Every winter, on TV there is a particularly disgusting advert that warns us about colds and other viruses. It shows someone on a bus, sneezing, and then how all of the virus germs fly about on the bus infecting all of the other passengers. "Sneeze into your hankie" is the message; don't spread your germs about; we don;'t want to pass on the virus.
Do you remember swine flu? Whatever happened to it? It was bad for the people who caught it and tragic for the families of people who died as a result of swine flu. We shake out heads now, knowingly, thinking that it was all such a fuss over very little, but like every virus it had the capacity to run riot through the population if conditions were right. Thankfully, that didn't happen, but that doesn't mean we will ignore it the next time it happens.
Ideas spread in something of the same way. I came across this notion in a book called Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch. He calls them ideaviruses - "a big idea that runs amok across the target audience". Ideas grow by people passing them on to other people. How many of you have Hotmail addresses? Why did you start using Hotmail? It was not because they ran lots of expensive advertising campaigns, but because the thought of free e-mail was an appealing idea to lots of people and your friends told you about it. So the number of people using Hotmail grew because the idea caught on.
See how this works: as a reward for his invention the inventor of the game of chess was offered one wish by the emperor of India. He wished for 1 kernel of rice on the first square of the chess board, to be squared for every section of the board; there are 64 squares. The king thought he had got off lightly and agreed. so there were 2 kernels on the second square, 4 of the third, 16 on the fourth and so on; by the time he got to square 64 he would have had to produce 153 billion tons of rice, 2 to the power of 63! How things grow.
Sneezing the gospel is about sharing an idea with people we know so that they come to understand it and believe it too. "If it is a particularly compelling idea, we pass it on to other people. In some way that is exactly the way we all got caught up in the gospel... an idea can become contagious!" (Hirsch)
Do you find the gospel compelling?
Do you wish that other people, your family or friends also found it compelling?
How can you pass on this compelling idea to 2 or 3 people you know in the next month?
This is the way in which churches mainly grow. Why do some churches have large numbers of students? Because one student tells another that the church they go to is great! Share the compelling idea of the gospel with someone and see what happens.
