Last time we were talking about the need to engage the culture and build relationships with those that we are wanting to reach for Jesus today. As we do this we have a great need for a lot of patience. We may want an instant or microwave result and see the local church grow quickly as our evangelistic efforts bear much fruit. But, this is seldom the case. Much time, effort, energy, and prayer must first go into building solid and healthy relationships with people and with the community before we will see any return on our investment.

It seems we are always wanting a quick fix. There is no easy way tosay this...the negative or disinterested perception of the church by those outside will not change quickly. Although we can spruce things up on the inside to keep those on the inside happy, we will see no substantial change in the culture until our collective personality, posture, and positioning changes. We have to be patient as any good missionary (or apostolic) community would be.

Without a friendship-level understanding of people, we tend to make coarse generalizations, false assumptions, and judgmental analyses, and we initiate arrogant movement toward people. We fail the context test. We did not take the time to assimilate ourselves into the culture that we are trying to reach – we did not take the time to understand what they think and why they live the way they do. We did not examine and understand the context in which they (and we) live.

Engaging culture is not as much about doing evangelism as it is incarnating the presence of Christ in every relationship we form. If we fail at engaging well and living as Christ would live among our neighbors, friends, and those we work with, we fail as apostolic people (missionaries) and the culture does not see the visible beauty or even the purpose of the sent church.

So, as an apostolic people (sent out ones) we simply need to invest time, effort and prayer into building relationships with those in our neighborhood, at work and those we interact with regularly where we shop, buy gas, and exercise. Just hang out, be there, listen intently so that you come to understand those you are taking time to know. Simply be there – this is called presence evangelism. And then, when you see or make an opportunity – step in and simply serve them in the Name of Jesus.