Crossroads myths II

Crossroads concentrates too much on evangelism.

Can you focus too much on evangelism? I don't know if that's a very wise thing to say. It is possible to focus on evangelism to the detriment of other things, of course. That's a better way to express this myth, perhaps.

In the past we have given the wrong impression that every Christian must be an evangelist and that only certain types of activities are valuable to the church and the church's mission. We have in the past neglected the importance of loving care and nurture of our relationship with God and our fellow believers.

Of course, neglecting your relationship with God and your love for the church actually undermines your commitment to evangelism in the end. And that is what we found out.

But is this still a fair criticism of Crossroads? No, I don't think so. We do two 'missions' each year. We see a few non-Christians come along to our meetings. We see one or two conversions every year. We are deeply committed to evangelism. But we are neither exclusively focused on it, nor astonishingly fruitful in it.

Crossroads has grown and changed a lot since it began in 2000. I fear that some of our critics haven't. I fear some of them are still stuck in the year 2000 or something.

In 2005-2006 Crossroads spent about 6 months on a careful consultation process to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses. If anything, we could be accused of focusing too much on pastoral care! You can read the report of that process here .