The Evangelism Project

Writer and lecturer Peter Rollins has been hosting a series of online web seminars to introduce listeners to four events he created and ran in his start up faith community of Ikon, located in Northern Ireland.  Rollins advertises these as “a series of Internet seminars outlining the theory and praxis of courses designed to send you off course and onto another.”  His goal with each of these is to break participants out of their current safe models of Christianity and launch them into a new way of approaching faith and the Christian journey.

His latest seminar, “The Evangelism Project”, is an event designed to take participants into the world of a group with a different faith background than themselves, in order to learn and be transformed by them.  His argument is that far too often, we limit our exposure to information with those ideas that we already agree with, or with information that is filtered through someone’s perspective that we agree with.  We are afraid of going to the direct source and being challenged by another’s beliefs or perspectives.  “The Evangelism Project” does just that by removing all filters and leaving a participant with a raw, unadulterated first hand look into the beliefs of a different community.

After such a visit, Rollins suggests asking that group, “What do we look like in your eyes?”  Speaking from experience, Christians often get caught up in an egotistical mentality because we feel as if we own all the answers.  Anything or anyone that stands contrary to our beliefs is wrong and must be converted to our worldview and perspective.  This attitude has and continues to leave a bad taste with those who do not hold to a Christian belief system.  In honestly asking another community how we appear to them, we begin to see ourselves in a different light and even give others permission to critique our lives.  If Christianity is based on love, shouldn’t we be known as a faith that allows others a voice to speak?

So what’s the point?  Doesn’t this have the potential to destroy someone’s faith?  I would argue the opposite.   If we truly approach such an experience with an open mind and the courage to be critiqued by others, this has the power to further transform our lives and our hearts.  We might begin to see and understand how we are viewed by the outside world.  Instead of seeing others as the monster, Rollins suggests that we begin to see ourselves as a monster in need of further transformation.   It is in this understanding that we are humbled and able to go deeper into our personal journey with God.

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