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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| You don't sell news. |
I remember listening in silent horror to another believer lamenting to someone else that the couldn't find an "in" to share the gospel with such and such an unbeliever because that particular sinner had a wonderful, fully supplied life. There were no problems, that he could see, for which he could offer Jesus as the solution. No sufferings for which Jesus could be presented as the balm.
I have a real concern, and I think it is a healthy concern for believers who sully the work of evangelism with that sort of pragmatic balderdash.
My concern is not only for the purity of evangelism, and the gospel itself, but perhaps equally or even primarily for the believer who has somehow been hoodwinked into this sort of confusion. I wonder if generational Christians (those who are from Christian homes and are saved in their youth) are more apt to fall into this sort of buffoonery than those who were saved as adults by the preaching of the truth? I wonder because the latter seem less inclined to pursue this sort of flimshaw than the former - at least in my experience.
I am concerned because anyone who imagines that the gospel can be aided by such impotent nonsense betrays in themselves an underlying denial of the sufficiency of the gospel to save. God hasn't asked us to pitch the gospel as though we were selling it - he told us to declare it, as though it were good news. News being the key point. You don't convince people of news, you don't sell it to them, you don't try and frame it in such a way as to make it more attractive to various target groups. It is news. Good news. The job of evangelism is not to sell the news, but to tell the news.
I say, I am concerned because anyone building upon such a fractured foundation, will necessarily have to make innovative accommodations to the house they build upon it. If one has to persuade people through sales to become believers, good gravy - what must we do to get them to act like believers once they are saved?
It seems to me that if we begin to rely upon our own ingenuity, we will rely upon from that point on. Paul refused to give into this sort of human wisdom, not because he was particularly wise, though I suspect he was, but because he was obedient to the Spirit of God. I believe that the Spirit leads us today to follow Paul's example - that is, to disdain our own ways, wisdom, and whatnot; to count as rubbish our own powers of persuasion, and to instead, trust that God is at work in the telling of the good news, and leave the work to Him.
If we are faithful in telling it, we don't need to sell it. |
posted by Daniel @
9:57 AM
 
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