6/18 The Big Kahuna, a vision of Evangelism

Location: Lexington, Kentucky, "hotel" portion of retirement home

If you haven’t seen this film, there is a young professional, in only his first year at a major marketing firm who is sent out with a team to represent his company. He also happens to be a particularly evangelical Christian. This character, Bob, meets Kevin Spacey’s character, a ruthless, semi-disillusioned middle-aged long-time employee of the company.

Bob is a particularly well-behaved, almost self-righteous man. I wonder whether this was meant to portray Christianity in a good or bad light through this portion of his “outer” character—not going to strip bars, drinking hard liquor or smoking cigarettes, and seemingly never associated with those who do. That is the part that has me questioning, his gasps that the world could be so bad to include those who would do all those things he would never dare, is this a good picture of a Christian?

Furthermore, Bob comes into trouble for his mode of evangelism. Instead of talking business with the major client coming into town (to his credit, he didn’t recognize him), he instead talks to him about death and life and Christ. This is relational evangelism, or is it? Honestly, we will never know. He does first talking to the man about his dead dog, finding out something personal about him. Does he twist the conversation? Is this ok?

The Danny Devito character tells him that his evangelism is nothing more than a sales pitch, a way of marketing Jesus. His suggestion is that Bob, the young Christian, instead focus on learning more about the individual, his hopes and dreams instead of “placing his hands on the conversation and steering it”—at which point he declares Bob stops being a human being and starts being a salesman.

So what is relational evangelism then anyway? Bob does find out about the man; however, he is the first to bring up the topic of Jesus—is this sales? Is marketing Jesus wrong? Is it marketing when it becomes personal? Is it only marketing when we pull out the track and 10-step points to “have a personal relationship with Christ?”

In the end the character who is criticizing Bob seems to come out on top, though the movie ends with that trendy song a few years ago with life lessons to rap music entitled something about “always wear sunscreen--”truly secular conventional wisdom and advice. We see Bob continuing to talk to the businessman—whether about jesus or business now, we don’t know. He didn’t want to get his messages mixed, make the man think he was talking about god in order to make him give them the business, but has Bob done wrong? At what point? Will he ever be able to keep a job this way?

I want to side with bob, but not having heard his conversations, its hard to know.