What initially drew you to the faith?
This is a question that, I find, is often left unasked when it comes to evangelism. This shortsightedness points to a deeper flaw in our efforts to make new disciples, as we tend to use either distant emotional tools or sweeping theological statements. While these are both useful tools in evangelism, they are not the end-all be-all of evangelistic outreach and they tend to forget that the people being evangelized have no care or relation to them. What initially drew you to the faith? This question should cause us to pause for a moment, and realize several things about our own evangelism. I can almost certainly guarantee you that it was not the presuppositional arguments of a believer, the diversity in unity of the trinity, or the glorious atonement and propitiation of sins that won you over for Christ, albeit not at face value. Statistically, nearly everybody that follows Christ does so because they saw the benefit of belonging to Christ and his community as a better way to live life than how they were already living it. That includes you. Even if you grew up hearing the fire and brimstone sermons and began following Jesus because you feared the punishment from God for sin, you saw that it was better. If you are younger and follow Christ, it is likely that you saw the close knit community of a local church and that attracted you, especially while living in the always connected-not really connected world of social media. It is the benefits of Christianity that almost always are what draw people into the fold initially. It is what drew me, having grown up in the church and living in this culture. In my early college years, as a professing Christian, I lived a life of terrible sin. Without great detail, it is safe to say that I turned down nothing put in front of me. I desired pleasure and satisfaction. Theologically I understand that I desired my own kingdom and not God’s kingdom as the underlying motive of my actions then. But what really drew me into the faith following those sinful times? What was it that caused me to pause and consider the weight of my decisions? It is easy, and right, to say that only those will come to the father that the son has called and the spirit works in. We cannot force salvation and we cannot save others (or even ourselves.) But we must also remember that we live in this material world with sinful people, and something draws us. What about you? What initially drew you to the faith? Was it the richness of friendships that you saw and craved? We as human beings crave and desire meaningful relationships. It drives me to have great depth relationally, despite my own sins that sabotage it. Was it the glory of the father, revealed in his people and his word? It was once said that the Local Church is a small taste of the glory of heaven that is to come. When you saw Christians, did you see something that you could not explain? That you could not understand? What was it that you had to know more about this Jesus and these people that drew you in? While these are hard questions to ask, and necessary questions, I want to caution us about two things. The first is relying to much on experience. Scripture and the Holy Spirit inform our experience, not the other way around. Our lives and experience are subject to the wisdom of God and must submit to Him. The second caution is for us to temper our evangelism by what means we choose. It is a foolish thing to rely on attractional means to draw people in. Jamie Dunlop wrote in great detail on this in his book “Compelling Community” which I highly recommend to you (link at the bottom of the page.) What do I mean by attractional means? These are things that the world can explain and things the world desires. Is your church community defined by the gospel “and”? Is you church explainable by adding something to the gospel? This is far to common in todays evangelical churches. We have millennial churches, cowboy churches, hip churches, bar churches, and many more, yet all of these stereotypical churches are adding to the gospel to draw people in. The problem with this is that the world can explain it. People join not primarily for the Gospel, they join because people there are like them. They get community that is not centered on the gospel alone, but on the gospel and whatever the thing there is. This is an exhortation to the local church; make the gospel alone so central to your community and your culture that nothing else can explain why you are one body of people. This is not an article about the theology of salvation. We can only be saved by Christ, and salvation is a work of the holy spirit, we cannot affect that level of change on somebody (1 Corinthians 3). This is an article about being intentional and purposeful in how we practice evangelism. Use the community of believers that God has planted you in, remember that you too were once drawn in by the compelling relationships and meaningful belonging to the family of God. Know that true evangelism is empowered and consummated by the work of the Spirit. What was it that initially drew you to the faith? Test it by the scriptures, work it out with your community, and use it for the sake of drawing others into the fold. Soli Deo Gloria. https://smile.amazon.com/Compelling-Community-Church-Attractive-9Marks/dp/1433543540/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=compelling+community&qid=1562860269&s=gateway&sr=8-1 |
Pastor MorganMorgan has been writing since middle school and worked for a year writing professionally as a news journalist for the Daily Tribune in Gallipolis. This blog is a chance for him to express his love for the Lord and all church related things through writing. Archives
December 2019
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