Messianics Rising - Barry Yeoman

Messianics
Rising

Cary, N.C. (JTA) — An arctic blast has emptied
the streets of the East New York neighborhood
of Brooklyn, yet inside the Living Springs
Family Center, a storefront Pentecostal church
with stamped-tin ceilings, the space heaters are
cranked up. So is the music, an upbeat gospel
heavy on guitar and electric keyboard.
Thirty Caribbean immigrants belting out
Psalm 113 lift and lower their arms to suggest
the cycle of the day: “From the rising of the sun;
Unto the going down of the same; The name of
the Lord is to be praised.”
Hips swivel. The floor trembles. Neighbors
embrace.
After an hour, the congregation is primed
for this morning’s guest speaker. Karol Joseph,
a staff member with Jews for Jesus, has come to
deliver a talk on “Christ in the Passover.”
It’s one of several polished programs developed
by the $20 million a year ministry to help
rank-and-file evangelicals proselytize to their
Jewish co-workers, employers and clients.
Joseph, 55, grew up in a Conservative synagogue
in Newton, Mass., and flirted with Scientology
and Buddhism before a classmate led her
to Christ in the 1980s. Now she feels called to
“witness,” or share her faith, “to the Jew first,”
as the New Testament commands.
Standing behind a table filled with Passover
symbols, Joseph describes the seder through a
Christian lens.
Growing
evangelical movement
finding new ways
to proselytize
“Some rabbis tell that the three layers of
matzah represent Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,”
she says. “But why would the middle matzah be
broken, buried and brought back?”
To Joseph it symbolizes Christ the Son,
sandwiched between the Father and Holy Spirit.
Moreover, the lamb shank evokes “the sacrifice
of an even greater Passover lamb, our Lord,
Jesus,” she says.
Before the 10th plague, the killing of the
firstborn son, “when the blood of the lambs
would drip down from [Jewish] doorposts, it
would form the sign of the cross,” she says.
Shouts of “amen” erupt from the pews. It’s
time for Joseph’s appeal.
“A lot of you know Jewish people,” she says.
“We need your help.
“More Jewish people hear the Gospel from
one of you than from one of us,” Joseph adds, explaining
that lay Christians are just as important
as professional evangelists at winning converts.
Joseph invites members to purchase instructional
books and DVDs, attend local evangelism
events and donate money toward her efforts.
After a standing ovation, several people
approach Joseph. Shirley Brathwaite, a home
health-care aide originally from Trinidad, says
she would like to share her beliefs with three elderly
Jewish clients without intruding into their
lives or getting fired by her agency.
“I know these people really need help,”

Brathwaite says, her words lacking the sophistication
of professional missionaries but every
bit as passionate. “They’re lost. They’re looking
for the Messiah to come, and they’re looking in
the wrong direction. Some of them might die in
sin and go to Hell. We should really tell them,
you know?”
Brathwaite knows this will be a long-term
process. Four months later she still hasn’t summoned
the courage to approach her clients.
“I don’t know what to say to them,” she says
in a worried tone.
Still, inspired by the Passover presentation,
she plans to call Joseph and ask her how to
move forward.
D
Anyone who has encountered street evangelists
with their cartoon broadsides knows
that Christian efforts to win Jewish souls are
nothing new. Yet the evangelical movement’s
numbers have swelled of late, with much of its
work happening off the streets.
“Missions to Jews have become more sophisticated
and better funded,” says Amy-Jill
Levine, a professor of New Testament Studies at
Vanderbilt University.
Hundreds of organizations now exist to persuade
Jews that their salvation depends on accepting
Jesus as Messiah. Many of these groups
are connected through a network of organizations
with media- and Internet-savvy staffs, as
well as well-oiled fund-raising operations.
While Catholics and mainline Protestants
have eschewed the practice, some of the largest
evangelical denominations — Southern
Baptists, Assemblies of God, Missouri-Synod
Lutherans — have stepped up their conversion
efforts. Independent missions have been on the
upswing, too.
Last year, Jews for Jesus completed a fiveyear
tour called “Behold Your God” that brought
its message to 53 cities worldwide. Chosen
People Ministries saw its income grow by 31
percent, to $7.9 million, between 2003 and 2006.
The Phoenix-based Jewish Voice Ministries International
says that since 1993 it has drawn
500,000 people to festivals and concerts aimed
at evangelizing Jews in Eastern Europe, South
America and India.
Messianic congregations, which combine
Christian faith with Jewish identity and ritual,
also have mushroomed.
Some call themselves synagogues and incorporate
such practices as bar mitzvah and
circumcision. JTA research turned up more than
300 such congregations in the United States; the
Association of Messianic Congregations puts
the figure at 438.
Yet there are no well-established methods
to track the movement, which is diffuse and
sometimes operates underground, experts say.
Jews for Judaism, an anti-missionary group,
follows 900 organizations in North America
alone and calculates that $250 million annually
is spent around the world. Estimates of
the number of Jewish-born Christians and selfidentified
Messianic Jews worldwide range from
60,000 to 275,000.
Israel has more than 100 Messianic congregations,
says Yaakov Ariel, associate professor
of religious studies at the University of
North Carolina and author of “Evangelizing The
Chosen People.”
“Thousands of young Israelis — graduates
of Israeli schools, graduates of the army — are
in Messianic congregations,” he says, adding,
“Almost all of them come from non-Orthodox
homes and many from secular backgrounds.”
What’s more, evangelicals perform an increasing
share of the charitable work in the
Jewish state.
“They’ve become an important part of the
welfare network: taking care of the elderly,
taking care of the needy,” Ariel says.
Last year, Chosen People Ministries brought
$50,000 worth of food to southern Israel, where
Jews had taken refuge from the conflict on the
Lebanese border.
Mitch Glaser, the ministries president, says
his staff was “buying food from grocery stores

in Jerusalem and schlepping it seven hours to
Eilat.”
“Was that evangelism? It might be,” he says.
“We did talk about our love for the Lord as we
did it.”
Back in the United States, as the movement
has boomed, so have its educational institutions.
Some of the nation’s leading evangelical
schools, including Criswell College in Dallas
and Western Seminary in San Jose, Calif., offer
accredited programs in Jewish studies or Messianic
Judaism.
Chosen People Ministries has teamed up
with California’s Biola University to create
a three-year master’s program in Messianic
Jewish studies. The Union of Messianic Jewish
Congregations has an institute — linked informally
to an evangelical seminary in Florida —
to ordain Christ-centered “rabbis.”
Myriad publications on how to win over
Jews are readily available, including theological
journals and a four-volume set titled “Answering
Jewish Objections to Jesus.” An international
umbrella group, the Lausanne Consultation on
Jewish Evangelism, brainstormed about strategies
this summer in Hungary.
Groups such as Jews for Jesus partner with
large evangelical congregations, such as the
McLean Bible Church in Vienna, Va., to train
members in reaching Jewish neighbors and coworkers.
“This is becoming front-page news in evangelical
churches,” says Lon Solomon, McLean’s
pastor.
Only rarely does the issue attract mainstream
attention, as when conservative pundit
Ann Coulter told CNBC talk-show host Donnie
Deutsch earlier this month, “We just want Jews
to be perfected.”
Jewish leaders are far from unified about
how much damage these efforts inflict.
“I am not convinced that this is a major
crisis,” says Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, U.S. director
of interreligious affairs for the American
Jewish Committee, explaining that the number
of actual conversions appears low.
Greenebaum worries, though, that when
churches fund Jewish-directed missionary
work, it creates an obstacle to interfaith dialogue.
Others express more alarm.
“Is it an existential threat to the future of
the Jewish community? No,” says Rabbi Craig
Miller, education director of the anti-missionary
task force at the Jewish Community Relations
Council of New York. “Is it hurting Jewish
individuals? Yes. The loss of any Jewish person
is a tragedy for family and friends, and it’s also
a loss of that person’s creativity and input to the
Jewish community as a whole.”
D
U nder the clankety-clank of an elevated
train, the vertical banners lining Brooklyn’s
Brighton Beach Avenue welcome visitors
to “Little Russia by the Sea.” Once vibrant with
working-class Jews, then suffering a period of
decline, the Brighton Beach neighborhood was
enlivened in the 1980s by a new wave of immigrants,
many of them Jewish and from the
former Soviet Union. Now pedestrians stroll
past furriers, a Russian ballet school and grocery
stores offering sausage, knishes and
smoked herring.
Through a doorway marked with a Star of
David and up a staircase is the Russian Community
Life Center, a modest cluster of rooms that
has become one of Brooklyn’s missionary hot
spots. On a Saturday morning, 60 immigrants
in black plastic folding chairs watch as center
director Leslie McMillan dons a head scarf and
lights a pair of Shabbat candles. She recites the
traditional Hebrew blessing, but with an addition:
“B’shem Yeshua,” which translates as “in
the name of Jesus.”
The Shabbat candles, a worship leader explains
in Russian, “is like a symbol of the light
of Jesus Christ, our Savior.”
Evangelists have identified Russian Jews
as particularly ripe for their message. They
lived under a government that for decades sup-

pressed worship, leaving them with few religious
preconceptions.
“It’s been forbidden fruit for generations,”
says Eugene Lubman, a 31-year-old computer
programmer from Kiev, Ukraine, who serves as
vice president of the center’s board.
“There was a spiritual hunger, an understanding
that the things in the world aren’t an
end in themselves. People have been gravitating
to any spirituality they can find.”
Lubman, who was born Jewish, believes that
Messianic congregations welcome immigrants
more readily than do some religious Jews.
“In the Orthodox community there are
things you are expected to start practicing,” he
says. “You have to change the way you eat. You
have to change the way you dress. You have to
change the way you act.”
Perhaps this “hunger” explains why the
center has attracted so much Christian interest.
Chosen People Ministries helped launched the
center and New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian
Church provides funding. Jews for Jesus leads
services for those curious about Christianity,
and a Russian Baptist church holds Bible studies.Another
congregation sponsors worship
services for recovering drug addicts and their
families.
Two summers ago, the center became a
staging ground as Jews for Jesus missionaries
descended on Brighton Beach en masse as part
of their Behold Your God campaign.
Throughout the year, the center teaches
sewing and offers citizenship assistance. But
the bulk of its evangelism comes by way of
inexpensive English classes — two hours of
small-group instruction followed by 30 minutes
of mandatory Old and New Testament study.
“We absolutely have to do this,” Lubman
says. “There’s so little support for immigrants.
They don’t know the language. They can’t get a
job. They’re absolutely lost in the new society.”
If missionaries can help newcomers acclimate,
he insists, “we really deserve their ear.”
Jewish leaders offer a less charitable spin.
They say symbols like the Star of David confuse
older Russians, who grew up under state atheism.
“They have no radar,” says attorney Marcia
Eisenberg, who works with the anti-missionary
task force at the Jewish Community Relations
Council of New York. “They have no context to
understand this is not Jewish.”
Critics add that evangelists’ successes do
not occur in a vacuum.
“I always thought missionary efforts were
an early warning system,” says Jonathan Sarna,
professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis
University. “If you want to see where the
weak parts are in Jewish communities, you look
at where the missionaries are. Most recently
you find missionaries focusing on immigrants,
the elderly and students — all areas where the
Jewish community has not done its work.”
Oleg Nemtsov, a 32-year-old massage therapist,
arrived in Brooklyn from Belarus in the
1990s. A teenager at the time, he enrolled in an
Orthodox yeshiva where other students “treated
me like a dog,” he says. They mocked his poor
eyesight, provoking scuffles that led to Nemtsov
being expelled after two months.
Struggling with depression, Nemtsov met
some evangelists in a Brighton Beach park. He
was touched by their kindness.
“I started picturing Christ as this sweet,
wonderful friend,” he says.
Nemtsov struggled with his religious beliefs
for another decade, but now he is considering
devoting himself to Christian evangelism.
“I don’t want anyone to burn in hellfire,” he
says.
Still, Nemtsov admits, he has some doubts
about his new faith.
“I’m pretty vulnerable to being misled,” he
acknowledges. “I just need to relax, talk to God
and see what He shows me.”

Cary, N.C. (JTA) — The Shabbat morning
service at Congregation Sha’arei Shalom
in this suburb of Raleigh has a familiar feel to
anyone who grew up in a mainstream American
synagogue.
Sixty adults and a handful of children have
gathered in a sanctuary adorned with sevenbranched
menorahs and an Israeli flag. Many
of the men wear yarmulkes and tallitot; the
women are dressy but not ostentatious.
After morning prayers and a silent Amidah,
a congregational leader opens a small ark and
removes a Torah scroll. He holds it aloft as the
room fills with the familiar chanting of the
“Shema” and “Echad Eloheinu.”
Before the Torah procession begins, the worshipers
recite an additional prayer in Hebrew:
“Yeshua hu ha-Mashiach hu adon hakol,” meaning
“Jesus, He is the Messiah, and He is Lord
over all.”
Sha’arei Shalom, which meets in a Southern
Baptist church, is part of the burgeoning phenomenon:
Messianic “synagogues” that blend
Jewish liturgy with a Christian message.
In the 1970s, no more than a handful of these
congregations existed throughout the United
States. Now there are more than 300 nationwide
— the Association of Messianic Congregations
says 438 — plus another 100 in Israel.
Congregations are found across the former
Soviet Union and in countries as diverse as Ar-
Messianics
praying the ‘Shema,’
but preaching Jesus
as the Messiah
gentina, the Netherlands and Zambia. Last fall,
1,000 people attended a fund-raiser for a new
Messianic center in Berlin launched by the
Chosen People Ministries and aimed at reaching
Russian immigrants.
Many of these congregations sponsor Torah
studies, b’nai mitzvot, klezmer concerts, kosher
food pantries, Shabbat dinners, singles gatherings
and Hebrew schools. They encourage
Jewish-born members to maintain their identities
and participate in events sponsored by the
larger Jewish community. They call Jesus by the
Hebrew name “Yeshua,” and the New Testament
“B’rit Chadashah.” They welcome interfaith
couples.
The goal, movement leaders say, is to create
an atmosphere where Jews feel more receptive
to a Christ-centered theology.
“A lot more people are coming to faith in
Yeshua through Messianic congregations than
ever would through street evangelism,” says
Mitch Glaser, president of the New York-based
Chosen People Ministries. “It not only brings
Jewish people face to face with the message, but
it brings them heart to heart with people who
have been impacted by the message.”
Evangelists call this “contextualization,”
presenting the Gospel in a cultural format that
welcomes potential converts. In Muslim countries,
Christian missionaries sometimes fast
during Ramadan, prostrate themselves during

prayer and refer to their churches as “Jesus
mosques.”
Though it is not a new strategy, missionaries
have used contextualization with increasing
skill and subtlety. To Jewish watchdogs this goes
beyond old-fashioned “witnessing,” or sharing
of faith. They say it smacks of fraud: the use of
familiar practices and symbols to lure people
away from their faith.
“This is Jewish identity theft,” says Scott
Hillman, former executive director of Jews for
Judaism, a Baltimore-based organization that
tracks missionary efforts. “What kind of witness
is it for what you believe to be true if you
have to use deception to sell it?”
Hillman says he does not oppose evangelizing
per se, as long practitioners are upfront
about their Christianity.
“But the moment you put up a sign saying
‘Yeshua’s the Messiah; fulfill your Judaism,’
that’s when I have a problem,” he says.
Most mainstream Jews believe that Christianity
and Judaism are mutually exclusive, no
matter what evangelists claim.
“Belief in Jesus as the Messiah places you
outside the Jewish community’s self-definition,”
says Lawrence Schiffman, chair of Hebrew and
Judaic studies at New York University. “That is
a fact.”
D
The theological differences between Judaism
and Christianity are deeper and more
complex than the issue of Jesus’ messiahship.
For instance, Judaism says God forgives repentant
sinners; Christianity describes an irreparable
breach that could have been bridged
only by Jesus’ death.
Judaism has the righteous of all nations
as being saved; Christianity says heaven is reserved
exclusively for those who recognize Jesus
as Messiah. When the two religions diverge,
Messianic Jews tend to side with Christians.
This is no accident. The Messianic movement
is rooted in evangelical Christianity.
Even today, many Messianic congregations are
aligned with conservative Protestant denominations.
The Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies
of God, Seventh-day Adventists, International
Church of Foursquare Gospel, Evangelical
Church of America, Lutheran Church Missouri
Synod and Presbyterian Church in America all
sponsor Messianic congregations.
Ray Gannon, who directs Jewish outreach
for the Assemblies of God, says his denomination
initially tried to assimilate converts from
Judaism without much success.
“It became clear to us that we would not be
able to plant our new Jewish believers in established
churches because of cultural differences,”
he says. “They’d say, ‘We’re Jews, and we want
our children and grandchildren to be Jews. We
want to have bar mitzvahs.’ ”
Today, Gannon says, “We’re not interested
in filling our churches with Jewish people. We’re
interested in enabling Jewish people to enjoy
the best things of Jewish life while at the same
time entering a real relationship with God.”
One of Gannon’s converts, Esther Rosenberg,
was suffering from a painful spinal disease
in the 1970s when in desperation she attended
an Assemblies of God church. Receiving
her attendance card, Gannon contacted her and
invited her to a Torah study at a Jewish-Christian
home.
It was at that study, Rosenberg claims, that
her symptoms lifted.
“I felt the ‘ruach Elohim,’ I felt the Spirit of
God, come upon me,” she says. “It was a big
thing, a big tzimmis. For the first time I could
sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes without
excruciating pain.”
Now affiliated with a Foursquare Gospel
church, the 77-year-old Rosenberg also attends
two Messianic congregations, “so I don’t lose
my Yiddishkeit. I was not intending to be a goy,
a shiksa, because I had accepted my Messiah.”
Over the past two years, some Messianic
leaders have questioned whether their movement
is too aligned with evangelicals. The opening
volley came in 2005 when theologian Mark

Kinzer published a book called “Post-Missionary
Messianic Judaism,” arguing that accepting
Christ does not release a Jew from certain religious
obligations such as keeping kosher and
observing Shabbat.
Kinzer is president of the Messianic Jewish
Theological Institute, which is based in Clermont,
Fla., and is building a campus in Los Angeles.
He believes that congregations have an
obligation to preserve those practices — not as a
form of “contextualized” Christianity but rather
as what he calls an authentic Judaism.
“God’s covenant with Israel necessitates a
certain way of life,” he says. “It’s not an option.
Any message that alienates Jews from Judaism
is not the Gospel. You haven’t saved a Jewish
soul.”
Kinzer agrees that Messianic Jews are “summoned”
to share their faith, albeit in a manner
sensitive to the long
legacy of Christian
a nt i - S e m i t i s m .
Unlike many of his
peers, Kinzer does
not necessarily believe
salvation is at
stake.
“I’m less confident of the negative spiritual
status of the wider Jewish world,” he says. “I’m
willing to believe there are many Jewish people
who are right with God.”
Kinzer has a core of supporters, but he remains
in a minority. Loren Jacobs, a self-described
evangelical Protestant who serves as
senior rabbi at Congregation Shema Yisrael in
Bloomfield Hills, Mich., calls Kinzer a “heretic”
for suggesting, among other things, that mainstream
Jews might have a place in heaven.
Even some Messianic moderates say Kinzer’s
ideas sound too much like “interfaith dialogue,”
in which proselytizing is sacrificed for
peaceful relations.
“I can agree to give up the word ‘missionary.’
It provokes intense dislike among most
Jews,” writes retired economist David Stern in
the journal Kesher, published by the Union of
“Belief in Jesus as the Messiah places
you outside the Jewish community’s
self-definition. That is a fact.”
Messianic Jewish Congregations. “Nevertheless,
the New Testament’s Great Commission
commands us to go into all the world and make
disciples. Failure to do so is the worst form of
anti-Semitism.”
D
Michael L. Brown, a prolific speaker on
the evangelism circuit, says Messianic
congregations serve one primary purpose.
“We’re not here to recover our Jewishness,”
says Brown, president of ICN Ministries in Harrisburg,
N.C. “We’re not here to teach Christians
how to recover their Jewish roots. We’re here to
send a message to the Jewish community about
Jesus.”
Brown believes that this congregational approach
produces more “lasting fruit” than missionary
blitzes like
Jews for Jesus’ 53city
“Behold Your
God” campaign,
which ended in the
summer of 2006.
Some Messianic
congregations
do perform street evangelism. At Shema Yisrael,
members distribute brochures at art fairs
and the local Thanksgiving parade. Most take
a more intimate approach, urging members
to bring friends to Shabbat services and social
gatherings.
“The best way of telling other people about
Jesus is through our web of personal relationships,”
says Glaser of the Chosen People Ministries.
When Jews attend congregational events
and come away touched, he says, “it’s more
powerful than trying to disseminate forensic or
provable truth.”
Smart programming helps, too. On New
York’s Long Island, Melech Yisrael Messianic
Synagogue used the 2006 movie “The Da Vinci
Code” to attract prospective members from the
surrounding Jewish community.
Before the film’s opening, Melech Yisrael

sponsored a four-week discussion group that
culminated in a screening and dinner.
During one meeting “we read samples from
the Gnostic Gospels,” congregation leader Kiel
Cooper wrote in a recent issue of Kesher. “Several
people then asked if we could read a Gospel
from the Bible to see what it had to say. When
was the last time a Jewish person asked you to
read Matthew with them?”
Members of Sha’arei Shalom insist their
goal is not to proselytize. Still, the North Carolina
congregation was founded by Chosen People
Ministries, a group zealously devoted to winning
Jews to Christ.
“Every Messianic congregation needs to do
proclamation and outreach,” says Glaser, the organization’s
president. “It’s a biblical command.
It’s not elective.”
That perspective is reflected in Sha’arei
Shalom’s guest preachers. One frequent speaker
has been Seth Postell, a doctoral student at
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in
Mill Valley, Calif.
A former Jews for Jesus street campaigner,
Postell also did missionary work in Israel for
nine years, and says he received a criminal citation
there for distributing copies of the New
Testament on a beach. He returned to Israel in
June to lead a nine-day trip featuring “prayer
walking and beach evangelism.”
To watchdog groups, preachers like Postell
confirm the impossibility of separating Messianic
congregations from more traditional missions
such as Jews for Jesus.
“Even if they aren’t constantly proselytizing
to their friends and neighbors, they’re still hearing
that message about how we need to support
those who spread the Gospel,” says Hillman,
the former Jews for Judaism director.
On a windy day last fall, members of Sha’arei
Shalom listened to a message about the importance
of evangelism from Michael H. Brown,
pastor of Adat Y’shua Ha Adon, a congregation
in Woodland Hills, Calif.
Using the New Testament as his reference,
Brown cast Noah, using the Hebrew name
Noach, as an early evangelist preaching righteousness
to his neighbors as he built the ark.
“It’s very clear from the Scripture that Noach
wasn’t just working by himself,” says Brown,
who is not related to the ICN Ministries’ Michael
L. Brown. “There were people coming up to him
saying, ‘What in the world are you doing?’ And
he was witnessing to people for maybe up to
120 years.”
Likewise, Brown says, Messianic believers
are called to proclaim their faith, particularly to
Jews.
“I wonder what ark God is wanting you to
build in your life,” he says. “Could it be to witness
to some co-worker or some family member?”
Brown acknowledges this is difficult work:
“Noach didn’t have any converts for 120 years.”
That, he says, doesn’t lessen the imperative.
“We need to be a verbal witness to people
around us,” he explains. “I’m not saying shove
it down their throat. I’m not saying beat them
over the head with it. But people need to know
where we stand.”

Fairfax, Va. (JTA) — The smell of fried latkes
permeates Darrin and Sharon Speck’s twostory
townhouse in this Washington suburb. It’s
the second night of Chanukah, and the couple
have gathered some friends and neighbors to
celebrate.
Three-dimensional Stars of David dangle
over the entrance to a living room scattered
with chocolate gelt. Small children, including
two of their own, crawl around and babble.
The only incongruous element is the Marty
Goetz CD. The Jewish-born former Catskills
singer found Jesus in 1978, and now his rendition
of “Ma’oz Tzur” blends seamlessly into
“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” Otherwise there
are few cues in the room that the Specks are
Christian.
With the music playing quietly, a dozen
people gather around the menorah.
“Baruch atah Adonai…” begins one of their
friends, a tall man in his 30s with a dark, bushy
mustache. He recites the traditional blessings
in Hebrew and English, then lights the candles
and carefully replaces the shamash.
“B’shem Yeshua HaMashiach,” he concludes
in an improvised flourish, using a Hebrew
phrase that means “in the name of Jesus the
Messiah.”
The Specks are part-time staffers at Chosen
People Ministries, an international organization
dedicated to bringing Jews to Christ. They
‘Friendship’ evangelists
eschew street, cozy up
to prospective converts
practice “friendship” or “relational” evangelism:
trying to win converts by building intimate
connections with neighbors, friends and
clients.
Relational evangelism is a time-consuming
process that often involves personal conversations
followed by invitations to a church or
religious-themed event — in the case of the
Specks, their annual Passover seders and Purim
and Chanukah parties.
Practitioners are less likely to interact on a
street corner and more apt to invite potential
converts to their homes. They are also more
likely to be effective, Jewish and Christian
experts say.
Darrin Speck, a 30-year-old remodeling
contractor from a blue-collar family in Canton,
Ohio, welcomes the guests into his home. Blue
eyed and small framed, he has a firm bear hug
and a strong jaw that frames a gap-toothed
smile.
Speck projects an utter absence of guile:
During months of interviews with JTA, he
answered scores of personal questions at length,
never seeming to measure his words. He and
Sharon, who works with him, can hold down
their end of a conversation on Talmud, holiday
rituals or modern Israeli history. Both deplore
the confrontational tactics of street evangelists.
They call themselves “postmodern missionaries.”

“The reason we like to celebrate Chanukah,
as believers in Jesus, is because there wouldn’t
be a Christmas without Chanukah,” Darrin says
to his friends. “Throughout history, people have
wanted to wipe out the Jewish people — just
look at Iran in our day. If the Jewish people in
the world were wiped out, there would be no
Jesus. And if there was no Jesus, there would be
no savior of the world.”
Soon the adults have settled into a serious
game of dreidel. Even within a missions movement
that is gravitating toward relational evangelism,
the Specks’ approach is particularly
gentle.
“I’m not out to offend people,” Darrin says.
“I want people to enter a dialogue and think for
themselves whether or not Jesus is the Messiah.
I can give you an argument, but that doesn’t
mean anyone’s going to buy it. People need to
search it out on their own.”
D
Darrin Speck was floundering at Chicago’s
Moody Bible Institute when he took his
first Jewish studies course in 1999. A machinist
who had quit his job making plastic injection
molds, he had enrolled at Moody in the hopes
of doing international missionary work.
“When you go to Bible college, you go all on
fire and excited. Then you start to study things
purely in terms of academics. You parse it, you
slice it in a million pieces,” he says, adding later
that “you can tend to lose sight of people.”
Discouraged by the abstract approach, he
considered quitting.
Jewish studies “revolutionized my life,”
Darrin says. Moody is one of the key training
grounds for Christian missionaries who want
to proselytize to Jews. One course, for example,
offers “practical techniques for culturally sensitive
Jewish evangelism.”
Moody also provides short-term training
for Jews for Jesus volunteers and teaches its
students the Jewish roots of Christianity.
“My faith made sense when I understood
Jesus wasn’t a blond, blue-eyed boy,” Darrin
says. “Jesus was this Jewish guy from the House
of David.”
Around this time he befriended Sharon, a
Chicago-area native with a soft, round face and
long blond hair. Sharon had studied mathematics
at Illinois State University before a calling to
ministry led her to Moody.
During her junior year, she had landed a
summer internship in Vladivostok, Russia,
where she led Bible-study sessions for collegeage
adults. This, in turn, helped spark her interest
in Chicago’s Russian Jewish community,
where she interviewed Orthodox women and
attended her first seder.
The couple married in 2001. The next year,
Chosen People Ministries hired them to reach
young adults around Washington, D.C. They
have since moved to nearby Fairfax.
They were given wide latitude about how to
do their work, and from the outset they decided
that street evangelism Jews for Jesus-style
would be a losing approach.
“In the ’70s, people were confrontational,”
says Sharon, who is as reserved as her husband
is ebullient. “You hand them a crazy cartoon
and they’ll argue about it. Walking down a
street corner, I don’t even take a coupon, let
alone something spiritual. I’m on my way somewhere;
I don’t want to stop and talk, let alone to
a stranger.
“The ‘70s was a unique period, and it’s not
going to be re-created here today with the postmodern
generation.”
Instead they figured that busy Washington
professionals most craved human contact.
So they hosted Shabbat dinners at their apartment,
hoping to build friendships with Jews,
which in turn would allow them to talk about
their beliefs.
“We call it a village, especially in an area
where everyone is single and working crazy
70, 80 hours a week,” Sharon says. “You have a
place where you can have deep friendships and
relationships, a place where you feel safe and
comfortable, in the midst of a big city.”

Likewise, in the service of fostering community,
they help organize “Simcha,” a four-day
retreat in Carlisle, Pa., featuring Messianic
worship and Shabbat ritual. This year’s retreat,
held over Memorial Day weekend, featured a
keynote speech by Michael Rydelnik, a Moody
professor who helped inspire Darrin’s studies.
Jewish leaders find this relational approach
no less offensive than street encounters.
“One is the harder sell, one is the soft sell,
but they’re both trying to sell you a false set of
goods,” says Scott Hillman, former executive
director of Jews for Judaism, a two-decade-old
organization that was established as a response
to the efforts of those who target Jews for
conversion..
By claiming that believers in Jesus can
remain Jewish, Hillman says, friendship evangelists
are just as deceptive as their more
aggressive peers.
The Specks insist that they are not trying
to deceive but rather to reach out to those who
already are spiritually curious.
“I think evangelism should happen on the
basis of trust: You’re my friend because you’re
my friend, not because I have any other agenda,”
Sharon says. “I’ll share with you my spiritual
journey as you share with me yours. It’s in that
trust relationship that you can talk about those
things and not feel that you’re being forced to
change or go somewhere you don’t want to go.”
One of the Specks’ Shabbat guests was
32-year-old David Schauder, who grew up with
a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. By
Orthodox or Conservative standards, he would
not be considered Jewish unless he converted.
“My dad would stress the cultural history
of being Jewish,” he says. “But since we knew
nothing of the actual religion, we were very
weak in terms of identification.”
As a software engineer, Schauder says, “I
believed in critical analysis,” but it left little
room for faith. Nonetheless, in 2004, he accepted
a friend’s invitation to attend a Shabbat dinner.
Schauder came away moved by the Specks’
hospitality.
“I was amazed how open and willing to talk
about their faith they were,” he says. “It was an
opportunity for me to examine the stereotypes
I had about organized religion.”
Schauder returned for more dinners and,
with the Specks’ subtle encouragement, started
researching his own Jewish heritage. Last year
he married Nicole Tigno, a devout Catholic. The
couple now study the Old Testament with the
Specks, using an English translation from the
Jewish Publication Society.
Darrin is leery of Nicole’s Catholicism, with
its veneration of the Virgin Mary, but feels
grateful that she has helped warm her husband
to Jesus.
Over time, Schauder has found his skepticism
waning. He attends Mass with his wife,
and the couple pray together at home.
Whether he will become Christian remains
an open question.
“I still feel like a beginner,” he says. “Even
though I have my doubts, I think my faith is
increasing. But I don’t know what that faith is.”
D
S chauder is the closest the Specks can
claim to success. That’s not unusual: Missionaries
do not win over many Jews.
Jews for Jesus last year wrapped up a 53-city
campaign, called Behold Your God, targeting
major Jewish population centers throughout the
world. Representatives handed out 16 million
broadsides, mailed Yiddish DVDs to Orthodox
households and trained members of large evangelical
churches. They set up kiosks in shopping
centers and bought advertising in New York’s
subway system.
According to the organization’s own statistics,
a total of 1,227 Jews declared their faith in
Jesus as a result of the five-year effort.
“If this were a corporate thing, they would
have been shut down by now,” says Rabbi Gary
Greenebaum, U.S. director of interreligious
affairs for the American Jewish Committee.
Missionaries insist these low numbers don’t

faze them, saying theirs isn’t a numbers game.
“It’s wonderful when a message falls
on receptive ears,” says Susan Perlman, a
co-founder of Jews for Jesus. “But what is important
in terms of my own responsibility is that I
am being faithful to get that message out in as
broad and clear a way as I can.”
To appreciate why missionaries persist, it
helps to understand Premillennial Dispensationalism,
a 170-year-old theology drawn from
the New Testament book of Revelations and
embraced by many — but not all — evangelicals.
Popularized by John Nelson Darby, a 19thcentury
Anglo-Irish evangelist, it holds that the
world as it now exists will end with the Rapture —
the wholesale ascension of Christians to heaven
— followed by seven years of war and natural
disasters known as the Tribulation. During this
period, 144,000 Jews are supposed to accept
Christ and work as his earthly emissaries.
Dispensationalists believe that the Tribulation
will pave the way for Christ’s Second
Coming to earth, followed by his peaceful 1,000year,
or “millennial,” rule. Those Jews who have
not converted will be relegated to hell.
Dispensationalism entered U.S. culture
through the Scofield Reference Bible, first
published in Great Britain in 1909.
“If you grew up inside the Protestant fundamentalist
evangelical subculture, it seems like
the most reasonable thing in the world,” says
William Trollinger, a religious historian at the
University of Dayton. “If you look from the
outside, it looks bizarre.”
The Specks acknowledge that the scenario
sounds peculiar, but they believe it nonetheless.
Dispensationalists view modern Israel’s
creation as a sign that the Rapture is imminent.
They also believe Christians have a role in this
drama by seeking Jewish converts.
“Jesus will not return to Jerusalem to set
up his Kingdom until his people — my people
— welcome him back,” says Michael L. Brown,
president of ICN Ministries in Harrisburg, N.C.
That does not mean wholesale conversions
are necessary, Trollinger says. Missionaries
believe they only lead prospective converts to
a certain point, and the final push comes from
God. That’s why they stress action rather than
results.
“Evangelicals are very good at counting
souls saved, but I don’t think, when it comes to
Jews, that’s so crucial,” the historian says. “It’s
more crucial that the effort be made.”
Lon Solomon, pastor of McLean Bible Church
in Vienna, Va., and a board member of Jews for
Jesus, frequently underscores this point during
his sermons and lectures.
A Jewish-born reformed drug dealer, Solomon
now leads a $90 million megachurch
frequented by well-known Republican politicians,
including former special prosecutor Ken
Starr, U.S. Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and John
Thune (R-S.D.), and former Commerce Secretary
Don Evans.
In 2002, President Bush appointed Solomon
to his Committee for People with Intellectual
Disabilities, where the minister served four
years.
“The Bible says that we’re going to share
Jesus Christ with 144,000 Jewish people who
are not going to come to Christ right now,” Solomon
said at the Dallas Theological Seminary
in October 2006. “They’re going to become the
preachers of the Gospels and the representatives
of Christ during the Tribulation period.
And for all you know, you may be sharing with
one of those folks.
“And, friends,” Solomon continued, “even if
they’re not one of those folks, when we share
Jesus Christ with Jewish people, we have done
our duty by giving them the opportunity to hear
the truth. What they do with it, that’s their business.
But it’s our duty to share.”
For Darrin Speck, Jewish resistance is just
part of the daily challenge.
“God called lots of people to do things, even
in the Bible, that seemed totally futile,” he says.
All he can do, Speck says, is obey God’s calling.
“It’s OK, I’m not a Billy Graham mass crusader,”
he says. “I believe God will take care of the
numbers.”