I learned an important ministry lesson years ago from an unbeliever I was trying to evangelize.
I was on staff with CRU & he was a brilliant & thoughtful student. Over the next few years, I shared the gospel with him many times, answering objections & using all the tools. 1/10
To answer his more complicated moral, philosophical, and theological objections, I took him to meet one of my theology profs at SBTS. Despite all this, he could never commit to Christ. He was a classic "always learning but never arriving at the church" kind of guy. 2/10
Eventually, I moved away to plant a church, and I continued to pray that someday he would come to faith.
Fast forward a few years, he calls me out of nowhere to tell me he'd become a Christian. I also spoke to his new wife, who was also a solid believer. 3/10
Not only that, but he had begun taking seminary courses to explore church planting.
I was floored. What finally broke through? What book, apologist, or intellectual finally convinced him? So I asked him. 4/10
Someone invited him to a church service and the preacher preached about hell and eternal judgment. It scared the crap out of him and he surrendered to Christ at that moment.
Like, he legit got saved. Radical, immediate conversion. 5/10
Looking back, I'd spent the better part of four years appealing to his intellect, talking philosophy & theology. I wanted to prove to him how intellectually satisfying & philosophically robust Xnty is. All that is well & good, but I missed the one thing he needed most. 6/10
He needed to know what many Christians want to avoid talking about with unbelievers. He needed what I was too afraid to mention bc I was embarrassed. He needed to know about judgment & hell, the unpleasant doctrines that demonstrate, by contrast, the beauty of the cross. 7/10
God gave me a huge part to play in his conversion, for which I'm grateful, but the honor of seeing him cross the finish line went to another man who was faithful in an area where I'd failed. 8/10
I'd spent years showing him a "respectable" Christianity, which kept him comfortable in his unbelief. In scripture, however, we learn that "the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Co 1:18). 9/10
One plain spoken sermon, that clearly laid out God's wrath against sin and the grace of the cross, had more power than my years of trying to reach him by the human means of appealing to his intellect.
In other words, the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
-end
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The pastor of our sister church told me this story. Some leaders were meeting at church a few weeks ago and they ordered pizza. One man invited the delivery guy to come to church the next day. The sermon that day was all about God’s forgiveness.
The man gave his life to Christ right there on the spot.
He and his girlfriend have two children with a third on the way. He went home and told her they weren’t sleeping together anymore until they were properly married. He moved into a guest room.
He asked the pastor to marry them later that week. The pastor agreed after doing some pre-m counseling.
The next week they were all in church. She ended up giving birth later that day. This past Easter Sunday, they showed up with all his extended family, taking up a whole row.
If Xns do not oppose LGBTQ activism, they will continue to take over every facet of public life.
Yet Xns who speak out are often criticized them for their tone or not being Christlike.
*This is how we lose.*
The key is to distinguishing btw diff types of ppl.
A 🧵
Every tweet has multiple audiences that converge in one space. Twitter doesn’t distinguish audiences. We have to do that ourselves.
And there are different tactics to speak clearly to each one.
Here are the top six audiences I'm aware of and how I engage them.
(1) The LGBTQ individual. He is under the power of sin and needs to find freedom in Christ. He is keenly aware that Xns oppose his lifestyle and thinks all Xns are hateful bc of it. He takes it personally when Xns speak out against LGBTQ activism.
The world is going nuts. A reformation is needed. But the next great reformation will not be like Luther's reformation 500 years ago. It will be a return to normalcy. It will be a retrieval of the ordinary.
Here are 23 ways to be Ordinary Reformers in 2023:
1. Fear God and keep his commandments (Ecc 12:13). Romans 3:18, which vividly describes the sinfulness of mankind, concludes with this: there is no fear of God before their eyes." 2. Read scripture every day 3. Pray every day
4. Take one day a week for sabbath rest 5. Go to church every week. Resolve to never miss a week unless hindered by unusual circumstances beyond your control 6. Strive to fight sin and obey Christ in everything
1. Fear God and keep his commandments (Ecc 12:13). Romans 3:18, which vividly describes the sinfulness of mankind, concludes with this: there is no fear of God before their eyes." 2. Read scripture every day 3. Pray every day 4. Take one day a week for sabbath rest
5. Go to church every week. Resolve to never miss a week unless hindered by unusual circumstances beyond your control 6. Strive to fight sin and obey Christ in everything 7. Confess your sins whenever you fail (1 Jn 1:9)
8. "Abhor what is evil"(Rom 12:9). If the Bible says something is sinful, then it's sinful. Don't play games. Don't "nuance" it into oblivion. Trust God and take him at his word. If it's sin, God hates it, it's wicked, and we should abhor it.
There once was a certain kind of evangelical Christian I felt free to make fun of. I was pastoring a fast growing church in an urban environment, and a spirit of elitism had infected us. No one would correct me on it because they made fun of them too.
The people we felt free to mock were conservative, uneducated, backwoods fundies who still read the KJV. They lacked the theological sophistication and cultural insight I had acquired while doing campus ministry and studying at seminary.
I came from the hills of WV. Appalachian, born and bred. I knew these people well because I grew up around them. But I had moved on. I was better than them. I was more learned and cultured. I had "seen the world" and they hadn't.
“All our teaching must be as plain and simple as possible.” Richard Baxter
“Truth loves the light, and it is most beautiful when most plainly revealed. It is the sign of an envious enemy to hide the truth, and it is the work of a hypocrite to do this under pretense of revealing it.“