Word of God, Speak

One of the speakers at last weekend's conference was a man some of you would have enjoyed - if only because he made everyone laugh! His name is Carl Ellis, and he's pretty much an urban ministry guy, as well as reaching out to Muslims. So, can I share some of it with you? This gives me a chance to write up my notes, too.

Pre-conversion Discipleship

He said: We tend to fall into the trap of wanting to win people to Jesus, to make converts, and look to God to disciple them, but it's really the other way around. We make disciples; Jesus converts people. We shouldn't get that backwards, be trying to do the God bit and blowing off the disciple-making. That's how you impact a culture, by making disciples. He said he read through the scriptures looking for where the 12 'became Christians' and couldn't figure it out. But they were disciples from day one, from 'come and see.'

Where we get in trouble and our evangelism/mission efforts get off is when we have a big emphasis on going in and harvesting when we're going places where nobody has ever planted. But Jesus started discipling people as soon as he met them.

Engaging People on Their Concerns

Similarly, when we meet people, we can start investing in them. Most people only reveal superficial things on first contact but if you don't brush those off and stick around, they will reveal more of their core concerns. Our job is to engage people on their concerns. Sharing the gospel isn't to tell them Christ is the answer until we know what the question is. Sometimes in our evangelism efforts we are too much like a clinic that gives out the same prescription to everyone, when we need to be like a pharmacist that dispenses what that person needs.

Discipleship is the application of the word of God to their life concerns, which they reveal at their own pace. The Bible is full of stories, and the stories are not just the banana peel for the good stuff inside, the are also edible! There's no situation someone is in, that someone in the Bible hasn't gone through as well. There's a story for everything.

Theology as Engaging with God

So, doing theology for yourself, it might be like this: You look at a situation in your life, and ask, what story in the Bible fits the same patterns? In that situation, how was God in control? How was he speaking? How was in present? And what does that have to say about how he is in control of, speaking in, and present in my situation?

"Doing theology" is really asking God specific questions about our situations and applying the word of God to our lives, and as we love people and know the Bible we can introduce other people to God, too.

So... I think we're back to listening, again. Listening to one another. Listening to our lives. Listening to God.