Effective Evangelism? (Part 2)

Part 1

A Better Way to Stand Out

While there are few direct commands to evangelize in the new testament, there is plenty of directing to live a christian life. There is plenty of teaching about loving one another and practicing all of the virtues, while at the same time warnings for believers not to fall into sin. There is a clear call to live differently than the world does. It has been said, “be in the world but not of it” (though not directly found in the bible), however the exact way that works is not spelled out, and therefore people have different ideas on what it looks like. For some it means having our own music, books, organizations, etc. and being offended at everything “secular”. People will know we are not of the world by Continue reading →

Effective Evangelism? (Part 1)

Introduction

Evangelizing is a popular issue among Christians. In fact, it is the word used for the particular tradition from which I come (evangelical). If it is so important, it would follow that we should be interested in understanding and studying it. It’s interesting how often a conversation among christians will turn toward an evangelical bent, either in how the subject matter will be perceived by nonbelievers, or how effective it might be in convincing them to become christian. While it is certainly talked about often, evangelism is often misunderstood in my opinion. Our current teachings on evangelism have left us largely ineffective and feeling guilty. For me personally, evangelism begins by reforming the church. I write here in Continue reading →

Singleness guide

There’s something that I’ve become acutely aware of here recently. As I’ve gone through my life and encountered different experiences, I’ve realize that a lot of things haven’t gone the way that I had been lead to expect they would. One of those areas is certainly the area of love and relationships (and/or lack thereof). Not only do I feel that I’ve been given the wrong idea about many things, I have also noticed the seeming lack of good and clear guidance as to how to navigate through these waters. Sure, many have tried to provide good and clear guidance, but the fact is that there are so many different versions of it out there, that may or may not gel with either the bible or real life. The romantic relationship thing is a hard channel Continue reading →

How Christianized do Ordinary Activities Have to Be?

A question along these lines came into my head at bible study last night. Some one was talking about how they got together with one of their friends to play video games, but before they started the guy prayed to thank God for the opportunity to hang out. He was making the classic point of making all of life about God.

My question though is how… overt and/or conscience does it have to be about God, in order for it to be about God? I really don’t know for sure. One thing I guess I’ve struggled with is that I usually don’t “feel” christian, at least in how it’s communicated to me that I should feel, and in addition, I often am not consciously thinking about God. I’m not sure that means I’m less holy though. I guess my intuition says that Continue reading →

American Paranoia

I wanted to share what I wrote in response to receiving the email forward described at this link: http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/mexicoflag.asp. This is a topic which I had been planning to write about anyway, and this made for a good opportunity.

I am quite disturbed about this email. I am appalled at the attitudes of fear and bias which this message communicates. I believe that it is wrong to think of the U.S. as virtually perfect place. I believe that this attitude of paranoia that someone is going to come in and ruin our “perfect” lives is wrong. I can’t see anyway around viewing this as leading to significant racism.

Quite similar is the story of Dubois ports world. Simply because there is a connection to the middle east, Continue reading →

Thoughts From “Crash” – Racism

I recently watched the movie “Crash”. It is a good movie that makes you think, especially about the subject of race and discrimination. It shows people in tough, “between a rock and hard place”, situations, which I appreciated because I think that is real. There are some situations which people are in which are like, “do you want a job and to have money to live or do you want to do the right thing?”

Also, it isn’t always stereotypical. There is one case of a black prosecutor who wants to investigate a case of a white man shooting a black man, because he has real doubts to the idea that the white guy was in the wrong. However others just want to make the white guy out to be a racist.

Though I do believe these thing happen, most of the Continue reading →

March Participation

Yesterday I participated in a march. It was the first time that I’ve done something like this. I recognize that I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about things, but I often don’t do anything (often I don’t know what to do). It was of course the march in support of immigrant rights. I don’t think that I fully understand everything about the issue, but I believe that I know enough to know that I’m generally against some of the legislation proposed. Nonetheless, I almost didn’t go, using the excuse that I’m busy and there wasn’t much time to get there after school. I realized though that it is an issue that isn’t likely to affect me much, at least directly, even if the legislation passed. That being the case, it makes it really easy to Continue reading →

Biblical Inerrancy?

I think the concept of biblical inerrancy is meaningless, or at the very least a moot point. There is no one whole complete perfect version of the bible in existence, and all the different copies that we have don’t completely agree. So it is obviously not literally inerrant. As far as being inerrant in content, the bible (and language in general) doesn’t exist outside of a context of interpretation, so even if you could argue that the content was somehow inerrant, it would be a moot point. In addition, as far as fact and figures, we should expect them to generally be true, however we should understand as well that often ancient writers were much less concerned with accuracy of details as we are today.

In addition, the bible wasn’t Continue reading →

Is Church Really Church?

I don’t have the time to do a full overview of this topic, but I had some good thoughts and wanted to share. As I’ve been growing in my faith and trying to continually understand this whole Christianity thing, the church services I attend (my background is evangelical protestantism) have felt less and less like church to me. It’s started to feel more like going to a concert and then a lecture, an event of propaganda attempting to make you feel one way and believe certain things. Maybe my problem has to do with that the church service seems so disconnected from life. I feel that I have been trying to integrate all of my life together, so that I am undivided or whole in whatever time or place I find myself in.

Saturday I helped some Continue reading →

A Modern Parable

A man was walking downtown one day, and as he was going along his way, he was attacked, beaten badly and robbed. The assailants fled the scene and, unfortunately for the man, no one had witnessed the incident, so there was presently no one to help the man and call for further assistance.

The man lay on the ground unable to move because of his injuries. He believed that he was in real danger of expiring due to either his external or internal wounds. However, soon he could see someone walking towards him down the street. It was a priest! “Thank God!” thought the man, “He’ll certainly help me, I am surely saved now.” Yet as the priest drew near he passed by the man as if he had not noticed him.

The man was in a state of disbelief and Continue reading →