Where does the gospel gain traction for unbelievers who are very decent people?
A few months ago, I had the privilege to spend 8 evenings with a family who wanted to know about Christianity. They are a terrific family – super-responsible people, caring for their children, contributing to their extended family and broader community, and with a vague sense of thankfulness to God for all the good things he had poured into their lives – health, house, holidays etc.
What’s more, they agreed with almost everything I said! Except they didn’t really. It didn’t get through into their hearts.
I tried every hook I could think of:
- they were sinners, whose sins would take them to death and judgment – except they didn’t really have a concept of sin that touched them deeply.
- sin is mostly about a failure to love God with all your heart – except they said they had a personal response of thankfulness to God.
- they should join God’s kingdom program of doing more than just living for themselves and their little world – except that they were contributing.
So, my question is this: where do you go – what is the gospel hook – for post-Christian, decent deists?
I’ve experienced this challenge before too.
I’ve noticed that it’s only when things go wrong (sickness, death, etc) that some people will see a need for God. And sooner or later, things will go wrong that will cause people to start questioning. I guess the gospel hook in these situations is that “Jesus died that we might have eternal life”.
Somehow, waiting for these situations seems unsatisfactory.
Brother,
One good way is go to the heart, their heart. Take a look at a post a wrote about “Why do you need Jesus?”. It is from a tract that I made and pass out. It speaks to the “heart of the matter”. They can see that their heart is not right before God. No matter what they might think.
Let me know what you think,
God bless you as you go out,
Richard
What I have found in my school ground chats to mums and dads is that what is “real” is more powerful for many people than what is “true”.
It’s not that they don’t think truth is important – but the key issue for many with a post-modern perspective is the issue of relevancy.
Heaps of people I know believe Jesus existed etc… and some are sure he even died and was raised- but when they see how it makes a difference in someone’s life, then they are convicted because it has transcended truth to reality (which is a strange way of putting it I know!)
I have found that testimonies and stories on how being a follower of Jesus gives meaning in life, removes fear and establishes true identity open a lot of doors to conversations about Jesus.
Sin is the problem of course – but when you are dealing with people who do not have ‘sinfulness’ in their world view. It may be more effective to start where they are at – the search for authenticity etc and then bring them to an understanding of where they stand (eg Paul at the Areopagus)…. Just my 2c.
At the end of the day it is not just an intellectual decision, but a work of God -a spiritual transformation.
The answer is to pray, pray and pray!
Dave,
isn’t the Biblical pattern to pray, pray, pray … and then to speak! [Repeat the above].
That is, praying and careful speaking are not alternative strategies, and can’t substitute for one another, but both are absolutely needed.
Is the key here that we alternate praying and carefully speaking?
Does this suggest that we should stop speaking and probing for “the hook” – especially if it’s out of our own frustration that the person doesn’t seem to be responding? We don’t know the true condition of a person’s heart at any given point, eg what they are wrestling with or meditating on with respect to their relationship with God. Perhaps the times of prayerful silence on our part – days, weeks, months – give room for the Holy Spirit to work & convict, eg 2 Tim 2:25?
I wonder whether you need to work in categories of worship and idolatry.
so worship – what we do with our time energy treasurer that indicates what we think has ultimate worth.
so everyone worships something – even good moral irreligious people – my guess is that they would agree, and they may be even willing to talk about what they in their heart of hearts worship.
from their it becomes a question of true , living meaningful worship or false, dead vain worship – and the possibility of worshipping the wrong things that take life rather than give it.
and if life is being taken away and not given then…
my hook is
somebody is getting robbed – and that’s not good is it !
it may be that you are getting robbed becasue you are worshipping something that in the ends doesn’t deliver – that would life frustrating and dehumanising
even worse
God is getting robbed because something is being worshipped other than him and his deliverance – that makes him angry
angry – because he is glorious and is alone worthy of our worship and idols and idolators are offensive.
angry – because he loves us and wants only what is best for us – to be truly human which is to be a true worshipper.
sin then starts to a category that can make sense – because as Romans 1 puts it, it is neither worshipping him or givening thanks – worshipping created things rather than the creator.
you might want to call it the ‘gentile’ hook?!!
does this make any sense?
Shane,
interesting thought, and I like the Rom 1 background. I suspect the word ‘worship’ wouldn’t fly for most people, but maybe something like ‘center of your life’. To which I suspect most people would put family.
In one sense, that’s hard to argue against, not because it isn’t idolatrous, but because God at the center of your life is not at the expense of everything else, but is the ‘colour’ of everything else. So for example, God at the center of your life still means profound family responsibility (1 Tim 5.8 etc), and I’m not sure that much about their family life would change if they became Christians.
Articulating the distinction here is the the challenge I’m trying to find a way into.
I assume that a variety of hooks exist, and I seem to remember a talk given by your old boss at Barneys (the recent one) in his Dept. of Evangelism days that outlined 7 ways that contemporary Aussies (20 years ago!) might ‘hear’ the gospel in a way that they connect with its truth.
Now, as to what those 7 ways actually were….
Geoff,
go find those 7 ways!!!
I know it sounds crazy, but hows about “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Jesus.”
Mike,
interesting idea – I suspect if I said that, the person would ask me ‘Have you done that?’, and as i got into my car to drive home, would find it all a bit unconvincing!
Tim Keller would say the hook is in showing them that they ‘know’ they are not right with God. That is the human condition! In fact it is probably the motivation for all their good deeds and their general thankfulness to a god.
As for giving everything you have to the poor… Jesus’ command to this man comes off the back of a statement in Luke 17 he states that to lose your life is to gain it. This rich ruler wants to gain his life without losing anything – and Jesus says that’s impossible! Luke has this all or nothing apporach to discipleship that can’t be avoided.
Following Jesus will cost this family something. My guess is the thing that will be most costly (initially) is coming to the realization that they’re really not right with God.
I wonder if you might not have been able to push a bit harder on the ‘personal response of thankfulness’ thing and explore who gets to decide what that looks like; me or God? Who is setting the terms in our relationship?
Craig,
take me a bit further down this track – where do we go next about what this looks like, without becoming ‘worksy’?
Andrew,
Sorry for not being very prompt.
Anthony Douglas’s post captures the sort of thing I was thinking about.
I might have asked them how they thought God felt about their ‘personal response of thankfulness’ to try and get them thinking about God’s view of them rather than their view of God. More likely I would have come up with the perfect response 20 minutes AFTER I finished talking to them.
I reckon worship language does fly actually. Pick 5 pagans and ask them what do they worship . It’s fascinating.
Acts 17 is the other place I’d go looking for hooks
Sometimes I find it helpful (and everyone is different, so its hard to prescribe), to ask “What have you got to lose by giving your whole life to Jesus”, then you may find what their sticking point is.
It may be a relic of the way you expressed the sallies that were repelled, but is it a question of starting point?
They strike me as classic worldview-assembler types…they’ve looked around, chosen things that they value, and opted to live by them.
It might be a bit Schaefferian, but I’d be inclined for the full frontal assault: ‘who says you get to choose?’ If, for example, the way they express their thankfulness to God is the equivalent of delivering gift wrapped parcels of dog droppings around the neighbourhood as Christmas gifts, should they not be concerned?
I guess it’s a reverse of Cartesian thinking: if I can’t trust my own perceptions, how authentic is my life/morality?
Seems to me that your “hooks” are all actually barriers: things that they need to change in order to convert. They may all be true, but in my experience, telling people that they are wrong and need to change doesn’t often draw people in.
One thing which helped me come to Christ, was seeing beauty and wisdom in God – reading proverbs was a major part of that. A Muslim friend once tried to evangelise me using the same reasoning.
I once witnessed to friend of mine who was (and still is) a staunch Greenie, by showing her how pro-environment God is. Up til then she’s though Christians were unconcerned with the earth. She’s a believer now.
Another friend of mine was helped to Christ by seeing that it was almost totally her non-Christian friends who were getting divorced, and her Christian ones seemed to have happier marriages.
Seems to me that sin and judgement, atonement and JBF are incredibly important to our theology, but not nearly so important as hooks in evangelism.
Maybe connect their sin & judgement to Jesus & the cross.
Sin takes Jesus to the cross.
The cross is the only way to be rid of sin.
The cross shows how awful God’s judgement is.
The cross shows how wonderful God’s salvation is.
What is a major part of the miracle of Incarnation and the entire Old Testiment?
God cares and never abandoned us.
God entered our community and directly related to humans.
(Before this Moses sees barely anything of God and gets glow-in-the-darkness & one of the prophets gets to see the back end of God as he’s walking past (Elijah?) )
There is your hook. Live with your enemies. Live amongst your enemies. Interact with them with compassion, generosity, care and love. Then give them all time they need to find God next to them having never abandoned them.
A comment I have seen used to describe the Evangelical Church (such as Anglicans) which I think is probably pretty fair is that they focus heavily on where humanity has failed God. Do any of you enjoy repeatedly hearing “You have failed and will fail” on any topic? Does it boost your morale and your interest to work harder when you are repeatedly told “You have failed and will fail”. The message of humanity’s sinfulness is around us. Our messy, blood-filled society with sexual obsession and rampant greed is enough reminder that we are not perfect. Our lives and the lives of those around us should be more than enough reminder that things are not good, things are not perfect and even when we try we don’t always do good things. The nightly news is more than enough evidence that humanity has fallen each day. I don’t need to have any Church tell me that life isn’t perfect.
It is true that Christ suffered a horrific and brutal torture and execution, that his death was a real event, that we are saved through sacrifice and blood. These are true parts of the message. The part that will make me cry and reduce the stone on my heart is that God created us, he cares about us and he never abandoned us. Try to display
When I do soul-winning, I have a specific set of steps I go through with people. I diagnose their spiritual condition first with a variation of EE questions. (Are you sure that if you died today,you would go to heaven? If yes, why?) If they are unsure or are sure based on works – being good decent folks, etc, they are not saved. If they are unsure, I ask if they would like to be sure? If they are based on works, I “get them lost” using scriptures from Romans. All have sinned… the wages of sin is death BUT the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Then I ask them if they recognize they are sinners. I have to explain to some that means less than perfect . You have to be perfect to enter heaven on your own. In either case they have to recognize they are sinners or they cannot be saved. Jesus came to save sinners, not (self) righteous types. I give the scriptures and the Holy Spirit brings the conviction.
I then explain (if I get this far) that you can be sure by hearing, believing and receiving the message of Jesus Christ and ask if I can explain it to them. If they say yes, then I give a short explanation of the cross, burial and resurrection of Jesus and ask if they believe it. If they confess that they do, then I lead them in a prayer to call upon the name of Lord for forgiveness and to accept Christ into their heart.
Note that at any point, if people get their hackles up and resist, you can end the interview. If these people will not be convinced by the Holy Spirit, they won’t be convinced by any words you come up with. Don’t worry about it. Just go on and keep sharing the gospel and eventually with more knowledge and skill, you will reap and have the joy of seeing people born again right before your eyes.