Gentle Evangelism

Earlier this year, NBA player Jaden Ivey was traded from the Detroit Pistons to the Chicago Bulls. Shortly thereafter, he was dismissed for “conduct detrimental to the team.”[i] This is not unheard of, but it is rare because he’ll get paid whatever is remaining in his contract. The Bulls were so fed up with Ivey, they fired him, with pay. Normally, if he was not in their future plans, they would either try to trade him, or let him play out his contract and then not offer a new one. What did Ivey do that was so odious, that Chicago was willing to pay him $10 million just to walk away? He talked about Jesus.

            Of course, this is too simplistic of an explanation, but it is how Ivey justifies his actions that led to his dismissal from the team. What Ivey actually did was post videos on Instagram. Sitting in his car, he made a series of statements deemed to anti-LGBTQ+ by many in the media. Instagram is there for the world to watch. The NBA’s official stance is to welcome all fans. As a part of this effort, the league officially celebrates LGBTQ+ pride month. Ivey sees this as sinful and contrary to scripture. In his attempt to tell the good news of Jesus Christ, he condemns the LGBTQ+ community and any who support them.

            I need to establish a few things. This column I am writing is not a statement about the LGBTQ+ community. I know Christians whose faith I deeply respect who believe that people in same-sex marriages can follow Jesus and honor him in their marriages. I know other Christians, also people I respect, whose faith is essentially like Ivey’s. They vehemently condemn anything outside of Cisgender and heterosexual, monogamous marriage on what they believe to be Biblical grounds. And, I know people who fall between these extremes. For me, the biggest question is how do we share our faith effectively and lovingly?

            The other thing I need to assert is that if Ivey was scoring over 20 points a game and leading his team into the playoffs, they would have gladly tolerated his rhetoric. Professional sports teams tolerate a lot from star athletes. Ivey is a good enough that the Bulls traded for him, but not good enough to be a distraction.

            On the night before Easter, after the Bulls had cut him, he was near Auburn University. He with a number of other street preachers. His presentation of the gospel included judgment and Hell for those who reject the gospel. Is that approach effective? Is that the approach Jesus took? Jesus’ preaching definitely included fiery images of condemnation. Matthew 13:42 and 13:50 are but a few of many examples of this. Moreover, repentance was a key message that he preached (Mark 1:15, 38). However, often today’s street preachers and hard-core fundamentalists sound notes more condemnatory than those offered by Jesus. Whatever your LGBTQ+ theology is and whatever your thoughts about judgment and Hell are, you don’t want to be more extreme than Jesus was.

 Jesus loves all people – gay or straight, short or tall, male or female – all people. Jesus doesn’t want anyone going to Hell. I think, in our time and place in history, the best way to help people pay honest attention to Jesus is to walk with them in their pain and listen to their stories. Someone will only trust you with their pain and their stories if they think you are safe. Our pain makes us fragile and our stories expose us. We need to be handled gently.

Jaden Ivey claimed that on Judgement Day, he’s going to be judged for how he represented Christ, not how well he played basketball. He’s right. However, I don’t think his approach is safe enough to draw in broken, vulnerable people. My vision for the way we do evangelism at Hillside Church is based on the qualities Paul refers to as the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). Note what’s included in that virtue list – patience, kindness, generosity, and gentleness.

I believe that when we embody these qualities, it will put others at ease. It will be a gospel gift to them, because the world rarely gives these qualities. In a state of emotional relief and spiritual rest, they will then feel free to reveal their true selves. At that point, we don’t have to point out their sin. They’ll see it already. They’ll acknowledge it and repent. If they don’t have language for repentance, then we can step in and read Mark 1 with them. Zacchaeus was a “chief tax collector,” which meant that he was a professional, state-sanctioned swindler. Jesus did not condemn him. He just joined him for dinner.  He made Zacchaeus feel seen and welcomed. After that, Zacchaeus did all the confessing unprompted (Luke 19:8), and Jesus pronounced him saved (19:9).

I shared the account of Jaden Ivey as a cautionary tale. I urge all Hillside members to be evangelistic. Share the gospel in the world. However, do it in a way that is patient, kind, generous, and gentle. Enter people’s pain and listen to their stories. As you do, the Holy Spirit will reveal that moment when it is time to help them see how their lives are a part of God’s story and they need Jesus. That’s our approach to evangelism.

 

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[i] Cody Benjamin, Christianity Today (volume LXX, no. 4, July/August 2026), p.68-73.

Pause for the Prophet

 

               If you worship at Hillside Church or watch our services on YouTube or Facebook, you are reading this in August, 2026, and you know we’re in the middle of a series of sermons from 1 Peter. This will run through the rest of August. After that, we will turn our attention to some prophetic moments in the Old Testament. We’ll hear from Deborah, King Saul (who was briefly filled with God’s prophetic spirit), Gad, Obadiah, Micaiah, Huldah, and Oded. If these are unfamiliar names, that’s the point. We know about Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and other “big names” among the prophets. In the Bible, God say things we need to hear. Often the message is embedded in familiar stories, but just as often, God speaks his word through people Bible we might not know as well.

               Walter Brueggemann notes a recurring theme in prophetic literature: the prophet’s word both “plucks up and tears down,” and “plants and builds up” (Like Fire in the Bones, p.9). When God speaks through the prophets we must listen and align our lives with the message. Sometimes this leads us to radically changes our lives. Michael Fishbane says “God’s living voice [is] experienced as a caesural implosion on human consciousness” (Sacred Attunement, p.163). In poetry, a caesura is a built-in pause. The reader of the poem pauses at the caesura and takes a breath as she digests the words. Taking a pause to hear and understand God’s voice is necessary for all who take their faith seriously.

               I am calling the church to open the Bible, sit in quiet awe before the words we read and hear in it, and pause; we must read with enough honesty vulnerability that we feel ourselves plucked up and torn down as God implodes our consciousness. Then, just as we, in our sin, feel unmade in the presence of the holy God, that same God plants us and builds us up, or as Paul puts it, makes us new (2 Corinthians 5:17). If we breeze through Bible reading too quickly, failing to slow down and pay attentions, we might miss the ways God wants to go to work on us and in us.

               So, for the next 4 weeks, take a caesura. Pause with me, as we sit before 1 Peter. Then over the course of the two months after that, walk with me through the stories of lesser known but extraordinarily important prophets. Along the way, we’ll pause as needed. Reading closely and attentively and vulnerably, we find that the word of the Lord is not always easy to take, but even so, when we read in faith, we meet God and this revives the soul (Psalm 19:7).  From now through the end of October, who will join me in pausing and receiving revival from the living God?