Coversational Evangelism :: A Non-believers Perspective

Recently, a good friend of mine who's not a believer accompanied me for an afternoon of conversational evangelism. He wrote a little essay on his experience, here's an excerpt:

As we walked down the park path, I recalled that we were reminded at the start of our journey not to force anything and let God do all the work. We are there to listen as well as to speak. Knowing that, it took a lot of pressure off of us. We walked for another five minutes and encountered a couple sitting on a bench. We politely approached them and asked if they would share their opinions on religion with us. Surprisingly, we got a very warm sounding "Yes!" I didn't actually expect anyone to talk to us that day. The next thing you know, we had been talking for an hour.

InterVarsity @ Harvard

I was working on a presentation on my ministry to give at churches / large groups of people & started investigating some of the evidences of InterVarsity's ministry in recent years. I came across this article on Intervarsity's work @ Harvard - here is an excerpt:

Harvard United Ministry chaplain Jeffrey K. Barneson says Harvard has a reputation for being irreligious. “I get these calls from people saying, ‘Oh I’ve heard that Harvard is a godless place,’” he says.

This reputation may soon be no more. According to University President Lawrence H. Summers, the evangelical Christian community here at Harvard has grown significantly.

Speaking to prospective freshmen during prefrosh weekend, Summers said that the number of students at Harvard who identify themselves as evangelical Christians has doubled in the last decade.

Link to HRAACF - A chapter of InterVarsity @ Harvard

St. Louis - National Disaster Area

Wednesday night, St. Louis experienced a freak storm with winds up to 90mph in some areas of the city. Power is out in so many areas around the city it is estimated to take up to 4-5 days to get most of the city back up and running. Today, the national guard was called in to evacuate residents without air conditioning due to a heat wave that has swept over the entire region.
This evening some friends and I canceled a BBQ we were planning and instead drove around the Tower Grove area of the city cleaning up fallen trees from the streets and people's property. The damage is pretty intense all over the city - even a 60 sq. ft. section of the airport roof got whipped up in the air and taken all the way to the highway. Please keep all of us St. Louis people in your prayers as we work to clean up and rebuild from the storm.

Prayer in St. Louis

Today at 1:30p pastors, professors and other Christian leaders met at the America's Center - the future location of Urbana 2006. This winter over 25k college students and young professionals will come together right here in St. Louis to learn about God's heart for the world and to begin to learn how God has called each and every one of us to play a unique role in his kingdom. Before that happens, Intervarsity is partnering and praying with many different Christian communities here in area to prepare for the work God will do this winter. It was exciting to be immersed in this communiity of leaders, some old faces, some new, some from as far away as Kenya and Malaysia and many from right here in the city.

Please be praying for the Urbana Program Team & Operations Team that are meeting here this week flushing out the details of how everything will work and asking God what his will is for the content of the plenaries.
Meet the Urbana 2006 speakers

In other news today - I learned that Intervarsity & affiliated campus ministries are now in over 130 countries! Praise God!

Coversational Evangelism :: Who is Jesus?

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."

Church & Para-Church

Today I had a great meeting with Mike Duncan who will be running the Journey's college ministry next year. Intervarsity is a "para-church" organization. According to the wikipedia, a parachurch is "a vehicle by which evangelical Christians work collaboratively both outside and across their denominations to engage with the world in mission, social welfare and evangelism." which is more or less true. I think of my role with Intervarsity as a missionary sent to a college campus. There's often a lot of confusion that goes on between Church and Parachurch boundries in that the Church doesn't like the "fact" that parachurches are "stealing their college students" and the parachurch doesn't like the "fact" that Churches "aren't reaching the college campus / raising up real followers of Christ vs. 'sunday believers' ".
Truth be told we're both working toward the same mission and in service of the same God. The end goal of Intervarsity's work IS NOT to be a safe-haven / hang-out for Christian students BUT it's to see students learning how to witness to their friends while discovering & embracing the calling that God places upon their lives. This is, I believe, the same mission the Journey works toward if in a restricted context (college campus vs. everywhere). I look forward to partnering with the Journey in the future to ensure that students are getting the message that we need to be living our lives for God as a witnessing community vs. a personal sanctuary. Mike and I have committed to meeting at least monthly to look for opportunities to partner together in our work. Please keep us in your prayers.

Intervarsity's Church Partnership Website - about

Intervarsity's Community Impact:
-Jimmy Lee: Intervarsity alumni @ U of I is now serving on the president's council on Asian & Pacific Island initiatives
-Stuart Holt, IV alumni, started his own marketing company and serves now as director of The Evangelism Institute; training people to share their faith with others.
-Mark Charles, IV alumni, now serves as a missionary reaching the Navajo people

Intervarsity Church Relations:
-Vintage21: a new Church planted by some ex-Intervarsity staff
-City Lights: a missions project partnership between Intervarsity & New City Fellowship
-Memorial Presb. Church in STL: pastored by intervarsity almuni
-The Pink House: a center for urban ministry training


*picture from "The Journey - How to Respond to the World: sermon"

The Journey - New Building

God has been at work @ my Church. Since I became a member 3 years ago, we've grown from ~100 to ~900 attenders; many of whom are non-believers who need to hear the Gospel. The Journey just got a new buildling - actually, our first (we didn't own the previous one) and it is quite a match with who we are.


A Church, as you may have heard, is the people & not the building... but... if our Church were to somehow magically transform into a building - this would be it. It's amazing to me how God has gifted us with a place that reflects in everyway who we are as a body of believers. True to the word / identity of God yet working to demonstrate how Jesus is not a God of the past but lives on even in today's culture.

I'm grateful for Jonathan's message this past Sunday on being a Church for the city; that we should be cautious to avoid being 'the new cool Christian group' but be committed to God's work in reaching those not like us. I'm reminded of how I heard small groups described at Intervarsity's New Staff Orientation: "[community] IS NOT a safe house for our well-being; rather, IT IS a residential home, a gathering place for the neighborhood where all are welcome to be part of the family".

Sadly, our culture has grown accustomed to churches saying, "You must look like we look and think what we think, not do what we don't do, and come to our building. Only then will we welcome you in to our community." The Journey is proud to stand against this attitude and engage people wherever they are with whatever they think. And since pubs and coffee shops are where people meet and hang out, it is the natural place for Midrash conversations.

Worship & Music

Spent part of the weekend talking to Ray (student @ Washington University in STL) about worship & my hopes for working with the students @ St. Louis University. Worship is often one of the most misunderstood words in the Christian world (another highly misunderstood word is 'church' but that's another topic). Worship is often spoken of as 'more than just music' and 'a lifestyle'. Many say 'we [people] are created to worship'. What does it all mean?
Ha - like I can answer that question in a single blog entry! I will say that the Bible does give examples of worship as singing , dancing, and even a spiritual transformation... One thing is clear - worship is much more than we make it to be.

Practicing the discipline of Worship
Once I get on campus (which depends on how quickly I can raise my support funds) - I plan to work with the SLU worship team to push them to not only lead people in worship as a community but to develop a deeper understanding of what worship is and how it extends and impacts every aspect of their spiritual growth. One thing we will be doing together in addition to music is to venture out and do conversational evangelism. We will also look into God's text to better understand the truth behind worship and how to express it.

Memory lane
The conversation this weekend made me think of a friend in LA who is one of the few worship leaders I have met with not only a heart condusive to worship but also a temperment sensitive to the spirit in leading people to worship. He's also one fantastic guitar player and becoming an excellent doctor =). I found some old pictures that we took too - God bless ya bro as you work with your friend to start your new Church out in CA!

ONS - Small Group Pictures!!!

patrick is shocked at my comments!!!


me & my small group in beautiful madison!


beth - yet another great iv staff working in intervarsity urban missions!



-> Intervarsity also has an urban missions project in st louis. Many SLU students have already gotten involved. We hope to send yet another group to city lights next spring for a whole week to see how God is at work in the city.