Live Review: Questioning Evangelism

I LOVE questions. I have told a LOT of students over many years that one of the most valuable skills in life is learning to ask Questions. So, I was thrilled several years back to meet then Cru staff member, randy Newman, who wrote the great book, Questioning Evangelism, recently released in its second edition.

Randy grew up in a Jewish family and normal conversation reputedly went like this:

"How are you doing today grandmother?"

"How should I be doing, I'm 86?"

Every question was met with a question in response. Jesus did the same in his meeting with the Jewish lawyer in Luke 10 and the rich young ruler in Luke 18, and in numerous encounters with Jewish leaders.

I doubt we can do better than Jesus himself in our evangelism. So why don't we slow down on spurting out our Gospel spiel, and instead ask a few questions.

What kind of questions?

Well, these are starters:

What do you believe about G^d?  Interesting, why do you believe that?
What happens if you are right; if you are wrong?  Why do you think that?
Who do you say Jesus was? Why?  What did Jesus say about Himself?  Why?
How did we come to be, personally? Why?
Is there any purpose in life? How did you come to that conclusion?
What happens after we die?  Why do you believe that?
Do you believe mankind is mostly good or bad? Why?
How does a PURE, HOLY, JUST G^d deal with us fallen sinful humans? Why?
How could you resolve the issue of a HOLY, just G^d having to deal with unholy, unjust people? Why?
If you died tonight what would happen to you?

Not only these, but most questions can be met with questions.  Randy's illustration is:

How could a good God allow people to go to hell?  Notice the unspoken confounding assumption, that leads Randy to ask,  "So you believe in Hell then?"

It takes a bit of practice, but it is a GREAT way to overcome many objections to Christianity, plus it is a LOT of FUN!!

Life Review: Evangelism - What?

I have taught Sunday School for about 46 years. I teach because in teaching, I learn the most. I especially like teaching the Bible, for that very reason. I can readily memorize Scripture... but only when I am teaching it. So, I beg for the opportunity to teach. This brings us back to my 3-lesson series on evangelism.

The second lesson discusses the VITAL topic of WHAT is the Gospel. The writer of the book we are using spends most of Chapter 2 describing what is NOT evangelism. Obviously he thought that information was vital, but maybe partly he took this approach because describing the meat of the gospel only takes a couple of paragraphs. So, here is my version of the gospel.

G^d spoke the cosmos into existence. How He did that, whether through Darwinian or other means is irrelevant to the Gospel. The cosmos were perfect, as created. Part of the creation, was us, and we were perfect. In fact we are Imago Dei, the very IMAGE of G^d. As image-bearers, G^d CHOSE to give us great freedom in our choices; otherwise we are merely robots.

With our personal freedom we chose to disobey G^d, which is captured in the word, "sin". Adam and Eve were the first of a perpetual line of sinners (Cain, Genesis Chapter 5- total depravity leading to Noah, Tower of Babel builders, Israel, me... hopefully, you get the picture). This sin separates us from a Holy Righteous G^d, which means we are isolated from Him, by our sinful nature, with NOTHING we can do about it. We are in slavery, just as Israel was in the first 11 chapters of Exodus.

BUT G^D... in His righteousness comes to earth as Emmanuel, Jesus, G^d with us, who lives sinlessly, then dies as a substitute for our deserved death. The death of Jesus pays for our sin, satisfying the justice requirement, and the Blood of Christ cleanses us, not because of our righteousness, but by HIS righteousness given freely to us. The sacrifice of Jesus puts us in good standing with G^d, and is our ONLY admission to heaven. His blood saves us, and not we ourselves, nor anything we do, except express gratitude through OBEDIENCE to Him.

That took about 250 words in 3 paragraphs. Yep, what do you think?  It's not enough for a book chapter!  Amazing!

Life review: Evangelism Part I

I am NOT an evangelist, but I strongly support those with this gift, and believe me, I am prepared, and looking for an opportunity to share the Gospel at any time. To those with the GIFT of evangelism, this won't make much sense.

Tomorrow (3 June- these are written well ahead of posting), we will begin a 9-week series in Grace Sunday School on the gospel. As it happens, I get to teach the first 3 lessons. Tomorrow we will cover reasons why we DON'T share the good news, then the following week we will talk about WHAT comprises the Gospel, and my last week I will insert one lesson on Randy Newman's approach, my favorite, called questioning evangelism.

First, I want to chat briefly about why we don't share.  I'd list the reasons as:

We are unsure HOW,
We are uncomfortable doing it,
We lack role models (those with the GIFT of evangelism are poor role models because it is effortless for them),
We don't SEEK opportunities,
We don't PRAY for opportunities,
We are obedient to our culture (rather than to G^d), which discourages sharing our faith, and
We are BIG CHICKENS (translates to WE are AFRAID)!

This is a SAD state of affairs for Christians. We OUGHT to realize that heaven and hell hang in the balance.  Take a look at the parable of Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, but don't get distracted, everyone has two POSSIBLE destinations: heaven or hell. G^d, in His grace, allows us to participate often in helping folks CHANGE destinations!

That, I believe, is part of "Laying up treasures in heaven", (Matt 6:20).

Until next time...

Life Review: Technology

We have lived through the Technology Renaissance. When we were kids, people had black&white televisions, and mostly AM radios. Then cam color TV and FM radio... and not much else. When I was working on my doctorate, the old Apple II and Apple IIe computers were just arriving at the UGA. This was a BIG breakthrough! In fact, I was among the first, if not the FIRST to type his own dissertation and print it for review. Drafts were printed on tractor-feed paper, and tearing the paper apart and removing the edge holes was a LOT of work.

When I arrived at UA, no faculty had computers. I remember saying, at least once, that I didn't want a computer, "...after all I wasn't a typist!" I also remember writing a paper longhand, giving it to the secretaries to type, proofreading the paper, then giving it to the secretaries to correct, then reading and repeating until the errors were minimal an acceptable, then MAILING the manuscript to a journal! Whew! Right after that I changed my mind about wanting a personal computer to do my own typing.

In fact, having PCs probably saved my career... or at least made me a lot happier. I am NOT a detail person and being ADHD repetition is extremely annoying - ask Brenda about that. At any rate the advent of personal word processing meant that I could slowly and steadily reduce the number of errors in whatever I was writing. It also meant I could write ONE reference letter for a student, then simply make changes to it to fit the new job, avoiding having to start anew with each new job app.

As a visual learner myself, I immediately was smitten by PowerPoint. Now I could SEE what you were saying, I could mentally capture images which helped me recall major points. As a speaker, I could put a few words on a slide, typically with a picture, and speak for 4-5 minutes, then go to the next slide. I NEVER wrote out my talk on PP, and then read it...boring!

Being able to store things on paper tape, no I mean cards, no I mean floppies, no, I mean 4", no I mean zip drives, no I mean cloud storage; has been a great benefit to me. I have trouble finding stuff, and the large number of files I generated each semester, could be stored in multiple copies, multiple places.

And the WWW went from only being available on campus, to dial-up, to modern wifi, that seems to get a bit better each week. Not to mention the convenience of making cell calls, then smart phones, then phones so smart they could replace a lot of PC stuff.

I have never been a "cutting-edge, early-adopter" guy. But I have greatly benefited from these improvements. And, looking back, I thank the dear L^rd for PCs!

Life Review: Brenda's Story of Daniel's Birth

On 13 July, 1982 our wonderful baby boy, Daniel, was born.  What a busy morning it was,  I (Brenda) thought I had lots of time before he would arrive and was busy taking care of last minute details while feeling a bit uncomfortable.  I remember making the bed and watching Kelly sleep as these  were her last moments as an "only child".  Phillip seemed a bit nervous and finally ordered me to  "get in the car" .  En-route to the hospital we were behind a small VW beetle that was slowly chugging along.  I was not able to sit down on the car seat due to so much pressure.  

We finally made it to St.Mary's hospital where we entered the ER, I think, my mind was a bit distracted at this point.  This was on the ground floor. I remember that we entered the hospital at 8 in the morning and Daniel was born at 8:30. They whisked me to the 3rd floor and asked for a urine sample.  I burst into tears and said "I can't give you a urine sample"!!!!!  They decided they should check me and they found that I was ready to deliver!  Daniel was very quickly born, and then the difficult part of the day began.  It was so frightening to see our son literally half blue and half pink and they took him away from me. The Docs thought something was wrong with his heart and he was quickly sent via ambulance to the Children't Hospital in Atlanta.  

Phillip had to borrow a car to follow the ambulance to the hospital.  Our car was so unreliable that he was afraid to use it.  All this was while he was in Grad School and we were living on our savings plus the $6,000 he earned each year as a grad assistant. Phillip sang hymns as he drove to Atlanta, these were the days before GPS had been invented and he wasn't familiar with Atlanta, at all.  I was pretty much alone in Athens and prayed for my sweet baby boy. It was a scary time, asthere were no cell phones, so I had to wait to find out how Daniel was, until someone called me long distance from a pay phone.  

Daniel was born with persistent fetal circulation.  His heart was found to be just fine and we were so grateful.  Also, his lower body was without oxygen; had it been his upper body, it would have made a dramatic difference in life as he knows it today.  

We thank God for our Daniel, and he has been blessed and cared for from the moment he was born.  Daniel is such a joy to us.  Daniel didn't require surgery of any sort and we were so thankful.  The valve slowly closed on its own and I got to hold him for the first time when he was one week old.  He is so loved and he makes us so proud.  We thank God for you and the man that he is are today. 

Thanks be to G^d that the remaining 4 were delivered without complications!  Now the pregnancies were another story- but they may be another post!   Brenda

Life review: My Love for Commas

I must confess, I LOVE commas. I just finished an EXCELLENT book by Rev. Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. Kelly loaned it to me, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Christianity. But, as much as I enjoyed it, it was too lean on commas. Numerous places, a comma or two would have enhanced the readability - and that's the KEY goal.

To be honest, I confess, (hey two confessions in ONE blog post - take note) I am a grammar snob. I noted, with great pleasure, some previous reader of the Peterson book had noted with an "ugh!" a grammar error in that fine book, which was, no doubt, finely edited by a professional editor.

I made the mistake of once mentioning on FaceBook, my distaste for split infinitives (to not go... to much like... etc.). I was promptly informed, by an English Ph.D. no less, that splitting infinitives was really more a question of taste than of proper grammar.  What? An infinitive is a particular part of speech "to ____" which turns a verb into a noun. How can it NOT matter to destroy a useful English device?

Admittedly, of all the HUGE problems in the world, grammar errors rank pretty far down the list. But, it doesn't take a lot of effort to follow them. And, sure enough, they do have a function - readability.

Now, many readers will feel compelled to go back and re-read my postings here to find errors and gleefully point them out. It shouldn't be hard, because I seldom proof-read these.

So, read away! (No, this really was NOT a trick to get more readers).

And, don't feel slowed down too much by all those commas, at least you didn't have to re-read the sentences!

Life Review: Competition in a Post-Modern Culture

Last post I wrote about the competition within Christianity, and attributed some of it to capitalism.  But, there are many factors at work in Post-modernity to FOSTER even more competition.

For MOST Americans, the ultimate goal is NOT to seek the commendation of Jesus, but to have "As nice a life as I can!"

Think about it. Consumerism is based on our desire to have more, do more, enjoy more. If we forget G^d, what else is there?

So, how does one compete in the arena of happy life? But posting their BEST moments on Facebook, etc. We make a terrific trip, and we want to share notifications and photos. Isn't sharing a good thing?

Yes, sharing the actual food, fun, and function of a trip would be very commendable, but sharing the "Greatness" of our lives virtually, as opposed to actually, is probably more competitive than cooperative.  Now don't get mad, just consider it. And I FULLY ACKNOWLEDGE there are exceptions, I am merely talking of generalities.

We are capitalists and competitors. They go together and have produced a VERY prosperous economy. But, an economy based on man's fallen nature, and a testimony to that fallen nature.

Why would Facebook convey anything different. Hey look at my: vacation, food, new thing, happy times!!! We compete by mostly sharing the GREAT aspects of our lives, though sometimes we use it better.

I enjoy FB, and post my share of stuff. But, I am fighting the constant urge to make the GOAL of life to have maximal HAPPINESS!

So what is an alternative goal? I have to try to remind myself, the chief purpose of writing this, that "Seeking FIRST the kingdom of G^d!" is such a goal. Loving G^d wholly, and my neighbor as myself, these are worthy goals.

L^rd make it so!

Another Look at Competition

Brenda and I have enjoyed a week at the beach and I have had time to reflect on things I don't typically. For some reason, I have been thinking about competition within Christianity, but that thought has been in my head for a few weeks.

As illogical as it is, there seems to be tremendous competition within the Body of Christ, the Church. To a casual observer this makes no sense, yet my observation is that this congregation is in an unspoken competition with that congregation, and this ministry is competing with that one. Even when ministry goals are almost identical, ministries compete rather than cooperate.

Here's an illustration. A young man in full-time ministry mentioned one day that he was very upset by a new minister who had moved to town and was working in the SAME fraternity as the young minister.

Outrageous!

What?

Whatever happened to those fields white unto harvest? Whatever happened to praying to the L^rd of the Harvest to raise up Laborers unto the harvest?

I blame our ministry competition in part on capitalism, and I say that as a fan of capitalism. Capitalism is built on competition and greed, and, given the natural fallen state of mankind, it works well, as a rational person might expect. It works so well economically that it bleeds over into Christianity.

Sad.