About a year ago, just after I published Second Story, my friend and I started dreaming of the next book project. What did the church and its people truly need in order to take additional steps toward inviting others to know and follow Jesus?
We talked about her dad and his days of ministry to college students long ago. He had this series of studies about Jesus that he simply called the John studies--they went through many stories from John where Jesus had important, life-changing conversations with people. She explained how every time he took people through that study, they would give their lives to Christ.
We needed something similar for today. The problem with the old studies, at least for today's culture, was that they were written in kind of a fill-in-the-blank style. They were more authority based than story based. So we started to ask ourselves, what would work today? What would introduce people to Jesus--who he said he was and who he showed he was? What would give people an opportunity to respond to his claims and his invitation without being overly simplistic?
So I spent the next year writing these seven stories for a group of people who were willing to come to my house to participate in "storying" on a Sunday night. We met off and on for the whole year. That group saw me through my dad's death. We prayed for each other. We grew together. And along the way, every single person saw their lives changed in some way. We only meet sporadically right now, but we saw several take a significant and life-changing step into Jesus's kingdom. Most of them are now involved in churches in some way. Along the way we met Jesus, and he changed us.
I'm working on an app so that the stories will be easily sharable. But for now, there's a dedicated page on my website that links you back to all the times I blogged about our discussions after the fact. I'm praying every day that through these stories, many, many people will be introduced to Jesus and hear his invitation to join his kingdom fellowship and work.
If there's anything I can do to support or help you along the way in that endeavor, let me know.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
big questions need prayerful responses
As you may know already, my dad passed away this past spring. The months following his death were a long road of trying to figure life out. My posts here, here, and here were part of my journey of working through my grief and answering those essential questions about life.
I think the death of a loved one does that--makes a person remember the big questions about life. Is what I am doing right now worthwhile? When I look back on my life, what regrets will I have? How do who I'm becoming and what I'm doing have eternal significance? Is it even possible to have eternal significance in life?
I think that there are so many other times in life when we are similarly confronted with these types of questions. At these important times in life, it's really natural to ask these types of questions. And these important times happen all throughout a person's life. They happen at the birth of a child, the anticipation of marriage, the process of divorce, a diagnosis of cancer or other illness, the moment the nest is finally empty, or the day you retire.
Because I'm so terrible at thinking on my feet, I've gotten in the habit of periodically observing and analyzing where my friends are at in life. Are they anticipating a big life change in the near future? Is something coming up that might cause them to ask certain questions about life and God? Because if I can think about these things ahead of time, I can also start praying about them too. I can pray that God would prepare my heart to be a friend to them at this time. I can prayerfully consider how I might respond when these questions come up. I can think about what stories I have about how God has intercepted my life in similar circumstances. I can think about stories from the Bible where God met people in similar circumstances. And I can pray that the Holy Spirit will prepare their hearts to be ready to hear those stories.
So that's my question for you for this week. What part of the life cycle are your friends at right now? What life changes are they anticipating or expecting? How can you be thinking and praying right now to be there for them in that moment?
If you want to think through these questions on a deeper level, there's a longer list available here.
I think the death of a loved one does that--makes a person remember the big questions about life. Is what I am doing right now worthwhile? When I look back on my life, what regrets will I have? How do who I'm becoming and what I'm doing have eternal significance? Is it even possible to have eternal significance in life?
I think that there are so many other times in life when we are similarly confronted with these types of questions. At these important times in life, it's really natural to ask these types of questions. And these important times happen all throughout a person's life. They happen at the birth of a child, the anticipation of marriage, the process of divorce, a diagnosis of cancer or other illness, the moment the nest is finally empty, or the day you retire.
Because I'm so terrible at thinking on my feet, I've gotten in the habit of periodically observing and analyzing where my friends are at in life. Are they anticipating a big life change in the near future? Is something coming up that might cause them to ask certain questions about life and God? Because if I can think about these things ahead of time, I can also start praying about them too. I can pray that God would prepare my heart to be a friend to them at this time. I can prayerfully consider how I might respond when these questions come up. I can think about what stories I have about how God has intercepted my life in similar circumstances. I can think about stories from the Bible where God met people in similar circumstances. And I can pray that the Holy Spirit will prepare their hearts to be ready to hear those stories.
So that's my question for you for this week. What part of the life cycle are your friends at right now? What life changes are they anticipating or expecting? How can you be thinking and praying right now to be there for them in that moment?
If you want to think through these questions on a deeper level, there's a longer list available here.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Encounters with Jesus VII - Cleopas
Well, after several months we finally were able to get together to do the last Encounters with Jesus story on Sunday night. It was a great time of fellowship and catching up, and as far as the story is concerned, I felt like it caps off the series really wonderfully. It is really meant to be an invitation to the life and kingdom work of Jesus, and I think that it does that.
It's been so amazing to see how people have grown and been changed by their encounters with Jesus through this series. We are not in the same place as we were when we started. My deepest prayer for this community now is that we will all be able to find out how God wants to use us in his work of reconciliation in the world.
As a community update, we're still trying to determine where to go from here. What I'd love to do is start with the beginning of the Bible, maybe going back to Michael Novelli's Echo the Story curriculum. I really want this community to know where Jesus fits into the overall story of God's interaction with humanity throughout history. So we're still talking about it and will figure it out.
As an Encounters with Jesus update, I've got a couple of things in the works. I've updated my website so that Encounters has its own page. I've also been working on developing an app so that people can use these resources in conversations with friends about Jesus. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like or how that would work, I only know that the days of little paper booklets (which is the other way I'm publishing the stories) are pretty much over. It's basically a test case to see whether it's something people could use if they wanted to have some kind of guided discussions about who Jesus is and what that means to our lives today. So stay tuned for announcements. I'm working right now on getting the app approved for both Apple and Android devices.
It's been so amazing to see how people have grown and been changed by their encounters with Jesus through this series. We are not in the same place as we were when we started. My deepest prayer for this community now is that we will all be able to find out how God wants to use us in his work of reconciliation in the world.
As a community update, we're still trying to determine where to go from here. What I'd love to do is start with the beginning of the Bible, maybe going back to Michael Novelli's Echo the Story curriculum. I really want this community to know where Jesus fits into the overall story of God's interaction with humanity throughout history. So we're still talking about it and will figure it out.
As an Encounters with Jesus update, I've got a couple of things in the works. I've updated my website so that Encounters has its own page. I've also been working on developing an app so that people can use these resources in conversations with friends about Jesus. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like or how that would work, I only know that the days of little paper booklets (which is the other way I'm publishing the stories) are pretty much over. It's basically a test case to see whether it's something people could use if they wanted to have some kind of guided discussions about who Jesus is and what that means to our lives today. So stay tuned for announcements. I'm working right now on getting the app approved for both Apple and Android devices.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Second Story review
Here's a new review of Second Story: Seeing what's not being said. Thanks to Ted Gossard who read the book and took the time to review it on his blog!
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Can we take this evangelism discussion to a deeper level?
I just finished reading this blog post -- 7 tips for talking with your neighbors about Jesus. The tips are actually fairly close to a list I might make myself, but they barely scrape the surface of what each of those things might look like in real life.
And as I was reading the overall story, I've got to be honest... I was really frustrated. What frustrated me was that I don't think that this pastor's experience with his neighbor is really normal for the regular Christian on the street. Is it normal that you'd have a couple of conversations around the building, then go hang out watching a ballgame, and then invite someone to church, and then find that the person has suddenly decided to follow Jesus?
Really? Because it hasn't been normal in my world. Maybe once out of 100 people--or maybe once out of 1000. But what do you do when you invite someone to church and they say no? What happens if you bring up spiritual things and the guy looks at you like you're crazy? How do you handle it if the guy starts avoiding you every time he sees you in the hallway?
And what if he goes to church with you, hears the gospel preached powerfully, and still has questions about God and about faith? What if he says, "I just don't see how God could send people to hell," or something about how all Christians are hypocrites? Do you send the guy to your pastor? Or is there something that you should be doing or saying yourself?
And what if you're not a pastor, you haven't had all that training about how to talk about Jesus or answer a person's questions about Jesus or put the whole big story together? What do you do then? How do you direct a conversation to Jesus?
I don't want to make evangelism more complicated than it is, because really I do believe that it is all about building relationships with people and walking through life with them. I believe it's listening and story-telling in natural and strategic ways. But I really think we do a disservice to followers of Jesus and to those who don't follow Jesus by just giving church people a simple seven-step list and sending them off to figure out how to put it into practice.
If we want people within our churches to be thoughtfully and carefully and effectively talking with others about Jesus, then we need to walk beside them as they figure out what that looks like in their own life situations. We need to provide resources and training. We need to challenge them to befriend others for the long haul. We need to be talking about barriers to faith--rational, spiritual, and emotional. We need to be equipping people to do the work of evangelism, even if it takes 3 years instead of a couple of months.
At least, that's what I think... so that's what we're doing here, on this blog, and in my community. I'd be thrilled if we could take this discussion to a broader community.
And as I was reading the overall story, I've got to be honest... I was really frustrated. What frustrated me was that I don't think that this pastor's experience with his neighbor is really normal for the regular Christian on the street. Is it normal that you'd have a couple of conversations around the building, then go hang out watching a ballgame, and then invite someone to church, and then find that the person has suddenly decided to follow Jesus?
Really? Because it hasn't been normal in my world. Maybe once out of 100 people--or maybe once out of 1000. But what do you do when you invite someone to church and they say no? What happens if you bring up spiritual things and the guy looks at you like you're crazy? How do you handle it if the guy starts avoiding you every time he sees you in the hallway?
And what if he goes to church with you, hears the gospel preached powerfully, and still has questions about God and about faith? What if he says, "I just don't see how God could send people to hell," or something about how all Christians are hypocrites? Do you send the guy to your pastor? Or is there something that you should be doing or saying yourself?
And what if you're not a pastor, you haven't had all that training about how to talk about Jesus or answer a person's questions about Jesus or put the whole big story together? What do you do then? How do you direct a conversation to Jesus?
I don't want to make evangelism more complicated than it is, because really I do believe that it is all about building relationships with people and walking through life with them. I believe it's listening and story-telling in natural and strategic ways. But I really think we do a disservice to followers of Jesus and to those who don't follow Jesus by just giving church people a simple seven-step list and sending them off to figure out how to put it into practice.
If we want people within our churches to be thoughtfully and carefully and effectively talking with others about Jesus, then we need to walk beside them as they figure out what that looks like in their own life situations. We need to provide resources and training. We need to challenge them to befriend others for the long haul. We need to be talking about barriers to faith--rational, spiritual, and emotional. We need to be equipping people to do the work of evangelism, even if it takes 3 years instead of a couple of months.
At least, that's what I think... so that's what we're doing here, on this blog, and in my community. I'd be thrilled if we could take this discussion to a broader community.
Monday, January 16, 2012
awkward conversations about Jesus
So I was at church yesterday, and one of our members was telling us a story about how he was hanging out with different people from work several years back. He had one semi-awkward conversation about faith with one of his good friends from work, and then moved on to the other friend. Though they were pretty good friends and had things in common to talk about, one day he kinda just busted out with "can I tell you about Jesus?" And the guy responded, "I'd really rather you not." Not quite the response he was hoping for. And how in the world do you recover from that?
When I was growing up in church, we were given these little tracts and sent on out to start conversations with people about spiritual things, basically by asking them to reveal real and deeply personal things about their spirituality and beliefs. I'm not sure where we got the impression that this would work out well, but somehow this was supposed to force a realization that people were lost, and that would give us a segue to sharing how Christ would meet that need. Then and only then might we give some kind of personal story about how Christ had been involved in our own hearts and lives.
Perhaps that worked in a different time and culture, but I can hardly imagine a situation in which that would actually work today. I can't say that I have all the answers about what we should do, but I can tell you what I've had the opportunity to do and how that has seemed to work out within the context of my relationships. And I think that story-telling is the essence of talking about faith in today's context.
For me, the conversation has tended to start when we're just talking about something else, and because my faith is so central to my life, I naturally bring it up when I'm talking about why I'm doing one thing or not doing another. In that moment, I have never then tried to apply my own experience to another person's--I'm just sharing out of my own life and context, telling my own story about my own life. Pile enough of these conversations together over a long period of time, and you've had hundreds of opportunities to tell the story of Christ in a really natural and relevant way.
Who knows where things will go from there? Sometimes I then get a question like, "so, how did faith become such an important part of your life?" And then I get to tell another iteration of my story that's more clear and cohesive, where I get to also really tell the story of the gospel. Sometimes we've become such good friends over that period of time that I'm able to ask questions and speak into all kinds of aspects of their lives, as any friend would. Sometimes together we uncover a certain longing for spirituality that then puts me in a position where I'm seen as a sort of spiritual mentor where I'm able to more specifically connect someone with resources or ideas to encourage them to explore that part of their lives.
Conversations about Jesus don't have to be huge, scary, mysterious things. They don't even have to be awkward. If we are truly building relationships with people, seeking to know them and love them as Jesus would, sharing out of our own experiences, and looking for opportunities to pray and serve, we can be the light that we were called to be.
What stories do you have to tell about who Jesus has been in your life? How do those stories relate to mundane things like laundry and child-rearing and working and playing? Where has God met you in the difficult places of your life? Pray that God would bring to mind the stories that you have to tell when and where it would be appropriate in the context of your relationships.
When I was growing up in church, we were given these little tracts and sent on out to start conversations with people about spiritual things, basically by asking them to reveal real and deeply personal things about their spirituality and beliefs. I'm not sure where we got the impression that this would work out well, but somehow this was supposed to force a realization that people were lost, and that would give us a segue to sharing how Christ would meet that need. Then and only then might we give some kind of personal story about how Christ had been involved in our own hearts and lives.
Perhaps that worked in a different time and culture, but I can hardly imagine a situation in which that would actually work today. I can't say that I have all the answers about what we should do, but I can tell you what I've had the opportunity to do and how that has seemed to work out within the context of my relationships. And I think that story-telling is the essence of talking about faith in today's context.
For me, the conversation has tended to start when we're just talking about something else, and because my faith is so central to my life, I naturally bring it up when I'm talking about why I'm doing one thing or not doing another. In that moment, I have never then tried to apply my own experience to another person's--I'm just sharing out of my own life and context, telling my own story about my own life. Pile enough of these conversations together over a long period of time, and you've had hundreds of opportunities to tell the story of Christ in a really natural and relevant way.
Who knows where things will go from there? Sometimes I then get a question like, "so, how did faith become such an important part of your life?" And then I get to tell another iteration of my story that's more clear and cohesive, where I get to also really tell the story of the gospel. Sometimes we've become such good friends over that period of time that I'm able to ask questions and speak into all kinds of aspects of their lives, as any friend would. Sometimes together we uncover a certain longing for spirituality that then puts me in a position where I'm seen as a sort of spiritual mentor where I'm able to more specifically connect someone with resources or ideas to encourage them to explore that part of their lives.
Conversations about Jesus don't have to be huge, scary, mysterious things. They don't even have to be awkward. If we are truly building relationships with people, seeking to know them and love them as Jesus would, sharing out of our own experiences, and looking for opportunities to pray and serve, we can be the light that we were called to be.
What stories do you have to tell about who Jesus has been in your life? How do those stories relate to mundane things like laundry and child-rearing and working and playing? Where has God met you in the difficult places of your life? Pray that God would bring to mind the stories that you have to tell when and where it would be appropriate in the context of your relationships.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Incense and the essence of faith
I was out of town this weekend, so I had the opportunity to visit an Eastern Orthodox church. It was so, so different in practice from the churches I have attended. They did part of the service in English and part of it in Russian. The officiants were in robes and spent part of the time in front of an alter in the front of the church behind an ornate carved screen. They used burning incense to bless and cover the congregants during the service. We had to stand and sit and kneel and read prayers and other liturgy from books. I was a foreigner, and I was lost.
It made me think a lot about culture and about what we invite people to when we invite them to Jesus. Rather, it made me ask the question, "what are we inviting people to?" Are we inviting them to our church, to worship God in the exact same way that we do? Or are we inviting them into a lifetime of knowing and following Jesus?
I have the sense that many times our expressions of worship alienate and separate rather than invite and include. I'm not sure that separation isn't necessary for some, or that it doesn't help create a community of belief that sustains and ministers to itself. But when we expect those outside of the church culture to change enough to fit in within our culture, we are asking an awful lot. And we really are asking for something that many will not be willing to give--maybe not ever, but for sure at least until they really know Jesus and have chosen to follow him. (Whether they should have to do so is a question for another day).
So I think that if we're going to be effective evangelists in today's world, we have to be really really clear within our own hearts and minds about what is essential for belief and relationship with Jesus, and we have to let everything else go by the wayside within our conversations and invitations to those who do not yet believe in or follow Jesus. It would be so unfortunate to let my culture or my expression of worship or my approach to God to so alienate someone that she was no longer interested in talking about God, especially if the something that's alienating her is something that's not essential to faith and godliness.
When I talk about God and about Jesus and about God's story of rescue and redemption and restoration, I want to be inviting people into an abundant life of restored relationships. That's it. That's all. I don't always want to invite them to my church (although they would certainly be welcome there). I don't want them to feel pressured to pray exactly the way I do (though I would be happy to pray with them and for them and to model my approach). I don't want them to think that there's only one way to express devotion or to spend time with God or to hear from God. I want to be there to help them discover what God is calling them to. I want to provide them with resources and connections to other followers of Christ. I want to prayerfully seek to hear from the Holy Spirit what he is doing in their hearts. I want to walk with them and learn from them too.
So what do you think are the things that are essential to invite others into when you are inviting them to faith?
It made me think a lot about culture and about what we invite people to when we invite them to Jesus. Rather, it made me ask the question, "what are we inviting people to?" Are we inviting them to our church, to worship God in the exact same way that we do? Or are we inviting them into a lifetime of knowing and following Jesus?
I have the sense that many times our expressions of worship alienate and separate rather than invite and include. I'm not sure that separation isn't necessary for some, or that it doesn't help create a community of belief that sustains and ministers to itself. But when we expect those outside of the church culture to change enough to fit in within our culture, we are asking an awful lot. And we really are asking for something that many will not be willing to give--maybe not ever, but for sure at least until they really know Jesus and have chosen to follow him. (Whether they should have to do so is a question for another day).
So I think that if we're going to be effective evangelists in today's world, we have to be really really clear within our own hearts and minds about what is essential for belief and relationship with Jesus, and we have to let everything else go by the wayside within our conversations and invitations to those who do not yet believe in or follow Jesus. It would be so unfortunate to let my culture or my expression of worship or my approach to God to so alienate someone that she was no longer interested in talking about God, especially if the something that's alienating her is something that's not essential to faith and godliness.
When I talk about God and about Jesus and about God's story of rescue and redemption and restoration, I want to be inviting people into an abundant life of restored relationships. That's it. That's all. I don't always want to invite them to my church (although they would certainly be welcome there). I don't want them to feel pressured to pray exactly the way I do (though I would be happy to pray with them and for them and to model my approach). I don't want them to think that there's only one way to express devotion or to spend time with God or to hear from God. I want to be there to help them discover what God is calling them to. I want to provide them with resources and connections to other followers of Christ. I want to prayerfully seek to hear from the Holy Spirit what he is doing in their hearts. I want to walk with them and learn from them too.
So what do you think are the things that are essential to invite others into when you are inviting them to faith?
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