This week’s interview is with Randy Siever of Doable Evangelism fame. Randy is quite a fun guy, truly a kid at heart, and an amazing conversationalist. It’s always engaging and entertaining to talk with him. I hope you get a chance to talk with him at The Born Again Church Tour 2008 in Seattle or Denver.

Elizabeth: Why do you care what outsiders think about Christianity, Christians, The Church?

Randy: It’s hard to get about the business of helping outsiders connect with Jesus when we insiders have made such a mess of ourselves.  We are, after all, the primary means by which outsiders can see Jesus today (especially our relationships with each other, per Jn. 17).  I suppose the easiest way out would be simply to abandon the word Christian (and Christianity) and abandon the church and just talk about Jesus, and I suppose it could be argued that Jesus wouldn’t have much to do with either if he were to show up today anyway.  But at the very least, if outsiders are our “customer” then we have some kind of responsibility to know our market and how we are doing at connecting with them.  To not care about their opinion of how we’re doing seems reckless and irresponsible to me.  Plus it sort of implies their opinions don’t count or matter, which I have a real problem with from not only a marketing/evangelism vantage point, but also a biblical one.

If there is something we can do as a family (the Christian one) or a community (the Church) to reduce the size of the obstacles between outsiders and Jesus, well, it would seem imperative that we do something.  It’s challenging enough these days to get people to consider following Jesus without creating barriers ourselves.

Elizabeth: If you have a MySpace or Facebook account, how many not-yet-Christians would I find in your group of friends compared to Christians? (Obviously this number will be skewed by the number of people who ask to be your friend because you are a public figure, but this ratio is still of interest.)

Randy: I have a Facebook page, but I confess that I am totally FB challenged.  I don’t know how to use it really, so I just hope people who want to connect with me find me!  I only have (as of today) 135 “friends”, and I just scrolled through them to see if I could count any not-yets.  I think there are at least five, not counting Helen Mildenhall and several other recovering fundamentalists who would not identify themselves as Christians.  I also have a slew of people that Christians would say are not Christians, but I think they are following Jesus so I didn’t count them either.

Elizabeth: Tell me briefly about one significant relationship you have with someone who does not self-identify as a Christian?

Randy: One of my best friends is Patrick North.  He is an admitted atheist, married to a former Catholic.  Patrick used to be my next door neighbor. We’ve moved (twice) but we have continued to hang out together.  We formed a Monday Night Football group, made up mostly of guys who Patrick knows, and almost exclusively of guys who don’t do religion of any brand.  We’ve gathered every season now for six years, picking a different sports bar each week.  Patrick and I have shared our lives together, both of us having oldest sons (about the same age) who have been “challenging”.  We’ve cried together and he’s been quite honest with me about myself and how I come across to people.  We’ve spent a LOT of time talking about Jesus, and he and his wife even took a class on marriage from our church (seemed to help some).  I had to help him with his homework once, though…had to find stuff in the bible, which he wasn’t very familiar with.  Anyway, Patrick is one of my best friends, one of my Doable Evangelism donors, and a guy I could call in the middle of the night if I needed someone.

Elizabeth: In what ways do you think people who are not Christ-followers care about the work you are doing?

Randy: Well, as I mentioned, Patrick is supporting me financially.  He thinks it is a really good idea to help Christians become more normal.  In fact, some of my biggest fans are outsiders, frankly.  They think my job is noble and huge and somewhat impossible, but they are glad I’m doing it.

Elizabeth: Dan Kimball in They Like Jesus but Not the Church writes about life in the Christian bubble, what are your thoughts on this concept and can you tell me about any experiences you have had with such a phenomena?

Randy: I was a pastor for nine years.  It’s really quite easy to get into a Christian bubble, even in the kind of church I was working for (about 40% of our attendees were “outsiders”).  The church can keep your life pretty busy, and part of the reason I quit was because it was consuming me and keeping me locked up in the building all week.  I needed to get out.

I find at our seminars that it is rare to run into a Christian who actually has friends who are not.  We in church keep telling them to bring their friends to services or events, but all of their friends are already Christians (some from other churches).  Doable Evangelism is helpful in training people how to get connected to people right around you who may also be outsiders, but I don’t know of any other practical training or help in doing this in the church world.

Elizabeth: Gregory Boyd in The Myth of a Christian Nation thinks the quest for a Christian nation undermines the kingdom of God, what are your thoughts on this?

Randy: Seems like Constantine tried this in the late 300’s, right?  That didn’t work out so well, as I recall.  I don’t think it’s possible for a nation to be ‘christian’, at least not in the same way that a person can be. A nation can subscribe to Christian ideals and morality in terms of legislation and justice issues, but unless everyone in the nation is yielding to the authority of Christ you end up with faith by oppression, which hardly seems like what Jesus was hoping for.

So yes, I do think that a political system that claims it’s authority from God, Jesus, the bible, etc. would undermine the more transformational agenda of the Kingdom of God.  I doubt very much that a theocracy is possible anymore…not a true one, anyway.

Elizabeth: Describe some of your hopes and dreams for the local expression of the body of Christ that you are connected with as well as the body of Christ in America and the world?

Randy: Wow.  Right now I’m pretty disillusioned, discouraged, and un-hopeful for the local expression of the Body of Christ.  I still go to the building I worked at as a pastor (I call it the building, rather than the church) now and then, but it’s increasingly more painful for me.  I look for reasons not to go, frankly.  That’s partly my own issues with that particular expression, but also partly my issues with church in a box in general.  I don’t have any answers at this point, but I’m hearing a lot of others out there, across the world, who are going through similar dissonance.

Elizabeth: Is there anything else you’d like to say about The Born Again Church Tour 2008?

Randy: I hope we can figure out what it would look like for the Church to be born again.  It sure seems to me like if that kind of dramatic transformation was possible on a corporate scale, that just might be the ticket of hope for the Church.  The alternative seems more likely to me, however, so I remain skeptical.

I do think it is more important than ever to dialogue about this issue of the church.  It is not enough to study the statistics, read the books and blog in the recesses of cyberspace.  We need to be face to face, in rooms with other concerned citizens of the Kingdom of God, talking and LISTENING to each other about our struggles and hopes and fears.  This kind of event feels like a triage event to me.  Maybe, just maybe, we can determine where the most critical problems are and determine the next course of action for some of those.  We can’t save them all, but we can save some.

Do what’s doable.

Get your tickets today to The Born Again Church Tour 2008 nearest you - it’s doable - REALLY!