The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock; and exalted
be the God of the rock of my salvation.
2 Samuel 22:47
No graver danger threatens the believer than that of forgetting that he was redeemed - forgetting even in the joy of realized life what our salvation cost, and what is the rock foundation of our faith. To meet this need our Savior pictures Himself not merely as the Rock of Ages, and our Strong Rock of Refuge, but the Rock of our Salvation. Here, in Him and upon His merit and atoning grace, we were saved from among the lost. Let us glory in this precious name and never forget that He was "wounded for our transgressions" and "that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree."
A couple years ago our Adult Bible Fellowship (ABF) studied Ray Comfort's Revival's Golden Key. Comfort's point was that the modern church is missing the mark on evangelizing by promising peace, joy and a happy life. He contended that the key in evangelizing is to focus on the fact that people need salvation and stop promising things that may or may not happen after accepting Christ. I look at the apostle Paul and would argue that it wasn't a happy life that kept him "fighting the good fight." However, Comfort's approach is a little on the "fire and brimstone" extreme (ironic that a man with the name Comfort could be labeled as someone who scares people into Christianity...I digress) and I do think there is room for the "softer" side of evangelism in some cases. Sean actually just read a book called They Like Jesus But Not the Church (I don't know the author) that contradicted Comfort's approach and argued that people in our generation are turned off from the church because of the judgment they think exists - kind of hard to make people believe they need to be saved if we don't tell them why they deserve hell, which gets interpreted as passing judgment. Disclaimer: I have not actually read this book and am writing based on discussions I had with Sean. Maybe he will post a comment with a better summary. I think it's an interesting dichotomy of views and I'm not quite sure where I stand on either one. I would be interested in hearing what other people think and/or personal experience with one approach over the other. My second disclaimer is that the comments about the books above are meant to point out the extreme nature that both of these approaches can take and don't necessarily represent the complete thoughts of the authors (that's why they wrote books instead of white papers...to expand on their positions).
1 comment:
_They Like Jesus but Not the Church_ was written by Dan Kimball. This book was recommended to me by the associate pastor of our church. The book is directed at church leaders challenging them to look at witnessing in a different way. Jesus has been commercialized in recent years and the author has found that most people are very willing to talk about Him. However, these same people are turned off by Christians because all they see are extremists and never really get to know any on a personal level. Brothers and sisters in Christ, how many non-Christian friends do you have? Do you spend more time with them or your Christian friends? When you hear about a non-Christian's beliefs how do you respond: with interest and respect or damnation?
I would highly recommend reading this book. He also has a companion book on apologetics and witnessing to today's non-Christians. I would be very happy to go into the book further here if anyone has questions.
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