Turning a Conversation to Christ

Brad Thayer continues to be the only faithful blogger over at the Third Avenue Baptist Church Blog. In this post, he tells of how one of his Christian coworkers turns a conversation he was having with a customer about adoption into a conversation about Christ.

I was encouraged and challenged by this story. I was encouraged because it demonstrates how easy it is to get into a conversation with anyone about the gospel. I was challenged because I am certain that I don't engage people in gospel conversations nearly as often as God deserves.

The gospel is good news! God deserves for his people to tell the story of how Jesus came into the world to save sinners. God deserves for his people to tell others who are ignorant and rebellious towards him about his glory, holiness, majesty, mercy and grace. In short, God deserves to be known and worshiped by every single person that he has created. This can ONLY take place as lost people HEAR and BELIEVE the gospel.

People can not hear, if they are not told. If I am not telling, I am not obedient or faithful. If I am not obedient and faithful, I am not a disciple. If I am not a disciple, I am not in relationship with Christ. If I am not in relationship with Christ, I am cursed. If I am cursed, I am going to hell.

Lord, open my stubborn and rebellious mouth even TODAY, for your glory in the name of Christ, so that by my willingness to share the gospel it might be proved that I am actually a believer in you.

Contemporary Church Buildings

Another interesting post from the Said at Southern Blog. It seems that Lifeway has come out with research which finds that the unchurched actually prefer traditional church buildings.

The reason I find this interesting is because so many contemporary churches are trying to find whatever cool, relevant, inovative method they can to make church more interesting in order to reach their unchurched neighbors.

Sometimes new church plants will build a church that is "nonthreatening" and doesn't even look like a church. Again, many church plants choose to meet in homes instead of buildings because they feel that people are turned off by traditional church and would feel more comfortable meeting in a home than in a church.

The problem I see with this trend is that too many churches are putting their hope in style, environment, and relativeness instead of the gospel.

The Holy Spirit is what draws unbelievers to the Father and the only method He uses as described in Scripture is the preaching of the gospel. Personally, I don't care where a church meets, or what the building looks like if a given church is preaching the gospel faithfully, and according to Scripture.

Unfortunately, it seems that in large part the "cooler," and more relevant a church tries to be, the less it trusts fully in the preaching of the gospel to convert unbelievers.

I am exceedingly thankful that my church, Third Avenue Baptist Church, trusts that the Holy Spirit is who enlightens unbelievers through the preaching of the gospel and therefore, the gospel and faithful, Biblical, preaching are what characterizes us.

On the other hand, the church I am a member of isn't perfect, and if we want to reach our neighborhood, we are going to have to be more faithful to actually be a presence in the community in order to preach the gospel that we are so faithfully trusting in. What good is a lamp that is under a basket? Fortunately, I believe that by the grace of God, we are moving in the right direction.

Buddhist Miracles

I read this story about a Chinese man who who was buried in a construction accident. He claims that Buddhist meditation saved his life. The doctors who examined him said that it was a miracle that he lived through the ordeal.

This brings up up an interesting issue related to evangelism. One of the most common methods of personal evangelism is sharing one's testimony. It is often thought that a person's testimony is something powerful that cannot be refuted because it is impossible to argue against someone's experience; something real that has happened to him or her. People love to tell how God changed their life and as they share, their hope is that the listener will also want his life to be changed and come to understand that it is only God who can do it. When I was church planting in Asia, we were taught that the first thing we needed to teach a new believer was how to share their testimony.

I do believe that sharing my testimony can be a powerful tool in evangelism. God has done an amazing work in my life and my conversion was a powerful, life changing experience. Nevertheless, my testimony is not authoritative. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu's, Atheists, and people from all other religions also have testimonies about how their lives have been changed by their belief.

Once, I was sharing the gospel with my tutor in Asia and she told me about how Buddha healed her grandmother of a sickness. Again, just last month I was talking to another Buddhist who shared his testimony with me about how Buddhism made him a better person. Some of the apologetics and evangelism methods we use won't have much effect when the person we are speaking to can claim the same things for their religion.

What is unique to Christianity is the gospel. No other religion has a holy and just God who is also loving and personal. No other religion has a Savior who is both God and man wholly at the same time. No other religion has a crucified Lord who was resurrected from the dead. No other religion has a God who himself atones for the sins of his people.

Other religions do have conversions, martyrs, miracles, paths to paradise and ideas of morality. But no other religion has a triune God who died for sinners. The gospel is unique to Christianity and when we are sharing our faith, we should make the gospel central, not experience.

The gospel is true whether I believe it or not. The gospel is true whether I have experienced it or not. When we are sharing our testimony, we MUST make the gospel the priority and use our experience as a means to direct the conversation in that direction. The Chinese man in the news story claims that in some way Buddhism helped save his earthly life. What he really needs to know is how Jesus can give him ETERNAL life!