I'm often asked by busy Christians (aka almost every Christian): 'How am I supposed to witness for Christ when life is SO busy?'
Often what's behind this is frustration at how busy church life is. (In my experience most of us find it a lot easier to blame church for being over-busy than examine the priorities behind the choices we have made in our own lives that contribute to how busy we feel.)
'Pastor, you say I need to spend more time with my unchurched friends, but how can I do that when the church diary is so full?'
Among many evangelical churches in the UK there is a helpful change of mindset happening at the moment which realises that in an increasingly secular society so many won't come cold to a church-based meeting or event. Many churches like Woodgreen are therefore realising the importance of focusing the mid-week church programme more intentionally and running more bridge-building church-organised social occasions in 'neutral' venues as a good 'first base'.
However my observation is that this change of mind-set hasn't necessarily filtered through to individual Christians and how we each view our everyday lives. Seeing ourselves as 'the scattered church' on Mon-Sat - that we are called to be missionaries to our families, friends, workplaces and local communities - needs to become as important to the way we think as coming together as 'the gathered church' on Sunday is. Unless we realise that we are all involved in 'mission' 24/7 we will never reach the current secular 'would-never-darken-the-doors-of-a-church' generation for Christ.
This is the major problem with the complaint, 'I am too busy to witness'.
It implies that 'mission' is something I have to make time for, rather than something I do as part of my everyday life. We need a radical change of mindset. We must resist the temptation to compartmentalize mission or see it as something that happens at evangelistic events as professional Christian workers give a gospel talk. These occasions can be good opportunities for reaping, but the ground needs to be prepared and the seed sown much earlier in hearts and lives. And that's the job of every single believer. As we know, sow and show Jesus in our families, workplaces and neighbourhoods, we are 'on mission'.
As David Paul Tripp so helpfully explains in the 2 minute video below - the change of mindset we need to adopt is moving from worrying about how we can fit mission into our schedule - to seeing mission AS our schedule.
Direct Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHo4RJ9EUws
