A couple of the RevGals bloggers, Jan and Songbird, recently posted reflections about the need for pastors and lay leaders to get out of their churches and into the communities. They were discussing this in the context of the Emergent Conversation, but that's not my purpose here.
Before sending people out into the community, the church needs to do a better job of preparing people to share their faith with others. Specifically, we are failing to "equip the saints" to wrestle with the hard questions that can be posed by thoughtful skeptics and seekers in discussions about faith.
For example, in a recent Bible study group I am involved in, the leader asked whether the Jesus and the disciples could have "engineered" the events in the New Testament that fulfill the Old Testament prophesies about the coming of the Messiah. She was referring to Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the events leading up to his crucifixion. Most everyone in the group nodded their heads, no, that wouldn't have been possible. I told them that some would argue that it WAS possible. Skeptics have said that Jesus and the disciples knew the OT prophesies as well as anybody else in that day and time and could have arranged for his entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey and for the dinner in the room. Furthermore, there are those who argue that Jesus colluded with Judas to arrange his betrayal to fulfill that prophesy and even some who would go further and say Jesus expected God would intervene to prevent his death.
After a bit of stunned silence, there was a lively group discussion about how they would respond to someone who agreed with the skeptical view. A couple of the participants talked to me afterwards and said they had never heard those arguments and would not have known how to respond to them before we had our discussion. I was surprised that these folks who have spent many years in intense Bible study and are very active in their churches had not been exposed to these views before and didn't know how to address them.
Before going out into the community to witness, you need to be prepared to respond to the thoughtful skeptic or else you appear uniformed and unpersuasive. Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ,and The Case for a Creator are a couple of good resources for the layperson seeking that kind of preparation that I have used in classes before. Some of the Alpha materials can be useful for this purpose as well. What would you suggest?
Before sending people out into the community, the church needs to do a better job of preparing people to share their faith with others. Specifically, we are failing to "equip the saints" to wrestle with the hard questions that can be posed by thoughtful skeptics and seekers in discussions about faith.
For example, in a recent Bible study group I am involved in, the leader asked whether the Jesus and the disciples could have "engineered" the events in the New Testament that fulfill the Old Testament prophesies about the coming of the Messiah. She was referring to Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the events leading up to his crucifixion. Most everyone in the group nodded their heads, no, that wouldn't have been possible. I told them that some would argue that it WAS possible. Skeptics have said that Jesus and the disciples knew the OT prophesies as well as anybody else in that day and time and could have arranged for his entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey and for the dinner in the room. Furthermore, there are those who argue that Jesus colluded with Judas to arrange his betrayal to fulfill that prophesy and even some who would go further and say Jesus expected God would intervene to prevent his death.
After a bit of stunned silence, there was a lively group discussion about how they would respond to someone who agreed with the skeptical view. A couple of the participants talked to me afterwards and said they had never heard those arguments and would not have known how to respond to them before we had our discussion. I was surprised that these folks who have spent many years in intense Bible study and are very active in their churches had not been exposed to these views before and didn't know how to address them.
Before going out into the community to witness, you need to be prepared to respond to the thoughtful skeptic or else you appear uniformed and unpersuasive. Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ,and The Case for a Creator are a couple of good resources for the layperson seeking that kind of preparation that I have used in classes before. Some of the Alpha materials can be useful for this purpose as well. What would you suggest?
