Walking Across Rooms

A small group of us from our church just finished a four week study called Just Walk Across A Room. It’s a DVD curriculum based on Bill Hybels’ book of the same name. This resource is for helping Christians do the work of evangelism even if they don’t have the gift of evangelism. Essentially, the message is this: if you are already a faithful Christian, make a genuine effort to befriend people who are far from God—whether in your workplace or neighbourhood or where you enjoy recreation—simply for the sake of loving them where they are. The point is not to see people as evangelism projects but as individuals created by and for God. This means showing interest in them, caring about them, serving them, becoming friends with them, regardless of whether or not they ever show interest in God, church, Jesus, or spiritual matters.

Hybels highlights three friendships throughout the study (through clips and interviews) that he invested himself in and how, in the midst of those friendships, he was given opportunity to share his faith. But all of these friendships began in very ordinary ways. All began, as the title suggests, with a walk across a room, a willingness to leave one’s comfort zone and either help someone out or just strike up a conversation. In one instance, the friendship was eight years old before the person came to faith. One of his friends interviewed has yet to come to faith but is now more open to the possibility.

I don’t intend here to post a full review of this curriculum. But I will say that it’s a great practical way to get people talking and thinking about being ordinary Christians and what it means for each of us to share our faith. I’m hoping to have at least one or two more groups of people use this curriculum in the coming months.

Sometimes when you do a study on a practical topic, you wonder if anyone who did the study will ever actually apply it in their own lives. It’s deceptively easy to take lessons learned in a small group and leave it there and not be intentional about living it out. The Letter of James warns about this very problem.

So the other night I was leaving our church, which is located across the road from our house, and I saw one of my neighbours (whom I don’t know well) working outside building his new garage. Now, as I said, I didn’t know this guy (and still don’t really know him well), and I’m the kind of person who’s usually hesitant about beginning a conversation with a relative stranger. Odd, perhaps, for a pastor. So as I was leaving the church and walking toward our house, I had the feeling that I should stop and talk to the guy. I did, and I’m glad I did so.

Granted, it was maybe a ten minute conversation and wasn’t at all religious. It was, by definition, small-talk. But all conversations—to say nothing of friendships—have to start somewhere. And in this case, I felt I was being challenged by God to live out simply one of the key lessons of this study—sometimes it’s all about walking across the room or, in this instance, across the street.

I have one more example. We have new neighbours. It’s a young couple who bought the house next to ours. They’ve had to do a lot of renovations to the house because there was a fire in the home at the beginning of the year. Anyway, a couple of days ago my little girl and I made a couple of chocolate cakes and decided that we, as a family, ought to bring one of them over to our new neighbours as a way of saying hello and welcome. We ended up hanging out there for more than an hour talking with them and their extended family (who also live in the area). Here it was a matter of a walk down the street.

But both opportunities were simple—simple enough for anyone, and a step taken that could lead to opportunities to share faith with people far from God. Neither occasion demanded that I drop off tracts, share the four spiritual laws, or memorize vast amounts of apologetic information (all of which can still have their place depending on the situation). All one needs is a receptive heart, a willing and submissive spirit, and a desire to show love and concern to others who are as much in need of the gospel we ourselves proclaim through our living. And one the best ways to proclaim Jesus through our living is through simple acts of walking across rooms—which is not unlike what Christ himself did in walking across the room from eternity to time.