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To: yonif
Confessions of a Targeteer

What a strange relatiionship between Evangelicals and Jews. Evangelicals could stand a lot of education regarding the Jews, and, from my experience, Jews are even more in need of understanding what Evangelical Christians are all about.

As to "targeting specific groups": Jews look at evangelism efforts from a very cramped and restricted perspective. The missionary / evangelism enterprise of the evangelicals is massive, consisting of literally thousands of organizations spending many billions of dollars annually. The amount of money and effort spent on "Jewish evangelism" is, relative to the whole, miniscule. The organizations that focus on Jews (as opposed to, say those that focus on Hindus, Muslims, Atheists, Bhuddists, Taoists, lapsed "cultural christians, Quechuas, Paraguayan Guranas, etc,) are very few.

I grew up in a "Missionary" Evangelical church ( half the budget went to missionary and relief activity). Then, as now, the "jewish" agencies were always lamenting their tiny portion of the missionary pie that they subsisted on.

Add to this the fact that most "jewish missionary" agencies spend the bulk of their time NOT evangelizing, but educating gentile christians as to the jewish roots of their faith, and promoting trips to Israel, and you can see that the outreach to jews is definitely a minor emphasis. If half of 1% of missionary effort "targets jews," I'd be shocked.

That Jews see themselves as at ground zero of the missionary effort is completely crazy, indicative of the (reasonable ) fears Jews have stemming from an earlier age when christians (mostly non-evangelicals) engaged in coercive "conversions." But it doesn't comport with present facts. I'm not sure, other than this, why "targeted" evangelism is considered bad (please enlighten me). To evangelize Koreans, you speak Korean, To evangelize Portuguese, you speak portuguese,... so what?

102 posted on 08/27/2003 7:48:40 PM PDT by cookcounty
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To: cookcounty
I have witnessed firsthand some of the tactics Jews for Jesus uses, including disrupting Shabbat services in a synagogue on three different occasions, so don't try to feed me sophistry about who these people are.

You might be less sanguine if Jews came into your Christian church during Sunday services and tried to get you to renounce Jesus. Evangelism takes many forms, most of which I have no problem with, but JfJ is out of line and patently dishonest about who they are and what they do.

Liars are the agents of Satan, not God.

106 posted on 08/27/2003 8:05:40 PM PDT by Imal (The World According to Imal: http://imal.blogspot.com)
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