Mr. Slug, Evangelism Explosion, and You

As I'm writing this, I'm wearing my favorite shirt of all time. It's a white t-shirt on what you could call its last legs (there are holes starting to appear in several places), but I'll probably continue to wear it anyway. It's a shirt that I found when I was attending a convention as a youth pastor in Colorado. I have no idea what city I was in when I bought it or anything, but I remember walking over to the booth and this t-shirt immediately caught my eye.

On the shirt, there is a giant brown slug with two orange antennae. It now looks like a big piece of crap on my shirt, but I don't care. I will still wear it. There is writing on the t-shirt as well. It says, "Mr. Slug Likes Me", and underneath this announcement, it says, "Sometimes when I walk by a tree, I think, 'Does Mr. Slug like me?' Now I know. That makes me grin."

The last part I had to remember because it's so faded, you can't see the last two sentences. Underneath the giant slug/poop thing, it says "Meaningless Ministries, Inc.", and underneath that it says "Read Ecclesiastes." When I bought the shirt, I asked the guy selling it to me what the heck the bottom two lines really had to do with the rest of the shirt. He told me it was an evangelistic opportunity every time I wore the shirt. I sniffed the air around me to see if there was any hint of lingering marijuana use, and then asked him what the heck he was talking about.

He said something like this: "Well, the shirt is really meaningless, isn't it? So when someone comes up to you and asks what your shirt means, you can tell them that it's meaningless, but there's something in your life that has meaning, and that's your relationship with Jesus."

I like the shirt. But I really hated his explanation for what it meant. Even at the time I bought it. Which is very surprising. You see, I used to be one of those kind of people who read books like Contagious Christian and Out of the Salt Shaker and other books on evangelism, and Ithought that evangelism could be done with tracts or with a four point presentation, or with knocking on people's doors and stuff. I was told in college in a class that that stuff works, and it's stuff we should be doing as Christians. I don't think that way anymore. I don't think that way about anything Christ-related anymore. I don't think you can narrow down things that pertain to your life in Christ into a nice neat little package, or a three-point sermon, or a (God-forbid) process. I won't even get into the whole discipleship/growing deeper in your relationship with Christ/go around the bases and hit a home run for Jesus approach to life in Christ. That's another post for another time.

When I used to wear my Mr. Slug Likes Me t-shirt out of the house (I think I might get arrested with the way it looks now), every once in awhile someone would ask me what my t-shirt meant. I told them it meant nothing, that it was just a t-shirt with a giant slug on it. Usually the person would say, "Oh, that's cool. I thought you were wearing a shirt with a turd on it, and that would be really weird." We would never get to the part about the meaningful stuff in my life. I would just pay for my Milky Way and leave the Circle K.

To me, evangelism isn't a program. It isn't a process. It isn't something you can pin down and say that one method works for everyone. Evangelism is messy. It involves getting to know people and loving them and living out what Christ means to you in front of them, knowing that there may never be a time when they will ask you why you're different. There may never be a time when you will lead them to Christ (whatever that means). It just means being who God has called you to be. It doesn't mean to befriend people in order to make them Christians. That sucks and isn't very truthful. It's about loving people just because they are people, because God made them.

So, I'm sorry Mr. Slug. You may like me, which makes me grin. But I'm not going to use you as a way to con people into liking God. Maybe they'll start liking God if I get off my duff and start loving people and getting to know people and stepping out of my comfort zone and being who Jesus wants me to be. And maybe they won't. And that's okay.