Tag: When Faith Isn’t Assumed

Turf Wars

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Roughly speaking, the job of a salesman is to convince you to buy something you don’t want or need. In truth, though, the best salesmen understand that their job is to help you discover what it is that you do need, and to then help you see that need met. In sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian context, we are surrounded by people who don’t really understand what they actually need. It is our job as followers of Jesus to help them with that. In order to do that, though, we first have to establish a relational connection with them. That means learning to operate on their turf. This all what we are talking about as we continue our teaching series, When Faith Isn’t Assumed. Let’s dive right in.

Turf Wars

There’s nothing quite like a home field advantage. Personally, with the exception of the Royals, I’m pretty accustomed to cheering for teams with incredible home field advantages.I know this season was somewhat of a disappointment, but the Chief’s Arrowhead Stadium is the loudest stadium in the NFL. Props on their dominant win last week aside, Seattle fans tried to make a counter-claim that, actually, theirs was the loudest NFL stadium a few years ago. Chiefs fans promptly demonstrated the error in Seattle’s thinking by responding with the cold, hard reality of 142.2 decibels, a Guinness World Record that, no, Arrowhead really is the loudest NFL stadium. 

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The Message that Saves

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If we are going to share the Gospel in a post-Christian culture, we have to be clear on what exactly the Gospel is ourselves. We’ve spent the previous two installments of our teaching series, When Faith Isn’t Assumed, talking about the reality of truth and the person of Jesus. Today we are rounding out this sequence by coming back to Jesus again. This time, instead of focusing so much on who He is, we are giving our attention entirely to what He does: Jesus saves. Let’s talk about it.

The Message that Saves

If you were to walk up to a random stranger on the street and tell them you think they are a sinner in need of salvation, you may get one of a variety of reactions, but none of those will likely be very positive. They may just roll their eyes and walk away from you. They may tell you where to take your opinion of them. They might even punch you in the nose for saying something so offensive to them. Simply put: They won’t like it. But just because they won’t like hearing it does not for that reason make it any less true. 

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A Class of One

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Last week we started a new teaching journey exploring how we can effectively share the Gospel in a culture that is post-Christian. It all starts with a foundation of truth, but that truth points us somewhere. It points us to someone: Jesus. Today we are talking about who Jesus is and what He has done through one of the most significant passages Paul wrote on the matter. Let’s marvel together at this incredible truth.

A Class of One

It all comes back to Jesus. For all the evangelistic tips and tricks that are out there—and there are many—for all the outreach programs and methods churches buy and put into use; for all the apologetic arguments both positive and negative we could use to promote and defend the Christian faith, there is one thing that everything ultimately comes back to: Jesus. If a person is going to make a rational judgment of the Christian worldview, no matter which worldview ground is his starting place—Christian, non-Christian, post-Christian, anti-Christian, and so on and so forth—he ultimately has to decide what he is going to do with Jesus. It all comes back to Jesus. If we are going to successfully share the Gospel in a culture such as ours, we have to be able to tell people who Jesus really is…which assumes we know that ourselves. Let’s see if we can’t tackle both pieces of this particular puzzle today. 

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