How to share your faith with an atheist

After a recent performance, American comedian and atheist Penn Jillette was approached by a Christian businessman. 

Listen to Penn Jillette describe what happened and share what he thinks about it. You’ll be surprised. 

Rockbridge Seminary students who have completed the online course “Contemporary Evangelism” may be interested in IMonk’s commentary on the Jillette video. Here are excerpts:

The theological wing of evangelicals clearly believes that if everyone will line up behind the right understanding of the Gospel, then things will change. Verse by verse preaching, complementarianism and plenty of theology- that will do it. I’m lukewarm on that prospect as far as it applies to evangelicalism as a whole. I’m all for making the Gospel clear and central, but I don’t have any illusions about how that’s going to be received by millions of people in my denomination or anywhere else.

No, the problem is who we have become. I think most of us know this. We knew it when we watched Penn Gillette’s video about the Christian who was willing to confront and proselytize him. We aren’t that guy and we aren’t those people. Oh, we want somebody to be like that, or we want someone to think of a way to evangelize people that we can participate in with a generous financial contribution. But most of us aren’t people who actually try to influence other people toward faith.

Are we universalists? Relativists? Postmodernists? Emergers who have abandoned a belief in hell? Your guess is as good as mine, but I don’t think we are missing information or even motivation. We’re missing the key component of reality. We (a lot of us) REALLY aren’t evangelistic people in the SBC anymore. Study it all you want, but something just isn’t there.

This is where I’m surprised that the pundits commenting on this situation aren’t willing to connect the dots. A big reason that the average evangelical isn’t evangelistic is the focus on the issues and tactics of the culture war. According to the culture war advocates, “those unbelievers” are the enemies of Christians and the kind of Christian culture we believe we are supposed to fight for. Are atheists, gays, Democrats, progressives and non-evangelicals in America actually people evangelicals are looking at as potential Christians? Give me a break.

The people in my friend’s church who haven’t seen a new member in 6 years? I’ll guarantee you that the discussion in those Sunday School classes are about how hard it is to be a good Christian witness in these terrible times with the liberals running the country. Being a witness = opposing the agenda of the anti-Christians trying to destroy the culture and corrupt our children.

The new “evangelism” is the culture war. We aren’t winning souls. We’re protecting our culture. If the other side wants to admit we’re right and come on over, great.

What if Starbucks acted like a church?

Admit it. Seeing your church through the eyes of a newbie is not easy. Sometimes it takes a parable to show us what we cannot see.

Rockbridge Seminary students who have completed the online course “The Theology & Practice of Evangelism” will remember the “Church Readiness Paper” that included the perspective of a non-Christian whom you invited to attend a service of your church. Think about that assignment as you watch this video.

Video by Beyond Relevance

Kudos to Solar Crash

What exactly does “missional” mean?

“Missional” is a frequent topic of Reggie McNeal. It’s the focus of his new book Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church and referred to in other books he has written, such as The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church (a required textbook for the Rockbridge Seminary online course “The Theology and Practice of Evangelism“).  

McNeal isn’t the only one talking “missional.” It seems to have become an evangelical buzzword of late. What exactly does it mean? Drew Dyck, editor of BuildingChurchLeaders.com gives some helpful background on the meaning of “missional” in his blog “Off the Agenda“: 

Missional was a term coined by a group of missiologists (another strange word) who were heavily influenced by the missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin. Upon retiring as a missionary in South India, Newbigin returned to his native England where he came to a rather depressing conclusion about western culture—it was post-Christian. As a result, he believed that Christians in the West had to start thinking like missionaries, looking for creative and authentic ways to incarnate the gospel in a culture estranged from the principles of God’s kingdom.

In many contexts the usage of the term has strayed far from its original meaning. As the term gained popularity, it has been used by just about everybody to mean just about anything. Author and missional leader Alan Hirsch offers a definition that clears some of the fog. He describes a missional church as “a community of God’s people that defines itself and organizes its life around the purpose of being an agent of God’s mission to the world. In other words, the Church’s true and authentic organizing principle is mission.” Anyone can call themselves or their church missional, but if mission (outward directedness) is not a core-deep value of their life or community, the term missional is being misappropriated.

Missional has become a buzzword in evangelical circles. Buzzwords can be annoying, but I believe missional captures a valuable insight. We can no longer put our heads in the sand and carry on with yesteryear’s methods. Like good missionaries, we must study our culture and live out the gospel in ways that are intelligible and compelling to our unbelieving neighbors.

Here’s how Reggie McNeal describes “missional” (Missional Renaissance): 

Missional is a way of living, not an affiliation or activity. Its emergence springs from a belief that God is changing his conversation with the world and with the church. Being missional involves an active engagement with this new conversation to the point that it guides every aspect of the life of the missional believer. To think and to live missionally means seeing all life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world.

Evangelism through Video – rate this one

Check out the video clip below. Can you imagine passing the link to a spiritual seeker or putting this link on your church’s website? How well do you think this communicates to a post-Christian culture?

Rockbridge Seminary students who have completed The Theology and Practice of Evangelism might be particularly interested in this.

Reggie McNeal’s Missional Renaissance

Yea, I admit it … I am a huge Reggie McNeal fan. He is more in touch with the church’s missional challenge than any writer I know. His new book Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church has just been released (already downloaded to my Kindle). If you’ve completed the course “The Theology & Practice of Evangelism,” you may be particularly interested.

Here’s why he wrote the book:

With everyone getting on the missional bandwagon, and everyone talking “missional,” and labeling so much as missional, there is a real danger that what it really means to be missional will become lost in the clutter. I wanted to write a book that distills the basicDNA of what missional really is.

Second, I wanted to give church leaders a way to talk about missional in ways that people would “get it.”Third, I wanted to help leaders develop a scorecard that rewarded their missional efforts.The church growth era certainly had a scorecard (one that we are still using) that declared winners and losers at that game.We need a scorecard that gives expression to the multi-dimensional facets of the missional church. (More here)

Leadership Network says this about Missional Renaissance:

Reggie is one of those writers that you know is going to be a fabulous read. This book is no exception. In fact it may just become not only a primer for the next two decades but the primary text book.