{"id":291,"date":"2003-05-05T19:26:07","date_gmt":"2003-05-06T00:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=291"},"modified":"2007-04-06T19:37:25","modified_gmt":"2007-04-07T02:37:25","slug":"evangelismconversion-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=291","title":{"rendered":"Evangelism\/Conversion (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Insert warning from last post. Thank you.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back to the list of ways to evangelize positively…<\/p>\n

  • Set a good example.<\/strong> The image of Christianity I get is most poigniantly going to be from you, so you might want to act accordingly. I’m not holding you to a complete standard of perfection, but avoid making nasty comments about those who hold differing beliefs and avoid putting down ideas that you don’t understand. This goes back to “be real” — if Christ is in you, I should see it in who you really are, not some mask you put up to fool me.<\/li>\n
  • Meet me where I’m at.<\/strong> One of the cool things my church did in college was hold a study hall where we could bring our friends and study… with food and adults and other older students who could help with difficult subjects. I wrote most of my senior seminar paper during the ones held during Winter Quarter and during Spring Quarter, my husband and I helped people study for their Biblical Narratives final. It was a quiet place to study… and the food was great. Other ideas: invite people to a games’ night at church where y’all are playing board games, a movie night where you discuss the movie afterwards…<\/li>\n
  • Witness to me in terms I understand.<\/strong> I’m not saying that you should talk to people as if they were two year olds or do not speak English. I’m saying that you need to remember that not everyone understands what paedocommunion<\/em> is or why it should\/should not be a practice in the church and that I might not know which Lamb the blood to sanctify me has to come from.<\/li>\n

    Enough on evangelism!<\/p>\n

    Conversion<\/em><\/strong>
    \nThis might just be representative of the blogs I read (as I am after all one of the mods for [shameless plug]Blogs4God<\/a>[\/shameless plug] and read probably 150 blogs for my weekly cache) but I see a lot of talk about evangelism from people who have been in the church their whole lives. I also see a lot of people talking about how they can’t understand how people could possibly *NOT* accept Christ when they hear the Gospel. As this makes me want to bang my head against my keyboard and as I really can’t afford the pain meds to deal with that, I thought I might ummm…. “enlighten” people as to how difficult conversion can be.<\/p>\n

    My Story<\/em>
    \nIf I haven’t said this enough times, I am a convert. My family is not Christian (and yes, I have tried witnessing to them). I accepted Christ when I was 14 and the seed got planted when my neighbor (who I later worked for in middle school, high school, and college) read me the *real* Christmas story when I was 6 and continued on to read to me about Jesus’ death on the Cross and His resurrection. There was a period of 8 years before I formally accepted Christ and my attitudes definitely changed during that time. When I was 9 or 10, I imagined that one day they’d discover that the Bible had been a hoax and that everything (the Church, theology, etc.) fell apart. The problem: in my mind’s eye, I would then see my friend Emily (who took me to church camp with her when I was 10) and her family as well as my neighbor’s family *still* worshipping and believing as if nothing had happened. This kind of belief in something that could not be proven absolutely puzzled me because there was apparently something I just did not understand about faith. I mean, Christianity could not be proven with science (and the Institute for Creation Research does not count as a scientific body in my humble opinion) — the existence of God could not even be proven conclusively. To my scientifically-trained ears, this was a definite quandry. I half-heartedly gave my life to Jesus at church camp when I was 10 — more to please the counselor I was with than because I actually believed. I pretty much left that behind for a few years until I started thinking about the fact that if there *were* a God and all that resurrection stuff was true, I’d be in deep trouble. So… Jen learns the Lord’s Prayer and says it every night and Jen attempts to learn how to blend in as a Christian. I dug out my book of children’s Bible stories and read it and was amazed at what I read.<\/p>\n

    I’d rather not go into the full account of my conversion moment (as there are some things I don’t discuss on here and I’m sure my family would prefer this — if you want to know, ask me and I might tell you if I trust you enough), but basically after I accepted Christ, I sought to learn everything I could. My friend Jason used to give me copies of Our Daily Bread<\/a> and I started getting familiar with the Bible through those. I started attending church when I was 16 and was officially baptized when I was 19 at my Conservative Baptist church in college. The rest is history.<\/p>\n

    Problems Converts Face In The Process<\/em>
    \nI hopefully have established that there was some difficulty in my acceptance of Christ. If things were as easy as people make them out to be, I would have been in the Church 8 years earlier. These are some problems that converts\/seekers face. These are from my experience and from stories told to me by others who are also not life-long believers.<\/p>\n

  • Completely turned off by image of Christianity portrayed by other believers.<\/strong> OK… we’ve all heard the phrase “Jesus, save me from your followers” and maybe some of us have uttered it a time or two. 97% of Christians out there are wonderful\/kind-hearted\/caring people. The other 3% aren’t and it’s that minority that is the most vocal. Take the example of Westboro Baptist Church. (They’re the [insert nasty group word] who picket at all GLBT functions — they were in the area a few weekends ago and the only reason I didn’t go throw eggs at them was that I couldn’t get a ride to where they were picketing. Well… that and enough people know Jon that I didn’t want my actions to reflect on him and besides… it would be a waste of eggs.) I seriously wonder if those people know how much damage they are doing to the name of Christ by what they do. Homosexuality *is* a sin; but one can communicate that in a way that is less hateful than holding up a sign saying “Thank God for AIDS” or “Thank God for 9\/11” In college, I would get asked why on earth I could call myself Christian when people like them used the same label. I know that in my pre-Christian days, this would have driven me further from Christ.<\/li>\n
  • Ability to practice the faith.<\/strong> For me, my parents were fine with me going to practicing the faith… as long as it didn’t interfere with their lives. If we were on vacation over a Sunday, there was no way I was getting to church. (The exception was when it was just my mom and I — she would help me find services to attend and even attended with me on occasion. That meant a lot to me.) I had to learn to get up with the sun so that I could have devotional time that wasn’t going to be interrupted by my father knocking on my door. Even then, they still gave me rides to church if I needed them while I was home. Some of my friends were not allowed to attend services while living at home by their parents or spouse. These are the lighter difficulties. In some countries (Muslim ones for example), converting to Christianity means death for breaking the apostasy laws embodied in the shari’ah<\/em>. I know that Jesus talks about gaining one’s life by losing it; but the people who quote that defense most frequently do so in air-conditioned sanctuaries in the Carolinas — not while facing the barrel of a shotgun or standing on a gallow. Some of my friends were disowned by their families — yes, Jesus does address this but it’s easy to say “it’s part of being a Christian” when you aren’t the one losing your support system.<\/li>\n
  • Cannot intellectually believe.<\/strong> I’m a skeptical person by nature and the intellectual belief in God was a hard thing for me. I realize now that I have always known in my heart that God existed, but my brain couldn’t fathom that. My dad is a very scientific person and spent hours instilling a love for the mechanical workings of the universe in my brother and I. I now have no problem reconciling Genesis and the theory of evolution (without dealing with the people at the ICR); but… it was a journey to get there. The thing I hear most non-Christians (and even some Christians) puzzle over is the Resurrection. Jesus died. Dead people do not come back to life. The fact that it happened is something that many non-Christians cannot accept and it’s something that people like the Jesus Seminar are making harder by the day. Other intellectual issues: miracles, angels, the Eucharist, etc.<\/li>\n
  • Admitting wrong\/ignorance.<\/strong> Nobody likes to admit that they were wrong. Well… going from believing in the possibility of a God to believing that there is one is a big step. One of my friends told me that from the time he accepted that there was a God, it took him a year to accept Christ because he was trying to figure out where he went wrong. I wish that people quoted the parable of the vineyard workers (the ones who came last still got paid) to us more frequently because that was the parable that made me stop kicking myself for not coming to Christ sooner. It is a complete shift of the mind for some people and that takes time.<\/li>\n
  • Lifestyle changes.<\/strong> Read the introductory story in What’s So Amazing About Grace?<\/u> by Phillip Yancey for an example of what I mean. A lot of people are trapped in sin; but don’t know how to get out. The Gospel *is* liberating; but people have to be able to grasp the life raft it provides and not everyone has the resources (i.e. knows where to turn) to do it. Some of my guyfriends in college struggled with a pr0n addiction. It wasn’t until someone introduced them to a Christian ministry dealing with pr0n addiction that they were able to fight it. Someone I knew used to drive up and down the street and pick up prostitutes. He would then spend an hour talking to them, buying them coffee and food, and telling them about Jesus. He would then pay them for that time. If people in the church really want to be incarnational and help people come to Christ, they need to go in and help to pull people out. Many people, however, would not *dream* of associating with these people so the life raft stays elusive.<\/li>\n

    My aim is to explain why people don’t convert as easily and hopefully I’ve done it. I know that my experience is the tip of the iceberg and others might have had different ones. I also know that many people who have been in the church all their lives have changed positions and had mini-conversions on those fronts and that I can’t assume that all life-long believers think one way. I have, however, just seen too much on blogs lately that really scares me on this issue and I felt like I needed to address it.<\/p>\n

    Comments are always welcome — just please be polite and keep them succinct. If it’s long, respond in your own blog and leave a link. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [Insert warning from last post. Thank you.] Back to the list of ways to evangelize positively… Set a good example. The image of Christianity I get is most poigniantly going to be from you, so you might want to act … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ministry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-4H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}