of discipleship that saves, they would argue, but repentance and receiving the grace of God.

Not surprisingly, then, their tactics resemble the "bait and switch" that Henderson resists. They start with a normal conversation, shift to the "are you going to heaven?", go through the Ten Commandments, and end with the "here's how to get out of Hell" pitch. For their part, Friel and Comfort are as disparaging of friendship evangelism as Henderson is of urgency evangelism. Pointing to their "bait" parts--the hook that draws the "fish" in--Comfort says he can establish a rapport--a friendship--with someone in about a minute. But it does no good to be someone's friend, he argues, if you don't share with them the one truth that saves them from the Eternal Fire.

This would be the main argument against Henderson's style (at least as presented on the brief segment): if you believe in Hell and in salvation through Christ as literal realities, then isn't it an act of the most cynical animosity to withhold that information from your friends for fear of rejection? Comfort's favorite illustrations frame the situation in concrete images: if I have a spare parachute and know the plane we're on is about to crash--and I withhold that parachute from you for fear you'll find my offer pushy--how can I possibly call myself your friend?

Now--to tip my hand, I'm more on Henderson's side (I think--I'll need to do some research) than Comfort's. But for the friendship approach to score rhetorical points, it needs to overcome the strong argument against it from the urgency evangelism side.

More tomorrow,

JF