On a Sunday morning in March, years ago, I attended a little country church where I heard a gospel message. At the end of the sermon, the pastor invited people to come forward if they wanted to have their sins forgiven in order to spend eternity with God. I responded. As I knelt at the altar, a lady with an open Bible knelt beside me and began to show me these Bible verses: →
For a teacher, the flip side of considering what your students DO know about your subject is considering what they do NOT know. And the next step is giving them what they MUST know in order to know what they NEED to know. You may want to let that sink in, because it is important for those of us who want to share the gospel with unbelievers. Earlier in this series of articles, we introduced the vertical dimension of the Good Soil Evangelism and Discipleship scale, which illustrates levels of gospel understanding—what specific unbelievers know about the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. →
Getting to know a person is like peeling an onion. It’s a natural thing that we do most anytime we converse at length with a person we encounter for the first time. We peel off layers by asking questions. Questions peel away layers, one at a time, often getting deeper into the person’s life with each additional question. And when done properly, our new acquaintances open their lives gradually without any sense of intrusion. →
“Ogres are like onions!” Or so says Shrek, the animated fantasy-comedy character in the popular DreamWorks movies. Hey, Shrek – Guess what! Humans are like onions too. We all have layers. And the key to knowing another person’s worldview – what he or she believes down deep – is to know how to peel worldview onions. →
In the North America “Leave it to Beaver” world of the 1950s, it was just assumed that all the neighbors were church-going folks who took their kids to Sunday school where they were taught Bible stories and memorized the ten commandments and the Golden Rule. While that was an unrealistic portrayal of American family life even for that time, today we might feel fortunate just to have one other Bible-believing Christian in our neighborhood. In a previous article, the issue of “worldview noise”... →
The gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed within pluralistic societies—it’s not a new phenomenon. But for many churches in North America, it’s a new challenge. The apostles Peter and Paul faced this challenge and there are lessons we can learn from their experiences. For many of us, God has brought the “mission field” into our neighborhoods and all around our churches. The choice of how we respond is up to us, ranging from Christian xenophobia (fear or dislike of people whose worldviews and cultures are not like ours) to Great Commission vision. It can often feel intimidating or out of place to have a faith-based conversation with someone whose worldview differs from our own. But understanding different worldviews and knowing how to start an evangelistic conversation with an individual whose faith views are not aligned with ours can reduce the level of intimidation. “Sharing God’s story of hope in a world of competing faiths and cultures” is one of the defining taglines of Good Soil Evangelism and Discipleship. And it is rooted in precedent-setting examples found in the book of Acts. →
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