Christ or Christianity (what's the difference?)

I'm not quite sure what this exact reading had to do with my hermeneutics class, but it grabbed me. The emphasis is on missions, but it aptly applies to anyone seeking to share Christ with those around them.

In India I had the wonderful privilege of seeing how pointing people to Christ far outweighs pointing them to Christianity. The children were not won over by the finer beliefs of Christianity. They were won over by the Holy Spirit revealing Christ in a convincing way. As the gospel went forth, hearts began to change. Obviously doctrine is important, but it should be the logical response of a heart already captivated by Christ.

We speak as if the Gospel and the doctrine, preaching Christ and preaching Christianity, were identical terms…Christianity, the doctrine, is a system of thought and practice: preaching Christ, the Gospel, is a revelation of a Person…But the Person is greater than the doctrine and far excels it, and consequently, when we speak of preaching Christianity and pass from the thought of Christ to the thought of doctrine, we pass from the reality itself to the shadow of the reality…To make converts to a doctrine is to make proselytes. The proselyte abandons one system of thought and practice for another; and to adopt a new system of thought and practice is not the way of salvation. The Christian convert is a convert not to a system of doctrine but to Christ. It is in Christ that he trusts, not in any system of doctrine or of morals. The difference between the work of a judaizing zealot and the Christian missionary lies here: that one sought a convert to his doctrine; the other seeks a convert to his Lord. This distinction is most profoundly important…when we ourselves know and feel the impulse of the Holy Spirit driving us to communicate to others the knowledge of Christ it is really a contradiction of our own experience to say that other men who experience the power of Christ and His Holy Spirit will not do what we know Christ and His Holy Spirit must urge them to do.

~Allen, Rollan The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church