About a month ago a friend said to me that the trouble with sharing the gospel is that he felt that he needed to start at the Creation and be able to tell the whole story from start to finish. That comment was repeated to me today. Recently, a lady I know said about the same issue, “I never know where to start, or how much I need to say”.
The problem that these friends were pointing to, is that we live in a post-Christian culture. Many people these days have little idea of what Christianity is about, or of who Jesus is. If they do have any concept of God it is often far removed from the reality. In a secular culture that has no knowledge of the Bible, where do you start?
Two weeks ago I was teaching in Church, and I asked people to consider what they would do if they were in a group of the only 12 Christians in the world. What would they be doing? What would be different in their lifestyle and in their approach to living for Jesus? Actually, the question they were facing was! “How do you bring people to Christ in a secular culture?”
I asked the question on two levels. Firstly, what would change personally in terms,of lifestyle. In general people felt that they would spend more time with the other 11 believers, that they would pray more (probably “HELP!!”) and that they would be asking God what to do.
When we got to the “So what would you do together?” bit, the answers were interesting and focussed around the idea of starting a church or a home meeting, as well as asking the Angels to help! Presumably the church they hoped to start would consist of the only 12 believers and they would hope to attract others.
As we explored a little deeper the answer came up that the 12 needed to focus on loving the people around them and find ways to be able to help them in order to win them. And the good news for all of us is that learning to live as ‘salt and light’ is a good half of what we are supposed to do – not hiding our light under a blanket.
Eventually we came round to the Book of Acts, and the fact that that 12 other people had been in this situation, and that they had managed to turn the world upside down. So what did they do?
At this point we were in uncharted territory in that we were asking ordinary believers (not church leaders/ministers/elders) to work out the way forward for the Church, and in this exercise, take responsibility for it. But isn’t that how it should be? Have we Professionalised Church too much?
Well the original 12 Disciples weren’t professionals. We know that. But funnily enough, the next thing that came up in our discussions was that the Disciples apparently had one big advantage over us – they had spent three and a half years with Jesus.
My response to that was “But how long have we been spending time with Jesus?” On reflection that seemed like a clever answer but actually not at all helpful. I’ll explain in a minute.
As we looked at the Beginning of Acts, we saw that the birth of the early church was, yes, marked with love for the unsaved, a willingness to care for the uncared for and a willingness to talk about Jesus to others; but it was also marked with the explosion of the supernatural power of God. The miraculous appears in every chapter of Acts. The Disciples and their followers moved easily in gifts of healing and miracles, prophecy and deliverances.
I said that my oh-too-clever response “well you have spent years with Jesus too” was not at all helpful. I had missed one very important point. Jesus’ disciples weren’t just with Him; following Him round and taking notes. This was a ‘hands on’ learning process for them. They got to do ‘the stuff’.
To the Jew, discipleship always led to the question “so what do I do?” To the westerner, discipleship often leads us to the question “so what do I know?” In the west we encourage believers to ‘grow’ by knowing stuff. The first Disciples learned by going with Jesus and doing stuff. He sent them out to heal the sick and drive out demons fairly early on in their time with him. Soon after He sent another 72 on the same mission.
We can be quite good at talking about it, learning about it, but not so good at showing people how to do it. So my oh-so-clever answer was unfair.
This became really obvious to me when subsequently on another night we were talking about healing and the common cry was “what do we do?” People are discouraged. They have tried praying for healing in the church on a Sunday and seen little success. It should work? It doesn’t seem to. At least, not regularly and spectacularly. Maybe part of the problem is that we have kept this stuff for inside the church and among ourselves when it was meant to be outside in the world. I can tell you from the experiences we have had working on the street that it is easier to get a non believer healed or touched by the power of God out there, than it is to get a believer healed in the Sunday meeting.
So what’s the best way to provide that ‘hands on’ learning to as many believers as possible?
Some of the things it might be helpful to cover could be:
- How to use the gift of prophecy, and get words for not-yet-believers
- How to pray for healing outside the church in a practical non-cringy way that brings results
- How to ask questions that can lead to people connecting with God
- How to sense when someone is ready to hear the gospel and how to explain it to them simply.
Suppose we use something like this as a basis for a ‘hands-on learning’ training session, and do it on a Saturday or a week night then a few who are really interested will come. The result will be that we have a few people who everyone else regards as now qualified. Qualified to operate on behalf of everyone else – a new professional class?
But what about the rest of the church? Maybe Sunday morning (or whichever is our main meeting-together time) is the only time that most people can get? So, maybe we can use our Sundays a little more creatively?
How about we use some of those times when the whole church is assembled to give people practical training in some of this stuff? Let’s get ready for revival now. Somehow we need to find ways to prepare everyone now. Not just teaching (what do I know?) but training in doing (what shall I do?). Somehow we need to train disciples that go and do rather than people who just stay and know.
Church is out there 