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The Easiest job in the World

Matthew 18:18-2; I Corinthians 9:19-23; 2 Timothy 4:1-5

November 8, 2026

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There’s an old story that tells about an alcoholic who used to sacrifice everything for his drinking. He would even pawn the furniture to support his habit and he’d occasionally go so far as to beat his wife when she would argue with him about it. His life was an utter mess. 

 

Eventually though, he converted to Christianity and that caused a radical change in his life. His co-workers weren’t sure what to make of all this, so they would sometimes make fun of him. Once they asked him if he really believed in the old story that Jesus had turned water into wine. He said, “I don’t know anything about that, but I do know that in my house Christ has turned beer into furniture and that’s a good enough miracle for me!”

 

People often think of evangelism as being some kind of highly complex theological process. but it rarely is. It’s usually a matter of one friend helping to identify a need in another friend. In fact, one of the most striking stories of evangelism I’ve ever heard was one in which a young man joined a church because of fertilizer.

 

This man was a new teacher in town and he noticed that his neighbor often went to church to work on various projects. The young teacher wasn’t interested in church at the time, but one day his neighbor invited him to go along to help on a church project.

 

I’m sure the teacher thought that it was going to be some high-minded Christian theological endeavor, but he agreed to go. Then he asked what they were going to do. The answer was that they were going to spread fertilizer on the church lawn. That’s hardly what the teacher had expected, but he went anyway and made some new friends.

 

The next Sunday, the teacher and his wife were in church and they soon became very much involved in the life of the congregation and their faith grew dramatically. All this happened because someone asked them to help spread some manure. And no, I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. 

 

Long ago, Jesus approached some people and simply said, “Follow me.” They chose to do just that. In many ways, Jesus is continually saying, “follow me” to each of us. The tasks we’re called to perform may be varied and that calling voice may be soft, but his call is unmistakable. If we choose to follow him into the servant’s role, we will find new strength, a deeper faith, and a sense that in these days the word of the Lord is not rare. 

 

Throughout this country, the church has become increasingly marginalized from society as people have lost a sense of the reality of God and have come to see the church as being just another social club that lays yet one more set of responsibilities of its members. They believe church is a cultural vestige that threatens to drain their time and drag them away from home.

 

But the fact is that church is not really that at all. The church is a place where personal gifts may be discovered and developed. The church is a place where people are called out of their shells and into a new type of family, where people can love and support each other without reservation.

 

The fact is that most modern Americans are feeling the pressure of having too many demands placed on them, and having far too little time. What they really want is a chance to pull back and have some time to themselves to just rest and recharge their batteries.

 

But what better way could there be to become recharged than to come into direct communication with their Creator? And what better way to become refreshed for the week ahead than by allowing God's power to flow through them while they are in service to others?

 

Diane Givens Moffett said, “In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self, and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found…

 

“It is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable place where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human being…That is our vocation:  to convert […] the enemy into a guest, and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.”

 

I remember long ago when I was in seminary, a fellow student, who was serving a church in a small town, had developed a plan for evangelism only to have it rejected by his congregation. I never heard the details of his plan, so I don’t know if it was a good one or not. However, that didn’t really matter because his congregation refused to deal with those details.

 

Instead, they rejected the entire concept of evangelism as being something that seemed to be both foreign and scary to them. As far as they were concerned, that was solely his job as the student pastor. He pointed out to them that he was very part time and didn’t even live in their community. 

 

In addition, he said that he had seen countless examples of them sitting in the local diner or leaning over a backyard fence to share stories with their neighbors. He added that, in essence, that’s what evangelism is. It’s not some complex set of highly-demanding techniques. It’s merely being a good neighbor. Purely and simply, evangelism is about reaching out to people and meeting their needs. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s sharing a sense of community with those who need it. 

 

In the mid-1990s a nationwide poll asked, “What word or phrase would you most like to hear uttered to you, sincerely?” Can you guess the first thing people wanted to hear? You’re right. It was, “I love you.” The second was, “You are forgiven.” And the third, believe it or not, was, “Supper is ready.”

 

What does the church have to offer the people of our time? For those who want to hear “I love you,” we can share with them God’s unconditional love. For those who want to hear “You are forgiven,” we can share with them God’s superabundant grace. And for those who want to hear “Supper is ready,” we may offer reserved seating at the Lord’s table. What a powerful message we have to offer today’s world!

 

But to do all that, we can’t be like those first disciples who lurked behind locked doors and shuttered windows in the days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. As David Shearman put it, “If you want to save lost sheep […] you don’t set up a paddock to keep the sheep in and watch them all the time. Not at all. You send a shepherd out there into the bush. If you want to find a lost coin, you don’t count how much money you have left in your wallet, you get a broom and put your glasses on.

 

“[…] we are reminded that it is through the on-going conversations over the back fence, the coffee cups in the kitchen, the unconscious enthusiasm for the Gospel and life in the Christian Community that makes us different. It’s not the clergy’s enthusiasm, though that can also be infectious. It’s the people. People willing to be a part of community. When it’s the people who sit and warm the pews on Sunday morning who love the Church and talk about the Church and about their faith, the church lives and grows. When we don’t talk about it, the church dies.”

 

Daniel Smith and Mary Sellon once wrote the following in an article about evangelism:  “Over and over we hear congregations wishing that the people in [their town] would become active in their church. What drives that desire is revealed in their response to the question ‘Why?’ Any time a significant number of people answer, ‘To keep our programs running and our doors open,’ we know that the congregation is in trouble. It has moved to the point at which the people beyond its doors are valued primarily for what they can bring to the church. People in the community are seen as the congregation’s salvation, rather than the other way around.” 

 

I remember a conversation I had once with a Jehovah’s Witness who explained her motivation for going door to door and attempting to scare people into faith by saying, “If you saw someone running toward the edge of a cliff, wouldn’t you scream out to make them stop?” Now I am much more of a fan of Presbyterian theology than what passes for theology in The Watchtower. That’s the name of the Jehovah’s Witness’ official publication.

 

But having said that, I think we Presbyterians have lost something important when we gave up that sense of urgency for helping others come to a relationship with Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in Romans, “[…] how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?” 

 

I believe that most people are looking for a sense of meaning in their life. Isn’t having a genuine encounter with the God who makes this all possible what they desperately need as well?

 

Where many of our churches fall down today is in remembering that once the worship service is over, each of us goes out those doors commissioned to be ministers on God’s behalf. Someone once said, “Baptism is the ordination of the laity.” Or, as the author of 1 Peter put it, “[…] you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 

 

But how are we doing with that calling? Oscar Wilde once wrote that his Aunt Jane had planned a grand ball to which she had invited countless people. However, not a single person showed up. She was so embarrassed by this social slight that Wilde said she died of what he called “mortification.” It was only after her death that her family discovered she had forgotten to mail the invitations. 

 

Too many people in the modern Christian church are like Aunt Jane. They find a source of personal encouragement and strength in the worship service. They may find comfort in Bible reading and prayer. They may even want to share these things with others, but they forget to extend the invitation. 

 

Or perhaps they extend it in a way that the people they’re talking with don’t understand. Isn’t that the point of our New Testament lesson today? It’s all about Paul’s willingness to go anywhere and take on any role in order to approach people in a way they can understand so he can share the good news of God’s love with them.

 

In thinking about how that dialogue might apply to the church, Don Hoffman wrote, “We have to translate God’s love into something the surrounding culture will understand. […] We have to listen. […] But I don’t mean to just shut us up. This has to be active listening. This has to be listening with a purpose. We want to build rapport with the other person, we want to understand him, we want to know how she thinks. Almost no one knows what it is like to have someone really, deeply listen to them. Almost no one knows how to really, deeply listen. Good listening is hard work. [But] Good listening is a way to communicate love.” 

 

So what are we listening for? The joys and sorrows of the people we’re talking with, along with their hopes and dreams, their pains and regrets. And most of all, we’re listening for ways that we can offer them our love and practical support. 

 

The real point of all this is that in spite of our misgivings, evangelism should be the easiest job in the world, because it’s the way God has chosen to spread the good news about his kingdom. God has already planted the seed of God’s love in the hearts of those we will talk to, we just have to share with them the joy and power that worship can add to our lives.

 

The most effective evangelism has always been one person telling another about what their faith means in their life. In this culture, we may feel reluctant or even embarrassed to tell other people about our faith, but just think what would happen if each of us brought just one new person into the church each year.

 

We would be faced with a revival of massive proportions! But for that to happen, we each have to decide if it’s worth the risk — to ourselves if we choose to do it as well as if it’s worth the risk to our church if we don’t. 

 

In honor of what would have been my father’s 109th birthday, I’d like to close with three short sentences my father used to end one of his sermons many years ago:  “Look at your hands. The future of this church rests there. Is it in good hands?” Amen. 

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Jim McCrea

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