Conspiracy of Kindness (Revised)
A Unique Approach to Sharing the Love of Jesus
Steve Sjogren
(Regal, 256pgs, $15p)
My wife loves a good practical joke. She will drive up to a drive-through window at a fast-food place and pay for the order of the person in the car behind her and then tell the cashier that when they give the food to the person, to tell them that Jesus loves them. Then she pulls away, giggling. She got that idea from Steve Sjogren, the father of servant evangelism. And Steve has a host of creative ways to kill the world with kindness that all started with his 1993 bestselling book, "Conspiracy of Kindness." Now, Sjogren is back with an updated and revised version, warranted with the arrival of the Internet and the Information Age, all of which has tweaked our ability to serve others and show kindness.
What Sjogren has taught me is that the dog is supposed to wag the tail, not the tail the dog. Churches are to serve, not be served by, their community. Have you ever noticed those "No Solicitors" signs at store entrances? They are there for a reason. Shop owners often display them in self-defense — sometimes from local churches and religious organizations that approach them all too frequently to solicit funds for this project, or that missions endeavor, or their youth group, or a new addition to their church. Every retailer has had the disheartening experience of having regularly to say no to yet another religious group. And, regrettably, somewhere along the way, some business owners have simply lost respect for churches so that, now, when a church really wants to do something for their community, for free, for nothing but the joy of serving, people lift an eyebrow and mumble, "Yeah, right."
Enter, "Conspiracy of Kindness." Sjogren's is a fresh approach to doing Christianity, which mirrors the sentiments of Mother Teresa: "Small things done with great love can change the world." He believes that exhibiting genuine kindness may be the greatest tool a Christian has in influencing their world. When we endeavor to affect the world through simple acts of kindness rather than those hard-to-learn, step-by-step, often counterproductive, make-the-pitch-and-close-the-sale confrontational approaches to "soul-winning" that have made "evangelism" a four-letter word for many people, we discover that anyone can do the e-word. Everyone can do an intentional act of kindness at any time for anyone anywhere: mow an overstressed neighbor's lawn, visit a hospitalized coworker, bake cookies, wash a car, be a friend, live life outside yourself. These are "low -isk, high-grace" approaches to sharing the faith. And they are proving to be more effective.
In "Conspiracy," Sjogren offers a host of kindness strategies sprinkled with timely stories — and he has a natural gift for storytelling — of people whose lives were changed by Christians who simply showed them "God's love in a practical way." The first edition of "Conspiracy" has sold over 200,000 copies and launched a style of Christianity that is changing strategies of churches around the world. As Bert Waggoner has observed, "Conspiracy means 'to breathe with,' and Steve Sjogren has indeed started a conspiracy by assisting the church to partner with the Spirit to breathe out the love of God into a world that desperately needs to know God's love."
