Bridge Walking

When I was younger my family would take vacations to Mackinac City and we would have to cross the bridge at least once per day. It was thrilling! We loved it! My brothers and I would beg my dad to drive on the green part just to drive my Mom crazy! It was awesome. I don't remember when I heard that you could walk across the bridge on Labor Day, but I do remember my reaction. "I'm going to do it one day!"

Fast forward 6 years.

One day in youth group our youth pastor announced that we would be taking a trip to the bridge and walking across it to hand out tracts. I was the first to sign up on the list! I wanted to go more than anyone. The only problem was that I was supposed to hand out tracts. Well, I went I was given a large amount of tracts and a matching T-shirt and we went across. We were supposed to walk a little faster or slower with the crowd so that we were able to walk with several different people in order to share the gospel with them. The tracts we were given had a few tidbits of information in them about the Mackinac Bridge. So when we would come up to people we would ask "Do you want some free information about the bridge?" Most of them would say yes, and keep and we would keep moving. Well, the first person I came to I asked her if she wanted any information about the bridge and she quickly said that one of us had already gotten her. She was a little snippy and was probably upset after being deceived. I was a little thrown off by her and went further ahead and went to hand a father pushing a baby carriage 'some free information' when he stopped me told me that he didn't want it and that he was upset that he had been deceived already. He then asked me a question that I've never forgotten, Why do you feel as though you had to hide your message behind bridge facts? I didn't know what to say, so I asked him if I could tell him my message. He quickly said no, and I ran on ahead. After that confrontation I couldn't give out another tract, half scared and half thinking that we had evangelism all wrong, I just couldn't do it. Right near the end I just wanted to get off of the bridge so I ran the last 100 years or so and I tripped and fell on one of the bridge extension points I fell hard! 100 or so tracts flew into the air and went everywhere. People of all ages started laughing heavily out loud and in my direction. No one helped me up, no one helped me pick up my tracts. It was absolutely miserable. I think what I realized is that these people had all been deceived by our group by given them information on the bridge that they were happy that something had happened to one of us.

The problem is I think that they had the right to laugh. They had been deceived by Christians.

There was no relationship. I didn't work on a relationship with anybody on that walk. I just wanted to talk about how Jesus died and rose again, but I didn't want to act out how he lived. I just finished reading the book of Matthew and I was absolutely amazed at how Jesus lived, and how that is a part of the GOSPEL of Matthew. We neglect that Jesus spent years with people building relationships with those around him.

Evangelism is hard, because it involves relationships.