One Gospel – Three Worldviews

The gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed within pluralistic societies—it’s not a new phenomenon. But for many churches in North America, it’s a new challenge. The apostles Peter and Paul faced this challenge and there are lessons we can learn from their experiences. For many of us, God has brought the “mission field” into our neighborhoods and all around our churches. The choice of how we respond is up to us, ranging from Christian xenophobia (fear or dislike of people whose worldviews and cultures are not like ours) to Great Commission vision. It can often feel intimidating or out of place to have a faith-based conversation with someone whose worldview differs from our own. But understanding different worldviews and knowing how to start an evangelistic conversation with an individual whose faith views are not aligned with ours can reduce the level of intimidation. “Sharing God’s story of hope in a world of competing faiths and cultures” is one of the defining taglines of Good Soil Evangelism and Discipleship. And it is rooted in precedent-setting examples found in the book of Acts.  →

The Nations... in Our Backyard

KATHMANDU, Nepal (CNN) -- Bhutanese refugees began arriving in the United States on Tuesday (3.25.08), the first wave of what the United Nations describes as one of the world's largest resettlement efforts. The U.S. has offered to resettle 60,000 of the estimated 107,000 Bhutanese refugees of Nepalese origin now living in seven U.N. camps in southeastern Nepal -- their home for the past 17 years. Six other nations... have offered to resettle 10,000 each. These refugees registered in refugee camps in eastern Nepal during the 1990s as Bhutanese citizens deported from Bhutan during the ethnic cleansing carried out by...  →

The Problem of Gospel Static

Imagine a phone call with a lot of static (“noise”) on the line—so much that you are only understanding part of what you hear. That’s what the gospel of Jesus Christ can sound like to people whose worldviews are strongly influenced by non-Biblical belief systems. We call this problem “worldview noise.” And if we do not understand the worldview noise in our communication of the gospel and do not find a way to penetrate it with clarity, our evangelistic efforts will likely produce spurious fruit. There are two reasons why unbelievers do not understand the gospel. The first is something that all unbelievers everywhere have in common, to the same 100% degree—spiritual blindness. And only the Holy Spirit can lift this veil and open an unbeliever’s understanding of the gospel. But the second reason for not understanding varies greatly from unbeliever to unbeliever. It’s worldview noise. Depending on the types of spiritual influences in a person’s earlier life, his or her worldview noise may be very dense or not dense at all or somewhere in-between.  →

Initial Contact or Relational Evangelism—or Both?

How quickly should we encourage an unbeliever to make a faith response to trust Jesus as Savior? In our initial evangelistic contact with this person? Or, should we wait until we have had multiple opportunities to explain truths related to the gospel? The Good Soil Evangelism and Discipleship Scale can help us answer these questions in a way that we can be relatively confident that we are planting God’s Word in “good soil.”  →

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