The ends don’t justify the means, but is it possible that the ends justify the exclusion of some means?

In Britain, a website did a man-on-the-street kind of study:

Representatives from price comparison website, www.moneysupermarket.com wandered the streets this morning wearing sandwich boards offering a free £5 note to anyone who asked. Despite encountering over 1800 people, only 28 passers by bothered to take advantage of the offer.

That’s a whole lot of people who wouldn’t ask for the money.  If you follow the link to the press release, you’ll find the reasons people gave for not asking for the money (cynicism, unbelief, and embarrasment) and the conclusions drawn about people’s attitudes toward money in Britain.  But, I’m more interested in what that says about the effectiveness of the form of communication.  How much more would cynicism, unbelief, and embarrasment  come into play when the message is religious and/or negative?

I’ll admit (before it comes up in the comments) that sandwich boards aren’t all that popular among street evangelists (as far as I know), but signage seems to be holding strong among protestors and other angry people trying to communicate a point.  I just can’t see signs being an effective way of communicating the most important truth ever, especially after reading the story above.

Tags: evangelism, sandwich board, street preaching

When i first read this, I thought to myself “this has to be a joke.” But then I realized what website i was on. I am not doubting that this method of evangelism might work. But, it seems like just making friends with every non-believer that you meet would be a much more effective tactic. I am getting tired of hearing about these evangelistic methods that don’t require a relationship with the outsider. Especially when they include some type of statement like this in the explanation

So, let’s say you are in the mall. If you are like me, the security guards in your local mall know you by sight. As soon as you step foot into the mall, an APB goes out over security radios. “Red alert! We have a bogey inbound! That preacher is back! Keep an eye on him! We don’t want this subversive influencing the youths who frequent our mall!” source

Really? Does this guy really believe that the college freshman rent-a-cop in the retail outlets is concerned about the indoctrination of teenage mall rats? When will we stop trying to do evangelism like this? It’s like we want to help pull people out of the miry pit without getting the mud on our clothes. If having a bait and switch fake cell phone conversation is the best evangelistic tactic we got, something is wrong in Christendom.

Tags: evangelism