Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
Posted on August 6, 2008 - by ray
Multiple Choice
Question: You live in suburbia. Your neighbor is similar to you in age and family structure. You don’t know much about your neighbor but feel that God is wanting you to invest in him. Do you…
A) invite him and his family to come to church with you and yours.
B) invite him to a special men’s event your church is hosting.
C) invite him and his family over for dinner, fully expecting to talk about spiritual things. You prepare yourself by reviewing the 2 spiritual diagnostic questions, the Romans Road, and the 4 Spiritual Laws.
D) get to know him over the course of several weeks through numerous conversations. After finding out his likes/dislikes/interests you ask if you can come along to his next _______ (you fill in the blank).
E) None of the above (had to add this as no good multiple choice question leaves this answer out).
Be honest with yourself as you think through how you would “witness” to your neighbor. Don’t be too quick to dismiss how entrenched we all our in our consumeristic christian sub-culture and how that influences how you become Jesus to those around you.
Posted on July 31, 2008 - by ray
Practically Speaking
I have a friend back in the States, we’ll call him Todd, who is also friends with a colleague of mine, we’ll call her Margie. Margie lives in another country by the way. One of the things I really like about Todd is that he is constantly striving to grow in his relationship with God. He wants to learn, to push himself to live a more missional-incarnational life, and to see God’s kingdom grow. He sent an email to me and Margie the other day asking a couple of questions about how we live out our life in a missional context. I asked Todd if he minded me posting about his questions and our responses. Here’s some of Todd’s original email:
… in your conversations with non-believers, what are you thinking during the conversation? How are you setting up the conversation? Are you trying to direct the conversation at all (I think I know the answer)? Do you feel the H.S. is leading you during the conversation?
I ask this because I encounter different people all day long. I work with others whose beliefs are very screwed up and they attend church. I find myself wanting to pull my head back into it’s shell and write others off. The very anti-thesis of what you both are saying/living.
So, everything that you believe, everything that you’ve learned on the field… can you break it down for someone who constantly struggles to hopefully live a life worthy of a high calling and some how, some way be Christ to those around me?
Before I give you mine and Margie’s response I want to say that Todd is not alone in his struggle to live a life worthy of his calling. I struggle with that. I can only assume that Margie struggles as well. In fact, if we’re being honest as followers of Christ I would hazard a guess that we all struggle from time to time with these types of things. I also want to mention that neither Margie or I are experts. We are simply sharing our experience. With that said, I want to directly quote my response to Todd, and Margie’s response. I responded first to Todd’s email:
I guess one thing I’ve learned is that I have to pay a lot more attention to what’s being said in conversations than I used to. It’s very much active listening. Another thing, and this is not universal, but people like to talk, and most of the time about themselves.
For me, I never force a conversation in a certain direction. My opinion is that people can see through that. I typically go into a planned meeting or time with someone else with a simple pryer that God would give me opportunities to point the person to Him. Sometimes it happens, sometimes is doesn’t. But I never force it.
If you listen closely there are opportunities to turn a conversation. For example, our neighbors came over a few weeks ago to celebrate a birthday. We were talking through dessert about the youth violence in the area. The wife was talking about the reasons (the causes) for the youth to want to act out violently. Things like education, poor economic situations, and poor parenting were mentioned. At that point I asked the question, “Do you think that the lack of a focus on religion and spirituality has anything to do with the violence?” It was a normal part of the conversation, but it turned the conversation. That one question led to a discussion about their beliefs. At one point she asked me about my specific beliefs and if I knew for sure what would happen to me when I die. I was able to walk through my beliefs with them….all of them. Now, it didn’t end in any conversion experience. I didn’t plan for it to. But I continually look for times that little conversations like this can take place, and hope that God is using them to draw my neighbors to Himself.
A lot of the time asking a question instead of making a statement can move a conversation in a direction you want it to go. I don’t know that the conversation with my neighbor would have gone the right way had I started out by saying something like, “Well, these kids need Jesus” or something similar.All of that to say:
- go in with the idea that you’re making relationships with others, not just seeing them as a possible “convert”
- don’t put pressure on yourself to force a conversation a certain direction.
- listen for subtle hints or places that a question can be asked
- in fact, ask a lot of questions
- don’t start with the end goal being “conversion”. Start with the end goal of glorifying God and moving the individual a step closer to Him.But again, this is just one man’s opinion.
And here’s Margie’s response:
First of all Todd, I want to say, “good on you for asking these questions!” Seriously, just the fact that you are evaluating how to share and build relationships with non-believers is a significant first step. Too many people never do that and spend a lifetime being ineffective.
Listening and asking questions is the key. You will never be able to meet them where they are if you don’t seek to find out by getting to know who they are.
I think the only thing I would add is praying and asking God to really break your heart for lost people. You mentioned wanting to pull away and write others off. I am going to be honest here and I hope I don’t offend you. I think one of the biggest weaknesses of the American, evangelical church is our satisfaction with being with the family. What I mean by that is this….the church has become everything, the center of our spiritual growth, our social network, our political party, everything. We have created a subculture from where we never want to leave. We talk about reaching the lost but what we mean by that is inviting them to church or preaching to them from a distance. We don’t want to hang out with them, be their friends or really let them into our lives. We reserve that right for fellow christians. The result I think is a fear that hanging out in the world will pollute us. We get almost disgusted by the lostness we see around us. That wasn’t Jesus’s heart at all. He felt compassion. He lived among broken people. We have to see sin as brokenness. We are here to mend brokenness. That means we have to get our hands dirty. We have to get out among the broken. We have to open our lives to them. We have to minister. I would ask that God would break your heart. That you would see their brokenness as he does. That you would enter their lives not to just give them a message but to share your own life with them. I would challenge you to leave your subculture, seek the broken and patiently and gracious share the gospel with them as God provides opportunity. That would be my prayer.
My only other advice is…treat them like people not projects and you can’t go wrong. Truly love and care and you can’t help but reflect Jesus. Share the truth with love and grace and you can’t help but penetrate their hearts with the gospel.
I have to say, what Margie said to Todd really resonated with me. I never understood how entrenched in the American Christian subculture I was until I moved away from it. Before moving here I could count on my hands the number of lost that I interacted with on a daily basis. Now it seems to be the other way around. That’s not a point of bragging, but a point of what a re-focus can do for you. I think as we grow closer to Christ our draw towards the lost increases. It has to…simply because that was the heart of Christ. And I constantly have to ask God to break my heart for the people I’m around. For me, this hasn’t been a once and done type of situation. It’s a continual, daily process.
Hopefully this has been a help to someone. I think it was a help to Todd, and I know that it was a help to me.
Posted on July 18, 2008 - by ray
The Gap
I’m preparing to teach a class on Spiritual Formation in September. I’ll be using the Frost & Hirsch book The Shaping of Things to Come as the primary text. In review of the book I came across something I had forgotten about that I think is worth posting. The authors refer to Robert Bank’s book Redeeming the Routines and his pointing out the gap between belief and everyday life. According to Bank this gap shows up in ten worrying ways:
- Few of us apply or know how to apply our belief to our work, or lack of work.
- We only make minimal connections between our faith and our spare time activities.
- We have little sense of a Christian approach to regular activities like domestic chores.
- Our everyday attitudes are partly shaped by the dominant values of our society.
- Many of our spiritual difficulties stem from the daily pressure we experience.
- Our everyday concerns receive little attention in the church.
- Only occasionally do professional theologians address routine activities.
- When addressed, everyday issues tend to be approached too theoretically.
- Only a minority of Christians read religious books or attend theological courses.
- Most churchgoers reject the idea of a gap between their beliefs and their ways of life.
Of course, the last is the most telling. Many of us fail to see the disconnect between what we read in scripture and believe about our life in Christ and what we actually do. I have to admit, I’m guilty of this as well, even living cross-culturally, where it’s my job to avoid this type of gap in my daily life.
I’m convinced now more than ever that we do a horrible disservice to both new and old Christians in our discipleship of them if we don’t teach and example what it means to live the incarnational life…what it means to love your neighbor, what it means to bless those who persecute you, and what it means to turn the other cheek. We do a fine job of teaching truth and sound theological concepts but we fall short in giving them the full council of the Word.
So, this is where the rubber meets the road - I need to come up with a way to teach and example this to 18 year olds this September in a way that will hopefully impact them to live out their faith, not just believe in it.
Posted on June 29, 2008 - by ray
A Call to Re-think How We Think
Piper. Brilliance. Read.
Posted on June 27, 2008 - by ray
What I Do
One of the things I struggled with after moving overseas was coming to terms with how my “day job” was defined. I came from nine years of IT work in a Fortune 500 company. My job was very neatly defined. I knew what was expected of me. I had yearly reviews and my annual raise was based on that review. I knew what was expected of me in order to get a promotion. I knew exactly where I fit in the organization.
Here, things are not so neatly defined. Early on there were days I would wake up and not really know what to do with my time. I struggled with understanding what was expected of me from an organizational stand point. Raises and promotions are things that don’t exist with my present employer. Organizational structure is not nearly as important as it once was (some might argue with this). I knew my overall task was to facilitate a CPM (church planting movement) among my assigned people group. That’s a little bit easier said than done. I was told that my first year was a “gimme”…that I just needed to focus on adapting to my culture, learn language, to not stress out too much. Again, that’s a little bit easier said than done.
So now, in my third year, I feel more comfortable with my “day job”. I understand my culture, I’ve learned the language, I don’t get too stressed out, but there’s still that uneasy feeling, that tension, between “working” and “living”. I’ve set up a charity organization, a non-profit, and the bulk of my relationships come through my charity. It eases the tension that I sometimes feel for not having a “real” job. I help small organizations with some of their IT problems. I do a little business training. I meet people. I engage them. I try to offer them something that will make their jobs (and lives) a little easier. But in the back of my mind there’s this tension, this question that lingers, what’s the path from helping these people to starting a church to helping to facilitate a movement.
Most days I do a good job of pushing that thought out of my mind…to focus on the individuals I meet, to be Jesus to them, and at the end of the day, hope that they are a little bit closer to Christ for having interacted with me.
