Immediately in reach of my left hand is a chafing dish containing multi-colored paper clips.  Each paper clip is connected to another in a rainbow chain that extends several feet. In order to use a paper clip I must extricate one from the chain.  I take great comfort in this, because I know who linked them.  I know, because when I was a kid I would sit at the preacher’s desk and link his paperclips.  I did this because I really liked my preacher, and that’s the kind of thing kid’s do.  So I feel curiously loved (and arthritic), as I wrestle a paper clip from the chain.  Also, the fine motor skills, and squinting involved in the process reminds me of the truth of the scriptures, for:

Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap.   Galatians 6.7

            The paper clips weren’t the only way we used to pick on our preacher, and some of our teachers.  We’d come up with nick-names, find irritating behaviors (like gum chewing, or foot shaking), give gag gifts etc… all because we liked a guy.  Many teachers we did not like, mostly because they did not like us.  There seemed to never be a shortage of guys who thought of themselves as Strother Martin, and the youth group as the cast of Cool Hand Luke.  Our Elders seemed to believe these George S. Patton mini-mes to be the very guys to reach the youth. I admit (mostly without pride) that like Benedick, we “devised brave punishments” for them, and they bit the dust, one by one. Sometimes, though, we got a teacher who didn’t dislike us, or feel the need to bully us, and then we had a great class.

            There was one guy who was neither cool, nor angry.  He neither bullied us, nor coddled us. He wasn’t educated, he had a speech impediment, he was painfully shy, and he tried very hard.  We were lambs in his class.  We would never think of treating him with disrespect.  He worked very hard at coming up with creative ways of making a point, but never succeeded at being anything more than clumsy at it.  Yet, I remember those attempts because of the earnestness of the effort, and thus I remember the lessons.  Once he came into class and drew a circle. In the circle he wrote the letters TUIT. Then he taught a lesson about how most of the time good deeds go undone because we never get “a round tuit” – around to it (get it). This was lame, even in 1978, but because he believed it, was doing his best, and couldn’t say it without stuttering we listened, and remembered.  Once he brought in a poster from a Driver’s Ed class that said “High Aim in Steering.”  His point was that you have to look ahead, take the long view, live for heaven not for the here and now.  I remember that point even though he was so nervous, and stuttered so badly I doubt he finished a coherent sentence that Wednesday evening.

And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come to you in superiority of speech, or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.  For I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My message, and my words were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but the power of God.   I Corinthians 2.1-5

            There is a saying so cliché as to be almost maudlin, and yet no less true: “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”  There is no more challenging a group to teach than teen-agers on a Wednesday night.  But even that lupine, predatory group sat quietly and listened when a man came to us as Paul came to the Corinthians.

            As we think about personal evangelism this year we are both humbled and empowered by this.  We understand that success lies not in our cleverness (or lack of cleverness), but in the truth of the message, and the honest effort of the messenger.

            We have all been given the truth.  We are all capable of honest effort.  We are all, thus, or all of us can be, effective evangelists.