David Geisler &
Norman Geisler in their book ‘Conversational Evangelism’ beautifully defined
Evangelism this way, “Evangelism is every day and, in every way, helping
your non-believing friends to take one step closer to Jesus
Christ.”. Apostle Paul in the book to Corinthians writes,
“Yet preaching the good news is not something I can boast
about. I am compelled by God to do it. How terrible for me if I didn’t preach
the Good News! . . . for God has given me this sacred trust.”. (1 Corinthians
9:16-17) NLT. Mind, this obligation is not confined to any particular
group of people, we all are responsible. R. Stanley from Blessing Youth
Mission emphasizes by saying, ‘Every
heart without Christ is a missionary field and every heart with Christ is a
missionary force.’. He further challenges by saying, ‘every Non-Christian funeral is the missionary call.’.
Let me point out couple
of hurdles that stand out when we are trying to reach the Non-Christian. 1)
Most of the time we are lost in the fellowship of believers that we aren’t
thinking to reach out to the Non-Christians. 2) It is seen in many
Christians, including senior leaders, in order to reach the people with
the gospel they quickly rush in abruptly and witness adverse results. 3)
The other crucial area of barrier is when it is seen Christians are only
familiar with Christian worldview and completely ignorant of other worldviews
and this complicates the whole deal of delivering the gospel effectively.
“When we are confronted with other world view we do not have adequate resources to equip ourselves because we are in love with this gospel in an emotional way when we also have to be committed in an intellectual way”.” Krish Dhanam. A professor from Oxford University once said ‘The good news is only the good news when people think their lives are bad.' How are we going to address this?
“When we are confronted with other world view we do not have adequate resources to equip ourselves because we are in love with this gospel in an emotional way when we also have to be committed in an intellectual way”.” Krish Dhanam. A professor from Oxford University once said ‘The good news is only the good news when people think their lives are bad.' How are we going to address this?
‘We should be careful not to burn our bridges and
make the task of another Christian who comes after us more difficult. Rather we
should talk to our non believing friends in a way that they actually want to
learn more about our faith.”. Conversational
Evangelism throws good amount of light by providing different perspective on
Evangelism. The book further comments by saying, ‘We may have to till the ground before we have
the opportunity to plant a seed. We are not called to bring all persons to
Christ but simply to bring Christ to all persons.’.
First,
we need to redefine what we mean by evangelism. Most of us have been taught
that evangelism is “proclaiming the Good News and inviting others to trust
Christ.” Yet, a valuable element is missing in that definition. The missing
element is simply that evangelism is a process. The apostle Paul said, “I
planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow” (1
Corinthians 3:6). You and I may not be able in one conversation to
share the entire Gospel with our non believing friends and then invite them to
trust Christ. But we may be able to help them take a step closer to the cross
with each encounter.
Possible
suggestions; You may add more to the list,
*Build
relationship with Non-believers in order to deliver the Good News effectively.
*Get to know other
worldviews by picking good books or attending seminars.
*Stop
using Biblical terminologies while relating with Non-Christian.
*Stop concentrating to
write articles and messages for Christian group exclusively. If you have the gift, start addressing general topics connecting to eternity and address common
crowd.
*Do not force people to
come to Church. It may disrupt your efforts. (The Bible says “Prepare
your work outside, and get your fields ready. Afterwards, build your house.”.
Proverbs 24:27)
Blessings.
No comments:
Post a Comment