What’s the weirdest “evangelism tool” you’ve ever seen? For me, it used to be one of those fake ten dollar bills that people sometimes leave on the ground. They look like real money on one side and then on the other they say something like, “A relationship with God is worth more than a million dollars.” Nothing gets a person more willing to listen to your message than punking them into thinking they have found $10.
But this Jesus ball just knocked the fake money right out of gold medal contention. I found it online while I was trying to research something called an “evangecube” that a reader mentioned. This ball is designed to provide you with an easy way to share the gospel with neighborhood kids. Here is how the site I found it on describes how to use the EvangeBall:
1) Play a Game. 2) Gather a group. 3) Use the colors to ‘Simply Share Jesus.’
Can you imagine if you were a neighborhood kid playing with some friends and someone came up and said, “let’s play with this ball.” After kicking it for a few minutes they said, “Whoa wait a second, this ball just told me that unless we are covered in the blood of Christ we’ll burn in hell for eternity.”
Would be that weird? A little. But here’s my take on tools like this. I think it’s great that people are trying to find creative inroads to share the message of God. Keep it up. But I also think that in our pursuit of using tools, we sometimes miss the best thing we’ve been given to share God with others: love. What if instead of a tract or a ball or a shirt or a clever book we just did a better job loving people?
Maybe I don’t need a publisher to hook me up with a book deal. Maybe that’s just another tool. Maybe instead, I need to concentrate on loving the people in my tiny little section of the planet. Maybe love is all we need afterall.
Update: Robyn makes a really good point below in the comments. She’s going on a mission trip and will use the cube to bridge the language gap. I say kudos to that. I did not imagine that angle. Thanks for pointing it out. Seriously, that is cool.
