On a Friday afternoon, a group of us from our church get together at a local pub for one of our small groups. The approach is “Ask anything?” Sometimes one of the group will raise a question that’s been bothering them but if not, the group leader will put forward a question to get us thinking. A few weeks back was one of those occasions and so Chris asked the question:
“Think of a specific person who you would like to have a conversation with Jesus about. If you started by asking them what they thought about Jesus, how would they answer?”
It’s a good question because it gets us moving from generalised answers to specifics. We got some good responses and I could think of a few people I know who would give those answers. Some might say that Jesus is God, some might identify him with the baby at Christmas, others might suggest he was a good teacher, a miracle worker even and especially those from an Islamic background would describe Jesus as one of their prophets.
When it came to me however, I started to think about a few people and realised that they wouldn’t have any reference point from which to start at all. They would most honestly answer “I don’t know. I haven’t a clue.” Indeed, even those offering one of the answers above, if pushed beyond the surface phrase would say the same. You see, the reality is that increasingly, many people do not have any awareness or knowledge of who Jesus is at all.
I mean that they do not have a doctrinal understanding of what it means to talk about fully God and fully man or the second person of the Trinity. I mean that they have not heard the Gospel message that Jesus died in their place and rose again clearly proclaimed. But more than that, they are unlikely to have heard any stories about the birth, life, teaching, miracles, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus at all. We are starting with a blank page.
This is important because it should get us thinking about church, evangelism and discipleship. This includes our work with children and teenagers but it also includes adults too. So, what can we do about it? Here are some thoughts.
- I prefer to use evangelistic courses which take people into the text of one of the Gospels. It’s what I do with First Look (Luke) and it is one of the strengths of Christianity Explored (Mark).
- Develop children and youth programmes that introduce participants both to the overall Biblical narrative and the life of Jesus.
- Provide opportunities such as day events for newer people to catch up with the foundational narrative of the Gospel
- Regularly preach through one of the Gospels.
- When preaching on other books of the Bible or topics, take people to the Gospel. Show them how the specific passage points to Jesus or the issue is answered by him.
- Similarly, use events from the Gospels to illustrate points and application in your teaching.
- Give Gospels away for free. I regularly offer copies of Luke’s Gospel to people outside our nearest shopping centre. Often I include an invite to try First Look.
- There are other resources including films and DVD series that you ca give away.
- Develop audio story telling resources that simply talk through a Gospel. That’s one of the things I’m going to be doing on the Faithroots Podcast.
- Equip church members to be able to naturally tell stories about Jesus. Do this through training but also modelling.
Faithroots 