How to talk

Recently one of our teachers gave a talk (sermon) on evangelism, and asked for people from the congregation to suggest why people might have difficulty talking to others about the gospel.

There was quite a range of suggestions, none surprising, I thought, but few touched what I had found as a younger person when I made many clumsy attempts to 'do my duty' which ended up to be such bad experiences for all involved, that I started to avoid people so I'd not have to experience such exchanges again.

However, I didn't mention that, but instead thought about it.

I later sent this to the teacher (pastor) by e-mail.

One reason not mentioned was that we are not equipped with the language to help others who have at least an implicit or unconscious materialist-evolutionary ontology, if not an articulated one, to understand the gospel. We speak from a stance of a world that is foundationally personal, and that personal conditioned by love, to a world where the personal is derived from the material through accidents of evolution.

In most cases we miss...and we cannot communicate with each other...because we only know 'church language' to communicate the gospel, not a language that actually communicates outside our group.