What Is the "Harvest" for a North American Church? (part 4)

I'm finally returning to my series on "harvest" for the North American church. To read previous posts, you can click here, here or here. Churches in the US have largely grown through proselytizing (definition: the effort to convert someone of another religion to your own religion). I'm sure someone who knows more about this subject might scream at my gross oversimplification. But that's what preachers too often do --we oversimplify. It's not intentional. It's just our natural tendency to make things understandable. Sorry about that.

At any rate, most churches in our environs had to steal sheep (sometimes, lapsed sheep) from other churches in order to grow. Granted, churches often justified such actions by saying things like this, "Their church isn't a good church;" or "They don't practice the truth;" or "We're simply better, so they want to be with us."

Living in Europe as I did, I was surprised at how much animosity Czechs had toward proselytizing. They tended to see it as manipulation. And you didn't want to be friends with someone who manipulated you. Of course, Europe has experienced unbelievable bloodshed over religion. Catholics killed Protestants. Protestants killed Catholics. Protestants killed Protestants. I suppose they should have welcomed our less lethal form of conversion. Still, they generally thought you should leave people alone & let them change on their own.

My point? We often don't know how to let people be without trying to manipulate them toward our way of understanding things. We are fairly inept at having meaningful, open-ended conversations with people about spiritual things. We know how to steer people to our version of truth. We know how to tell people that they should attend our church. But we rarely know how to help people explore the deepest questions of life. And we rarely know how to commit to a relationship with a person without trying to "convert" them to our faith in the process.

In the parable of the Sower (or the Four Soils), it is notable that the Sower sows indiscriminately. He does not seem to judge the soil. Rather, the sower consistently does one thing. What is this one thing? The sower puts the word of God into people -- all people, regardless of the "potential" for conversion -- and then lets God do the rest. The sower does not cajole, does not threaten, does not beg, does not pressure. The sower sows. And then lets people be. "Let those with ears to hear, listen."