Thursday, March 3, 2022

Letter to a minister

Dear Agamemnon,

I think the current preaching program is the first time in more than 50 years of attending churches that I've encountered a program on 'commending Christ'. Excellent.

I think it lays the ground for a more concerted offering that might be considered.

People really learn behaviour change through engagement. Just listening to a talk rarely does it.

Could we look at a series of seminars on Communicating Christ? These would include pre-reading, a short presentation followed by facilitated discussion (such as described by Brookfield -- https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.396.577&rep=rep1&type=pdf ) then break into syndicate groups to work up presentations and engage in practice.

I think the questions that would need to be covered would be:

Why do I: believe the Bible, think Christ resurrected, Yahweh exists.
What about evil in the world?
Doesn't science (evolution) disprove the Bible/Christianity?

The big five.

To a more aware enquirer, the Trinity might be a question as well...that could be a bonus! Or, we could figure out 7 topics...the perfect number.

The important thing would be to get past personal testimonies, as useful as these can be, to the grounds of belief. Why these things are justified true beliefs based on (public) objective evidence.

Another or allied approach might be that of Greg Koukl's. His book 'Tactics' describes an enquiry-dialogue approach to 'talking the gospel' that is of broad applicability.

You might be aware of his work, but here are some links that could be of interest.

Tactics 1: https://youtu.be/aTzh6oVbsKk
Tactics 2: https://youtu.be/dPH7O6saijY
Tactics 3: https://youtu.be/C_NnFJak-B8
Tactics 4: https://youtu.be/Qszn4Gg69Tw


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