“How shall they call on Him of whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10)

During one of my first weeks in college, the upperclassmen were allowed to harass us and treat us like serfs.

That was a long time ago and I have no bad memories of the experience, so it must not have been too dangerous or humiliating.  What I do recall, however, is upperclassman Walter Maine ordering me to mop his floor.

The floors in our dormitory rooms were some kind of hard linoleum, as I remember.  These days, I could clean his floor with scarcely a thought, seeing as how I have done our kitchen floor a few hundred times.  You assemble the equipment, fill the bucket half-ful of warm water, add a little Mr.Clean, dip the mop in, squeeze it out good, and run the damp mop over the floor. Every 30 seconds or so, you return to the bucket, slosh the mop around inside, squeeze it out, mop more of the floor, and continue the process until the floor is clean. Then, toss out the water, rinse the mop with clean water, and rinse out the bucket, then store them.

Simple enough.

But not for this 18-year-old farm boy in the fall of 1958.

I had never mopped a floor in my life.

I had two sisters, one older than me and one younger, each of us separated by two years.  Patricia and Carolyn worked inside the house with mom; I spent my days outside on the farm.

I could feed the calves, drive the tractor, bale the hay, grow you a field of corn, build a fence, and pick a bale of cotton.  I could plow the mule, herd the cows, kill a hog, harness a horse or mule to the wagon and drive it to town.  I could do a thousand things on the farm.

Inside the house, I was helpless.

I never made my own bed, never loaded the washing machine, never ironed a shirt, and had never cooked a single thing on the stove. I’m still helpless in the kitchen other than washing the dishes after a meal.

That day at college, I undertook to mop Walter Maine’s dorm floor the way I had seen mom or dad scrub down the back porch with buckets of water.

I filled the bucket and dumped the entire thing on the floor. Then, with the mop, I began sloshing it around, trying to carry out my assignment.

It was not a pretty sight.

That’s when Walter returned to his room.

You could have heard the explosion in the next building.  He was not a happy camper.

Give him credit.  After cooling down, he calmly set about teaching me the right way to mop a floor.

I’ve never forgotten, and still follow (ahem) the Maine System.

Walter did something we in the Lord’s work frequently do about the multitudes outside the doors of our churches:  We make assumptions.

He assumed I knew how to mop a floor. Doesn ‘t everyone know that? It’s such a simple, basic thing.  The answer, of course, is not necessarily. Not if they haven’t been shown.

In the same way that everyone has to be shown how to brush his teeth and tie his shoes and comb his hair–the most elementary aspects of childhood–we have to be taught all the other skills, too.  The first grade teacher taught me my ABCs. A high school teacher taught me how to type, and I am forever in her debt.

Here are a few assumptions we in the Lord’s work often make, causing us to fail a lot of people:

1. We assume everyone knows of Jesus. They don’t.

2. We assume everyone knows the way of salvation, the Gospel of Jesus.

3. We assume every citizen in our town knows they would be welcome in our church and the times of our services and what would be expected of them if they ventured to come.

4. We assume everyone who wants one has a Bible, and that those who own one know their way around in it.

5. We assume everyone who is shown the gospel way is eager to leave their way and join us.

6. We assume that the unsaved and unchurched must have rejected Christ and turned away from His gospel.  That they may never have heard and had the opportunity to respond never occurs to us.

7. We assume that anyone who rejects the gospel is an idiot or a fool.

8. We assume that everyone understands our religious language, and thus toss it around without checking to see if the audience is following us.

9.  We assume everyone not doing a myriad of things we consider “basic Christianity” is being disobedient to God.

I still recall when, as a college student who had become deeply involved in church for the first time, the assistant pastor called me off to one side to ask if I would give my “tithing testimony.” I said, “What is that?”  Tithe was a new word to me. No one had ever introduced me to the concept.

He was making assumptions.

When Bill told some of his co-workers on the carpentry crew about the emptiness in his soul, most had no idea what to say. But one of the men said, “Bill, come go to church with me.”  To his complete surprise, Bill said, “How do I do that?”

“How do you do that?” his friend reacted. “You get in your car and drive down to the church and get out and walk in and have a seat.”

Bill said, “Do you mean just anyone can walk into a church?”

“Yeah. Just anyone.”

Bill came to church the next Sunday, heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, then walked down the aisle to the pastor during the invitation, and gave his life to Jesus Christ.

Bill’s testimony is a rebuke to those of us who are not tellling our friends and co-workers that they would be welcome in our church.

Nor should we assume in this Christmas season that everyone knows why we make so much of a stable in Bethlehem, some ancient prophecies, and the announcement of the angels to several shepherds in a dark field.

Let us go tell our neighbors and friends we want them to come with us to our pageants and plays, our worship services and our Bible studies, and that they will be welcome. Let us not make the fatal error of assuming they already know.