3 Stories - but something in common

Here's a quiz question....

What do Chinese Taxi Drivers, a church in Africa, and some Christians in South America have in common?

Answer: some interesting 'conversion' stats!

Here is some more info on the three stories:

This week on Jackson Wu's blog he said the following:

"Have you heard any jokes about the Beijing taxi drivers? Here's one.

Question 1: How many taxi drivers are in Beijing?
Answer: Around 65,000

Question 2: According to missionary reports, how many of them are Christian?
Answer: 150,000

(That last number is totally made up.)

I wonder how many times missionaries have listed the same taxi drivers on their statistical reports as "making a decision for Christ." Any taxi driver will "believe" as long as you pay the meter.

Seriously, if you want to hear a typical gospel presentation, ask a taxi driver to repeat back what his customers tell him everyday. I did that once with a non-believing driver––asking him what other Christians had told him in the past. He beautifully laid out a clear traditional gospel presentation, probably better than many I've heard from a number of missionaries and pastors.

Obviously, there are a lot of false professions. Some simply want Jesus to bless them."

In the book "The Great Omission"(p44) by Steve Saint he tells the story that a friend of his shared with him:

"...entire neighborhoods have gone forward to accept Christ at evangelistic events...one day I happened to be with several of the local people when they had a special meeting to decide who would go forward at the next foreign missionary's alter call. I couldn't believe my ears! They wanted the gifts (often a bag with pencils and bible literature) and wanted the missionaries to come back again.  I asked one of the leaders how many times he had gone forward to receive Christ, and he said 'About a dozen times'. Then he added, 'If we all go up, the missionaries won't believe it. We have learnt that half or two thirds is a good number, to keep them coming back.' "

Some years back we somehow got on the mailing list of an American Pentecostal missionary who was attempting to plant a church not far from where we lived.

The first email we received was a report on how God was 'blessing' in the church - the evidence given was that they had just held a crusade and about 50* people came forward and made decisions for Christ.  A photo was attached of the small group in a relatively small room, and showing almost the entire 'audience' no longer in their seats but 'down at the front'.

A few months later we received another email.  Apparently another crusade had been run and a further 30* people had come to Christ.

Over the next couple of years we received a few more similar emails with similar figures.

The last one we received said much the same thing and showed another photo of the crusade event - they were still meeting in the same small room, there seemed to be about 30 or 40 present and yet again he was giving numbers that would mean that almost all in attendance had given their lives to Christ.

Either his church was losing people faster than they were 'being saved' or else it was the same people over and over again who were 'coming forward to receive Christ'

(* exact figures may have differed a little - these are representative figures from what I recall)

Whether its Asia, Africa or South America, 'mis-placed Shame and Honour' cultural contexts impact the life of the church and the process of evangelism and discipleship. A person can very easily simply be honoring the 'missionary' in order to achieve something entirely different than what the missionary thinks is being achieved. In a desire to sincerely lead people to Christ we can be sincerely  wrong in our approach and understanding....and thus seriously missing the mark when it comes to actually giving these folks the 'true' gospel.  The Significance of this is that if we don't give them the true gospel, we are hindering rather than helping them to true repentance and truly trusting in Christ as their Lord and the Saviour.

Although the taxi driver joke may be funny....this issue is no joke!  The eternal status of lives whom Christ died to save is at stake!