Commending Christ

Our sermonettes this season (pre-Lent, I guess) are about 'Commending Christ': evangelism.

This evening we were told about 'giving one's testimony' and declaring the gospel, and we had some brief words on that.

This was not training, it was....vague encouragement...to? Give a 'testimony' and/or explain the gospel.

Here's what was missing. No one is interested in your 'testimony'; unless you find out that they are, of course, but even there, the important thing in my estimation is to get to their world-view as quickly as possible. We are in an age of subjectivity, so a person who hears your 'testimony' can well say 'Good for you,I'm glad you found something that works for you; cheerio.'

Schaeffer encourages us to find the point of tension between their unavoidable experience of life, of their 'mannishness' and its need for an explanatory contextualisation which only God who is There can give: as creator and redeemer. Creation is the starting point (Acts 17) and Christ is the end point (Acts 26).

Koulk encourages us to ask questions to get information and get them to explain their world view, or belief, or spirituality to find a point of gentle confrontation.

In the end we need to be able to set out why we believe Yeshua resurrected, why we trust the Bible on objective grounds and why we have good reasons to believe that Yahweh exists and is the eternal one.

Our faith is the response to good reasons, not a private incommunicable experience (a Jasperian grasp for significance).

We also had a song, a hymn that talked about this world evaporating like snow...alas; no mention of the New Creation, which is the end Yahweh has for us. Not a neoplatonic nowhere land.