Evangelism Summer 2001

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"If you choose to be a Christian, when you die, you will go straight to heaven," the man says as he pushes his way through the crowded subway car. "Why not make that choice today?" I briefly look up from my book. A man near me, his ears shielded by headphones, trails the preacher with his eyes. And everyone else does what New Yorkers on a crowded seven P.M. express do best: they ignore him.

A moment after the preacher passes, I'm a jumble of reactions. This kind-looking man is recklessly sharing his faith with these ungrateful people. He is a soldier for Christ, an evangelist to make Paul proud. Telepathically, I tell him, "Go team!" But then my enthusiasm subsides: his simple message doesn't seem to be going over so well, and I start to think that if I weren't a Christian, I don't think his pithy theology would make me drop my book and computer bag and follow him through the doors to the adjoining car, much less to the feet of Jesus.

Clearly, I say somewhat smugly to myself, this man is not a Catholic. A Catholic just wouldn't make such a spectacle of himself within such an unwelcoming unwilling parish. But then my theology training catches up with me. I recall that many Catholic saints and martyrs have done exactly what he is doing, and died for it. Just as I'm beginning to wonder whether or not the subway evangelist would consider me worthy of his definition of a Christian, however, I start to sense that this man may be on a different team after all. Don't get me wrong—we aren't competing against each other. It's just that when it comes to evangelization, we work from different playbooks.

More times than I can count I have had some variation of the following dialogue with well-meaning evangelicals:

"Have you been saved?"

"Well, ...

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