My church, The Journey, recently started a new ministry called "The Seventy-Two" which is a ministry focused on evangelism. I had made a commitment at ONS to take my student leaders out to experience conversational evangelsim; to go out and see the evidence of God working in other people's lives (believers or not), pursuing them as he pursues us. However, I knew that God needed to continue to grow my heart for this discipline as it really is something that's very difficult for me to get out there and do. It's amazing to me that on my first Sunday back in STL I hear about this new evangelism ministry and how they will be doing it every week. So in the nature of 'practice makes perfect' and that the best way to overcome your fear is to face it head on (with God right there with you I might add), I decided to start going on these weekly ventures to better my understanding of evangelism so God might use me to teach my students about it in the future.
During my first experience with "The Seventy-Two", I went and followed one of the two guys who had been doing this for the past couple months. It was an interesting experience as it was very different than the approach that I leared from York Moore a month ago. I left thinking I wanted to try York's meathod again - so the second time we met up (this past Saturday), I decided to go off by myself and have my friend Jason who come with me. The interesting thing is that Jason isn't a Christian but we are good friends and often talk about spiritual issues together. Jason gave me some great non-biased perspectives on how each conversation went and I was extremely greatful for his encouragement after each encounter.
We we ended up talking to a couple we met in Tower Grove Park and talked to them for about an hour. I learned all sorts of fascinating things about their background, beliefs etc... When Bill and Sandra hear the word 'religion' they think of things like: constriction, something that divides, man-made, and oppressive. They have similar thoughts about Christ and suggest that Jesus is just another myth in a history of myths, one of the oldest being Isis and Osiris. I was able to share the gospel with them and got their immediate impressions of it which was similar to their response to "religion". Most interesting to me was how different their view of Christ is to mine (if you read the tale of Isis & Osiris and the story of Jesus in the New Testiment you'll see what I mean). Also interesting was their desire to "find the truth - because somebody's got to be right and somebody's got to be wrong".
At the end of the conversation I felt like I had just made a couple friends and we exchanged contact information and look forward to getting some bubble tea together (Sandra really likes the tapioca candies in bubble tea =) and they've never been to STL Bubble Tea before!). Please continue to hold them in your prayers.
Interesting Conversations
-- snippet of a conversation between me and Jason earlier that day --
"... and it really struck me just how amazing it is that God connects with so many different peoples and cultures through the same gospel. At this black church I was at, the service was steeped in celebration for the freedom that Christ provides us from songs like "breakthrough, free for all, etc.." to dances that had repeated themes of throwing off chains and tearing through invisible walls. At the journey we focus more on the radical-ness of the gospel, how different Christ was and how we should be constantly approaching God so that we might be transformed into radical believers who God uses to change the world around them. At ACF (Asian Christian Fellowship) they love how the body of Christ is a tight community, intimately involved in each other's lives just as God Himself is a community: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Elohim -- 'im' being the plural construct in Hebrew and name for God). "
-- snippet of a conversation with Bill and Sandra --
"... religion is oppressive and used to control people. Spirituallity on the other hand is something totally different. It is universal, inclusive vs. exclusive, truth, honest, pure and you're free to find your own path to God. There's no one to go through to get to God, you just go straight to God yourself. ... Who is God? Well he created us and everything here but then he gave us free will. He also controls everything to a certain extent - we don't know how but he somehow has his hand in what goes on. Who is he though? I guess I don't really know who he is."
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