Rejoicing in "Failure"

"I used to think that when we are witnessing people always need to get saved and baptized in that moment. But if that is it, our ministry is so depressing, and we are failures. Now I have learned that in that depressiveness and in that failureness, we can rejoice!"

                                                                                                   ~quote by our Nepali friend and pastor 

Evangelism has never come naturally for me.  I don't really like talking to strangers in general, so striking up conversations with random people and then talking about spiritual things is always really tough.  But this past week in Manali has pushed me outside my comfort zone and allowed me to practice being bold as Paul exhorts us to be.  I was able to see that evangelism is not just throwing a message in someone's face and giving them the chance to take it or leave it. I found that if we actually made the effort to chat with the person we bought water from or the guy sitting two feet away in the coffee shop, hearing their story and sharing ours (at least bits and pieces) came pretty naturally.

Of course, the part of our story that came up the most frequently in Manali was simply our reason for being in India.  Pretty much everyone there is traveling and wants to know where you're going and where you've been.  And the fact that we came all the way from Kathmandu to spend a week in Manali was intriguing to many.  But what could we say other than the truth?  Time after time, we told people how we came to Manali because we heard there are a lots of Israelis there, and we wanted to have conversations with them about the Tanakh (Old Testament) and Hashem (Hebrew word used in reference to the God of Israel) because we believe firmly in both.  Most people found this funny, strange, or even crazy.  Israelis across the board were mystified by a group of Nepalis, Americans, Taiwanese, and even a Palestinian Jordanian that all professed to worship their God.  Even when it was only Chris and I talking to a guy named Or, he couldn't believe that we had actually come there just to talk to people like him about God.

Although it wasn't intentional, the strangeness of our purpose actually worked to our advantage.  People were interested in what we had to say because really, who rides a plane two hours and a bus fifteen hours just to talk to some Israelis in the middle of nowhere India about the Bible?

After sort of understanding why we came to India, most people we talked to would follow up by asking, "So what are you?" Though this question often seemed funny at the time, it's really pretty sad!  Just because we said we believe in the Old Testament and God's covenants with Israel, they thought we must be some new religion or sect.  Most argued that, despite our belief in Jesus as Messiah, we could not be Christians.   Christians don't believe Tanakh.  Christians kill Jews.  Christians believe Jesus nullified the promises made to the nation of Israel.  We heard all of these things!!  

This reflects some big issues in the Church.  We (Christians) worship a Jewish man who is King of the Jews and whose Father chose the Jewish people to be His firstborn nation.  More than half of our Bible is the Old Testament, which is not outdated but is actually the foundation for everything we read in the New Testament.  So what has Christianity become that a Jew can see no part of their religion in ours?

Explaining that we are in fact Christians and why made up the majority of several of our conversations.  Other times we mostly discussed why we believe there is only one truth (since most Israelis we met were of the belief that everyone has their own truth).  I wish I could say that our conversations led many to radical, life changing commitments to Jesus.  But they didn't, and we can't define success that way.  We spoke truth in love to many lost sheep of Israel (and to several Nepalis and Indians as well) and trust Holy Spirit to do the rest.  We rejoice in what looks like failure because maybe, just maybe one of them will think about what we said and humbly search the scriptures for themselves.  And surely that will lead them to the foot of the cross.

Josy <><

the whole India team 

  our evangelism team for the first two days

Kasol, another city we visited near Manali

one of the many stray dogs hanging out by the river 

P.S. Although it may sound like I was highly involved in all these conversations, I admit that I did more observing than speaking.  I still have so much to learn from our bold Nepali brothers and the others on the team!