2006 July — wadehodges.com

Where Do You Start?

Filed Under: Gospel

What began as the relaying of a conversation I overheard and my initial reaction to it has grown in the comments into a much more important discussion on evangelism.

Mainly, where do you begin when sharing the gospel with a skeptical seeker or seeking skeptic? (They are slightly different animals you know.)

I think most of us can agree that the Left Behind novels should not be used at the beginning or in the middle or at the end of the process. Let’s leave them behind for now and always.

What about the Bible? Is that the place to start? Brad thinks it is, but I’m not so sure.

Darin begins with “truth” as the unavoidable reality. But Darin, what is truth?

Let’s continue the discussion, where would you begin the conversation?

Of course, where we begin the conversation should depend entirely on where the other person is on their journey, but that answer will kill the discussion, so let’s just assume we’re dealing with a generic post-Christian skeptic who has been to church a few times over the years and has decided organized religion ain’t all that. He (or she) has read the DaVinci Code and doesn’t buy all that Brown is selling, but figures there’s got to be a little truth to it. Now you find yourself with an opportunity to share the gospel with this person. Whatcha gonna do? Where you gonna start?

My answer: I’d start with the church. I’d invite the person to become a part of a Christian community and start exploring the gospel through relationships, conversations, and experiences. If the gospel is experienced in a community of faith, then I think a lot of the other obstacles to faith, intellectual and otherwise, can be dealt with accordingly.

Of course, there’s a huge weakness to this approach, but I’ll leave it to someone else to point it out.

July 24, 2006 By Wade 42 Comments

Rooting for the Skeptic

Filed Under: Gospel

Yesterday, while at Panera Bread, I had the privilege of overhearing a conversation between a skeptic and a couple of Christians. If I hadn’t heard this myself, I would have never believed it had taken place.

The two Christians were trying to evangelize this skeptic and he was having none of it.

They asked him if he had read the “Left Behind” books. When he told them that he didn’t care about stuff like that, they told him that they cared about him.

Then one Christian said, “Do you believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God?”

The skeptic said, “No. I believe some of it’s from God and some of it’s not. There are too many fingerprints left on it for me to believe that it’s all from God.”

So the Christian responded, “Do you believe in a literal, burning hell?”

Again, the skeptic said he didn’t and he couldn’t understand how it fit into the plan of an all-loving creator God.

This caused the Christian to launch into a rousing defense of a literal, burning hell and how it fit into God’s plan of redemption.

As I listened, I found myself starting to root for the skeptic.

July 21, 2006 By Wade 26 Comments

Sabbath

Filed Under: Spiritual Formation

Monday is usually my day off. Actually, it’s almost my day off. I have a hard time leaving the computer alone and staying away from email. This past Monday I tried to make my a day off real Sabbath. I didn’t touch the computer, didn’t read an email, and for good measure, I didn’t turn on the T.V.

It was great. It was also difficult, especially as the day drew to a close. I wanted so badly to go upstairs, fire up the computer and see what was in my inbox. But I resisted and yesterday morning when I checked my email I found in my inbox nothing pressing. Yet I know if I had check email on Monday I would have spent at least an hour writing responses or checking blogs.

I’m going to continue this discipline on Mondays. Partly because it changed the rhythm of my day in a pleasant way and partly because I found it so stinkin’ hard to leave the computer off even though I was having such a great day.

The T. V. issue is much easier for me, especially in the summer. I’ve already decided that when fall rolls around, I’m going to cut back substantially on the shows I consider to be “must see.”

July 19, 2006 By Wade 5 Comments

Slow Down

Filed Under: Random

Dear Mr. Say-Your-Phone-Number-Way-Too-Fast-While-Leaving-a-Message-Guy:

Why do you leave chatty, interminable messages on machines and voice mail and then as you’re signing off say your phone number so fast that I have to rewind and listen to the message three times before I get it? It sounds like someone has just pointed a gun at you and told you to get off the phone immediately and it makes me wish someone were pointing a gun at me.

Here’s a request: Say your message as fast as you can and slow down when you get to the number.

If you’ll do this, I promise you’ll get more call-backs and the rest of us will dial less wrong numbers.

July 18, 2006 By Wade 10 Comments

Decision Making in the Church

Filed Under: Quotes

Consider this from Luke Timothy Johnson’s Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church:

On any number of issues it is simply impossible to reconcile what New Testament writers have to say on the same subject. The answer to the question, What does the New Testament have to say about X, is often, It depends on what you have read last. If we ask for example, “What is the Christian attitude toward the State,” we must consider at least the chasm between Romans and 1 Peter on one side, and Revelation on the other. If we ask, “What is the proper Christian attitude toward the world,” we would have an even more complex range of views, running from the irenicism of 1st Peter, through the intricate “as though not” of Paul, to the radical sectarianism of the Johannine Letters.

We meet the same diversity on other questions, down to and including the best way to describe Jesus . . .If we turn to such practical matter as when and how to baptize, or celebrate the Lord’s supper, or organize a community, the sad history of Christianity illustrates just how obviously it is possible to prove anything on the basis of the New Testament, as long as a certain judicious selectivity and suppression of evidence is carried out.

What do we make of this thematic jumble? In the first place, we exercise common sense and make a healthy distinction. If the New Testament writing agree so powerfully on the shape of Christian identity but differ so much on the specifics of its articulation in the world, this might mean two things: The first is that identity is more important that ritual consistency; the second is that the New Testament actually legitimates a healthy pluralism of practice within the same basic identity.

Within such diversity, in turn, we are allowed to exercise the exousia (power/freedom) given by the New Testament itself with regard to Torah. We resist the urge to make only one such opinion normative to the exclusion of others. Rather, as with the opinions of the Talmud, we enter into a conversation with these diverse views and opinions expressed by the New Testament, finding in their areas of overlap as well as in their points of divergence guidance for our own decisions.

. . .Every Christian community, like every Christian, stands to one degree or another in disagreement with some part of the New Testament. Anyone who claims otherwise is simply lying. The issue of biblical authority, therefore, is not whether it gives a consistent blueprint for every aspect of our lives, or that our lives conform exactly with that blueprint. Given the diversity within the canon, any such claim would be specious. The issue of authority is whether the texts are taken seriously as normative, even when–as is often true–they diverge or even disagree.

Taking the text seriously means that in our ecclesial–as well as personal–decisions we are willing to take a stand over against as well as under the text. Do we allow divorce in our community despite Jesus’ clear condemnation of divorce? Then we do not live in accord with this text. To be faithful to the Scripture, we cannot suppress its reading; we must be able to say why we do not live in accord with its clear directive. This means that we must find authorization for our position somewhere else in these writings; sometimes we will be given an option by the divergence of another text or by the exousia (power/freedom) of reinterpretation in the light of new experiences of God’s work in human lives and events. The limit to such exousia, in turn, is set by the integrity of the individual and community identity as measured by the messianic pattern authored by these same writings.

I know there’s a lot here and I’m going to reflect on it some in future posts, but first I’d like to hear how Johnson’s thoughts strike you. It seems to me he’s describing a way of approaching Scripture that is foreign to Bible-reading, Bible-believing Christians. What do you think?

July 13, 2006 By Wade 13 Comments