Yesterday, I shared an article from The Wall Street Journal about the loss of apprenticeship in preparing a young person for adulthood. It’s interesting that the writer recognized the difference between being book smart and wise with regard to life. 

The culture of the first century put a high priority on learning through apprenticeship. You see hints in this direction as you read the New Testament, particularly in how Jesus spoke of His relationship to the Father. But it’s also likely that in the early Christians’ desire to “make disciples, teaching them to obey all that Christ had commanded them,” their vision of “teaching” was somewhat different than what we mean by the term today.

Once they recognize the deficiencies of an information-only type of teaching, these leaders begin to downplay the need for verbally teaching people the fundamental doctrines of the faith. The result is a largely atheological ministry that inevitably leans toward a behavior-focused, moralistic message. The good news (powerful, life-transforming information) subtly shifts into good advice (“Just tell me how to live!”). And we wind up with a biblically illiterate mass of well-intentioned Christians being told each week what to do.

Camp 2

In response, other church leaders swing the pendulum back. We must teach people and teach them well. The problem, however, is that “teaching” in these churches is often reduced to conveying important biblical information. The assumption is that once we learn the right things, we will live the right way.

It seems to me that the real question is what we really believe. It seems to me that we do tend to have two creeds—the one which we believe in our intellectual assent, and then the one which we believe to the extent of acting upon it in faith. More and more it seems to me that the true level of our orthodoxy is measured by this latter standard rather than the former. And more and more it seems to me that there is no such thing as an abstract Christian dogma—that each Christian dogma can be experienced on some level.

Apprenticeship is serious business. Never downplay the importance of sermons, theological education, and deep Bible study. Just make sure you match all of these with doing life together, modeling a new way of being human, inviting people to come alongside of us and learn what it means to follow Jesus – not merely by what we tell them but also by how we live.

The mission of the church is a hot topic these days, and I am glad to see that pastors and church leaders are sharpening each other’s understanding of how to address this topic biblically and how to lead our churches to respond faithfully.

Last week, I posted five nagging questions I had after reading Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s book on the mission of the church. Within a few hours I had an inbox full of messages from people saying that they had read the book and had some of the same questions. By the end of the week, Kevin and Greg had offered some helpful clarifications that move the discussion forward. I’m grateful for their friendship and for the tone of this conversation.

Since last week, Ed Stetzer has written an extensive review of What Is the Mission of the Church? for The Gospel Coalition’s journal Themelios. Ed is an evangelical missiologist who has spent significant time studying this issue and encouraging churches to engage their communities biblically with the gospel. In his review, he expresses his appreciation for Kevin and Greg’s interaction with key passages in Scripture, their insistence on keeping the cross and resurrection at the center of the gospel, and the way they differentiate between the mission of God and the mission of the church. And yet, Ed believes that the way they unpack their definition is too narrow. He writes:

With their definition, they underplay the relationship of secondary ministries to those in the community that are not immediately didactic and explicitly gospel revealing. In arguing that God’s mission for the church does not include caring for the poor or intervening on behalf of those who are oppressed (good, God-honoring, and God-commanded), but making disciples through the proclamation, they overlook the role of work and example in discipleship. Rather, they equate “making disciples” with evangelism. Making disciples includes evangelism, but in “teaching everything Jesus commanded,” love and good deeds are also a part of the disciple-making process.

Ed’s concern is very similar to mine, which is why I would like to revisit my five questions in light of Kevin and Greg’s response from last week.

1. “Can we reduce ‘making disciples’ and ‘teaching Christ’s commands’ to the delivery of information?”

I agree with Greg and Kevin that the gospel is never merely “the delivery of mere information.” It is the explosive message of grace that powerfully secures our salvation. I also agree that verbal proclamation is vitally important. Here’s what Kevin and Greg say:

And yet, in the Great Commission texts the disciple making work is described as teaching, testifying, or bearing witness. And in Acts we see the mission of the church described not as Christians faithfully living out their vocations but as the word being verbally proclaimed. When Jesus sent his disciples into the world, it was to speak.

Agreed. But again, Kevin and Greg are defining words like “teaching,” “testifying,” and “bearing witness” as exclusively verbal events. I agree that these words are primarily about verbal proclamation, and yet there are elements of teaching, testifying, and bearing witness that are caught, not taught. I am not downplaying verbal proclamation but leaving room in our definitions of “teaching all that Christ has commanded us” for modeling and mentoring as well. Mark Horne provides some additional biblical support for the view I’m putting forth.

2. “If we agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the gospel, can we also agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the mission?”

To this, Kevin and Greg respond:

We passionately believe that the church should proclaim the gospel with words and promote the gospel with good works. But this is different from suggesting the mission of the church is to rebuild communities or build the kingdom. We hear Trevin asking, “Aren’t good works necessary to corroborate the message we are proclaiming?” Yes and Amen.

I am not denying that Greg and Kevin have a place in their book about obedience and the necessity of good works. My point is that our promotion of the gospel with good works is part of the mission. In other words, I want to include the corroboration of the gospel as part of how we conceive of mission, whereas Kevin and Greg insist on good works, but don’t want to call those good works “mission” because of their desire to keep the priority on evangelism.

3. “Isn’t there a sense in which worship is expressed through our life in the world, not just our corporate worship services?”

To this, Greg and Kevin respond:

We tried as hard as we could in the book to stress that good works and loving others matter, that they are essential, they are not optional, and they glorify God. The confusion may be that Trevin hears us saying worship is the mission of the church and then wonders why we don’t include all-of-life-worship in our definition. But we are careful to say mission is what we are sent into the world to accomplish. Therefore, we speak of worship as the goal of missions. Christian mission aims at making, sustaining, and establishing worshipers (247).

At the risk of talking past one another, I understand that Kevin and Greg have a robust view of our obedience in the world and our worship as consisting of all of life. And yet, I want to include that obedience within the wide-lens definition of “mission,” whereas Kevin and Greg want to make a sharp distinction between the two. Worship is not merely the goal of missions; it’s also the means. Our worship (whether gathered corporately or lived-out individually) is one way that the gospel is promoted and the mission moves forward.

4. “Even if we recognize that the verbs related to the kingdom are passive (receiving, bearing witness to, etc.), does this necessarily preclude us from speaking of ‘work for the kingdom’?”

I won’t rehash this point because Kevin and Greg agree with the way that I and others use the phrase “work for the kingdom.” We’re on the same page here, although I think we need to be careful to keep our theological discourse from devolving into the tendency to police people’s language. Parsing of words and phrases can be a helpful exercise, but it can also lead to a sort of insider-lingo wherein we recognize who’s “on our team” by the way they use or refrain from certain phrases. I don’t think Kevin and Greg are guilty of this, but some Reformed-types do go overboard in language-policing. (For example, I’ve heard people talk about how misguided the phrase “obey the gospel” or “live the gospel” is, even though Peter and Paul specifically use the first and preachers like Spurgeon were happy to use the second.)

5. “Is our representation of Christ not part of the mission?”

Following up their initial response, Greg and Kevin penned an additional blog post on how good works and the mission relate to one another. Interestingly enough, I agree completely with what they say here, quoting from Eckhard Schnabel:

We like the way Eckhard Schnabel puts it in his massive work Early Christian Mission. Schnabel argues that “expansive proclamation” is “the centrifugal dimension of mission” and “attractive presence” is the “centripetal dimension” (1:11). Our words ring out; our deeds draw people in. So the “elements of mission” include not only the ministry of the word but also “charity” and “ministry of grace.” But this is not the same as saying missions is charity or that a missionary is anyone who serves others in good deeds. According to Schnabel, “missionaries” are “envoys sent by the risen Jesus Christ to proclaim the good news” (1:11-12). Just as important, he clarifies what mission is striving for. “The result of mission is conversion: people accept and adopt the message proclaimed by the missionaries, they are integrated into the new community of faith, and they start to practice a new way of life with new behavioral patterns” (1:12).

I nearly did a double take when reading this paragraph because it struck me as saying exactly what Kevin and Greg do not say in their book: that the mission has two dimensions – “expansive proclamation” and “attractive presence” – both geared toward conversion of the lost. The book narrows “mission” to expansive proclamation only, with good works being a matter of obedience but somewhat disconnected from the mission of the church. I agree with Schnabel that the ultimate goal of mission is conversion, while the means toward that goal can also be included in how we speak of the church’s mission.

Conclusion

Let me end by saying how much I appreciate Kevin and Greg’s critique of what passes for “mission” in many segments of evangelicalism. Simply being a nice person and doing good things in the world are not mission, since there are non-Christians who engage in the same types of work. Verbal proclamation is priority; it’s our ultimate goal and it is vital. When they critique the “social justice” crowd, I “amen” them the whole way.

My big concern is that in their stalwart defense of evangelism as the mission of the church, they have narrowed the idea of “disciple-making” more than Scripture does. Ed Stetzer sums up the basic point of contention here:

Gilbert and DeYoung have a different view than the prevailing approach in evangelical missiology.They believe the missio ecclesia is making disciples (X), with other actions and deeds (Y and Z) remaining distinct from X. Others (including most evangelical missiologists) see the missio ecclesia as YXZ, keeping X at the center but seeing Y and Z as essentially part of the mission. Gilbert and DeYoung, in my estimation, get the center of the mission (X), but have not properly worked out Y and Z’s relationship to the fulfillment of the church’s mission.

I’m thankful for pastors like Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert and count them both as friends. I appreciate them for their rigorous thinking imbued with pastoral sensitivity and a desire to be biblically faithful.

Recently, I read their new book, What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission, an ambitious work that seeks to place the church’s mission within the framework of the Bible’s story line and the New Testament gospel. DeYoung and Gilbert focus on the Great Commission texts in order to formulate this definition of the church’s mission:

The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father. (241)

I am largely in agreement with this definition, but I’m puzzled by the way the book unpacks it. I agree that the mission of the church is to make disciples, but I think I pack more into the definition of “disciple-making” than DeYoung and Gilbert do.

So instead of doing a full review, I thought it might be helpful to put forth five nagging questions about I have about their proposal, in hopes that these questions continue the conversation that DeYoung and Gilbert’s book has begun:

1. Can we reduce “making disciples” and “teaching Christ’s commands” to the delivery of information?

It seems to me that DeYoung and Gilbert tend to reduce “disciple-making” to teaching and then reduce “teaching” to the transferring of information. I agree that teaching is a central part of discipleship (which is one reason I am dedicating the next few years to the development of solid biblical curriculum). At the same time, we need to recognize that teaching also takes place in mentoring, in modeling, and in collaboration with others. So wouldn’t good deeds of love and justice fit within the overall definition of “teaching”? Isn’t part of disciple-making expressed in older Christians coming alongside new believers and together doing the good deeds Christ has called us to? If so, then doesn’t the making of disciples inherently include, at least in some measure, our work in the world? At the end of the day, I don’t think we can separate “making disciples” from “loving neighbor” in the way that it seems DeYoung and Gilbert do.

2. If we agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the gospel, can we also agree that there is a zoom-lens and wide-lens view of the mission?

I liked DeYoung and Gilbert’s chapter on the gospel, particularly the way they distinguish between two ways of conceiving the one gospel. In DeYoung and Gilbert’s conception, the gospel of the kingdom is integrally connected to the gospel of the cross. Or put another way, the cross is the fountainhead of the blessings of the kingdom. My question is: Why not use this approach in considering the mission? Can we not conceive of the church’s mission in wide lens and zoom lens as well? Evangelism is central (zoom lens), and yet evangelism is corroborated by any number of activities (wide lens) that demonstrate the reality of our gospel proclamation.

3. Isn’t there a sense in which worship is expressed through our life in the world, not just our corporate worship services?

At the corporate level, it’s clear that worship takes place within the church’s gathering. Yet the biblical story line begins with Adam and Eve worshiping God by obeying His commands in the garden. It was their cultivation of the garden that reflected their love and praise for their Maker. So when DeYoung and Gilbert claim that worship is integral to the mission of the church and yet want to separate worship from our deeds of justice, I worry that we are failing to remember that our good work in the world is part of our obedient worship to God.

4. Even if we recognize that the verbs related to the kingdom are passive (receiving, bearing witness to, etc.), does this necessarily preclude us from speaking of “work for the kingdom”?

When people use terminology like “work for the kingdom” or “build for the kingdom,” they usually mean that their good deeds are done at the bidding of King Jesus. They are doing these things on behalf of the kingdom. DeYoung and Gilbert are hesitant to allow any of our good deeds to be seen as contributing in some way to God’s work in establishing His kingdom. I understand their concern. Yet I think that propping up an unbendable category here might suppress kingdom work rather than inspire it. I think many people in our churches are unaware of how their “labor for the Lord is not in vain.” Connecting our good deeds to the kingdom that only God will establish can be a pastorally helpful and biblically faithful way of showing the relationship between kingdom work and the church’s mission. “Working for the kingdom” does not necessarily lead to burn-out and utopianism. For most of us, it infuses our current work with passion and excitement, knowing that God will take our work and use it for His purposes.

5. Is our representation of Christ not part of the mission?

DeYoung and Gilbert believe we must represent Christ, but it seems like they connect this representation so tightly to verbal proclamation of the gospel that little room is left for representing Christ through love and good deeds. I wonder if, in addition to the Great Commission passages, we also need to consider the New Testament metaphors for the church as we seek to discern our mission. Images like Christ’s bride, Christ’s body, and the holy temple and royal priesthood help us understand that being like Jesus is part of what it means to “teach all that He has commanded.” Christ-likeness is a part of the mission, and we cannot and should not separate proclamation of Christ from the representation of Christ we offer through our acts of service.

Update: Kevin and Greg have offered some clarifying answers to these five questions here. I encourage you to read their response. This is a conversation worth having.

Today’s post is contributed by Jerry Rankin, president emeritus of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He blogs at The Rankin File.

The gospel and missions. This subject would appear to be a no-brainer and elicit a yawning “Duh, what’s the point?” Everyone knows missions is about proclaiming the gospel. Or do they? It is amazing the discussions I have had over the years with leaders of mission agencies, denominational executives and church pastors about what is missions.

I fought the battle in Southern Baptist circles for years on the need to give specialized emphasis to missions. The retort was that this was unnecessary since everything we do is missions. In reality, if missions is everything, then it is nothing. If it is everyone’s responsibility, then it is no one’s responsibility.

The issue has been complicated in recent years by the emerging of the term “missional.” What does it mean to be missional? I think the common connotation is that whatever is done outside the internal focus of church programs is missional. Outreach to unbelievers and evangelism would certainly be considered missional. Involvement in a church plant in another community, somewhere in unchurched North America or among an unreached people group in Africa would fit the designation.

But so would disaster relief, building a home for Habitat, ministering to the poor through a food pantry and clothes closet, helping to build a church in a pioneer area or passing out water at a public event on a hot day. These activities are not about our church’s worship, discipling members, Bible study classes and youth ministry. They are focused outside the church and are therefore “missional” whether or not the gospel is shared.

Certainly we ought to be doing these things, as Jesus taught us to care for widows and orphans, minister to the poor, heal the sick, and visit the prisoner. He even commended the Pharisees for being conscientious about tithing, but admonished them for neglecting the more important things.

We can do a lot of good things that we ought to do, motivated by love, compassion for the needs of others and accruing no personal benefit, but is it missions? “Missions is the activity of God’s people to fulfill God’s mission.” And God’s mission, from before the foundation of the world, has been to redeem a lost world. It is why Jesus came and died on the cross and rose again. It is why the Holy Spirit gathers believers into a local church.

And obviously, without a clear presentation of the gospel, God’s mission is not being done. In the early 20th century, missions was sidetracked by a paradigm shift to social ministry. Amazingly, the conversation goes on. Missions is relief ministry, it is advocating justice, feeding the hungry, stopping human trafficking, providing education, or digging water wells.

Christians should be doing all these things and more, but if it is missions it will include a clear presentation of the gospel that the lost, the hurting, and the needy might be saved from sin and reconciled to God. Why would we try to improve the temporal, earthly life of others and deny them the knowledge that meets their need for eternity?

I will never forget hearing a missionary public health worker in West Africa testify of a very successful ministry of bringing pure drinking water and sanitation to destitute Muslim villagers. At the conclusion of an impressive presentation he broke into tears and confessed that he had been a failure for he had yet to see anyone embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. I will never forget his closing remark: “Healthy in hell doesn’t count for much.”

Without the gospel, it is not missions!

“Personal relationship with Jesus.” No phrase is more characteristic of evangelical lingo than this one. We all know the phrase, but when pressed, many of us have a hard time explaining exactly what we mean by it.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for another blog in which I wondered out loud about the helpfulness of using the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” when presenting the gospel. Regardless of what we mean by it, how is it heard? Gina Welch, who wrote a book about her time masquerading as a believer at Jerry Falwell’s church, confessed her bewilderment at this terminology:

“You often hear evangelicals use an inscrutable expression to describe their faith. They call it ‘a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.’ For a literal thinker like me, those words had a corporate-speak detachment from content.” (91)

“I still had a hard time holding on to an understanding of these words – a personal relationship with God. As in you and God stay up late talking? As in you and God are secret shares? I mean, I knew the rhetoric – an intimate relationship with God and a willingness to put Jesus first was the outward manifestation of real Christianity…”

“Evangelical language was a language of its own, where the rhetoric often didn’t mean what the words seemed to signify in English. Words were encoded symbols used to describe feelings evangelicals  understood. Sometimes I was able to understand these feelings and crack the code on a turn of the phrase. But not so with the personal relationship with God. With this I scraped and scraped for a more direct meaning, but each layer I revealed was just another picture of a picture.” (236)

Asking hard questions about our Christian vocabulary may make us squirm a little. But it’s healthy to ask questions if our goal is to adopt better, more-biblical terminology.

“Personal Relationship” Lingo – Where Did It Come From?

In the last century, evangelical churches grew in number as people (many of whom migrated from mainline Protestant churches) sought a conversion-centered, conservative Christianity. Evangelicals found that one way to gauge a person’s spiritual life was to discover how they viewed Christianity:

• Was their religion simply a weekly tradition, filled with dry rituals and empty ceremony ( i.e. high church)?
• Or was it a vibrant “relationship” with God through the person of Jesus Christ (i.e. evangelicalism)?

So evangelicals began to say that Christianity isn’t a religion, but a relationship. Our emphasis on personal conversion and subsequent transformation separated us from other denominations. The phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” arose out of this context as a way to differentiate between the two types of Christianity.

As the years went by, worship songs and evangelistic crusades pounded the phrase into evangelical consciousness. Songwriters took the “relationship” lingo and began writing more praise songs to Jesus than hymns about him. Evangelists emphasized the personal aspect of conversion, showing how it’s not enough to know about Christ. One must know him personally.

What About Today?

I believe the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” correctly expresses the biblical idea of discipleship and reconciliation with God. Evangelicals are right to use this phrase if through it we mean a personal, ongoing life of discipleship that includes gradual transformation into the image of Christ.

The Bible teaches that upon conversion we enter into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus is our mediator, the one who reconciles us to God. Justified by faith alone, we are united to Christ. We indeed have a relationship with Jesus, and this truth is glorious! Using the language of “relationship with Jesus” makes communion with God central to Christianity. That’s not a bad thing. The phrase is evocative, and it has been useful.

But I’m not sure that using the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” in our witnessing efforts helps us gauge a person’s spiritual life like it used to. Times are changing. I have met and talked with people who assure me that they have a “personal relationship with Jesus,” even though their lives show no evidence of Christ’s indwelling presence. Others tell me they know Jesus personally but have no need for the local church. A few are all about “personal relationships” with key religious figures.

What do you do when witnessing to a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness who also claims to have a personal relationship with Jesus? In the shifting landscape of post-Christendom’s rampant individualism, a “personal relationship with Jesus” can mean many things – too many things I’m afraid.

What are the alternatives?

Are there other ways to get across the same message? J.I. Packer gives us “knowing God.” The Puritans spoke of “deep communion with God.” John Piper emphasizes our “desire for God.” And then there are a variety of ways to speak of the life of discipleship: following Christ, serving his kingdom, submitting to his lordship. In recent years, “Christ-follower” has become a popular way of speaking of our faith.

What do you think?

Does “personal relationship with Jesus” still have staying power?

What are some other phrases we might adopt that still express this important concept?

Does this phrase help or hinder your witnessing efforts?

The term “evangelism” gives many Christians the willies. We immediately think of canned presentations that seem stiff and unnatural. We are paralyzed by the thought of knocking on a stranger’s door and talking about Jesus.

In response to these images of evangelism, we promote the idea of “building relationships” before sharing the gospel. We call it friendship or relational evangelism.

I think this development is a healthy one. We don’t share the gospel apart from who we are as witnesses. The most effective evangelism takes place within the context of relationships where the life of the Christian is on display.

But sometimes, I wonder if our emphasis on relationships might cause us to turn all our focus to relationship-building and indefinitely postpone gospel proclamation. So someone asks you, “Are you sharing the gospel regularly?” and you think, Of course! I’m building a relationship with an employee at a coffee shop; I’ve got a friend who watches football with me; I’m getting to know the parents in my child’s preschool class.

Weeks and months (maybe even years) go by, and we’ve made friends, but no disciples. We still haven’t spoken about our Christian faith and what it means to trust in Jesus.

It’s true that effective evangelism usually takes place after trustworthy relationships have been built. But something is amiss when we can “get to know” people well over a period of months and never talk about Jesus.

A few months ago, I struck up a conversation with the father of one of the kids on my son’s T-ball team. We talked a little about his work, about his kids, about our community. I asked him why he had chosen our town. His answer? The church drew him here. They had wanted to raise a family in a small town with a good church. Several family members had recommended a particular church, and so they upped and moved here.

This guy had no idea I was an associate pastor at another local church. He didn’t even know I was a Christian. Yet within a few minutes of the conversation, it was clear that he was a believer and that his faith in Christ was central to his life. As I thought about that conversation later, I realized that it would have been impossible for us to form a lasting friendship without talking about Christ. His Christianity was so central to his identity that it could not go unnoticed or unmentioned.

In pastoral ministry, I have the same “problem.” Whenever I talk to a neighbor or strike up a conversation with a stranger, I usually am asked about my occupation. As soon as I mention that I’m a pastor, the relationship changes. The conversation shifts. (Things either go uphill or downhill from there.) But there’s no sense in hiding. What I do is connected to who I am. To form a good friendship with someone, my occupation has to be on the table.

I am all about building relationships and sharing the gospel within the context of those relationships. I’m not saying that every conversation has to end with an altar call. But it worries me when Christians can become “good friends” with non-Christians without revealing their Christian identity.

Waiting too long to talk about your faith is counterproductive. If I can get to know you well over the course of several months and yet never hear you speak of Jesus, then when you eventually do share the gospel, I will probably assume that Jesus is not very important to you.

On the other hand, when your Christian faith runs deep, Jesus has a way of making an appearance much sooner. Our identity in Christ should be such an integral part of our lives that it is impossible for someone to know us well without understanding how our Christian faith informs our lives.

So, yes. By all means, build deep relationships with unbelievers. But be up front about who you and are and what you believe. Don’t go in cognito in order to be a better witness. Let people see Christ in you and let them know Who it is they’re seeing.

Yesterday, I posted a review of Breaking the Islam Code: Understanding the Soul Questions of Every Muslim, a new book by J.D. Greear. J.D. is pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina and blogs regularly at JDGreear.com. Today, I’m happy to have J.D. stop by the blog and talk about ministry to Muslims.

Trevin Wax: In your experience, what’s the biggest psychological hurdle that Christians have when it comes to sharing their faith with a Muslim?

J.D. Greear: The biggest psychological hurdle is feeling like they have nothing in common with a Muslim. We think Muslims are a fundamentally different kind of person. But they are made in the image of God just like we are, so they have many of the same questions, ideas, and thoughts.

Secondly, they’re very religious people and, because of that, they have a lot of questions about God. Islam has uniquely prepared them to ask questions about God to which Islam does not give a good answer. Islam, in many ways, paves the way for a Gospel explanation.

So understanding Islam, and understanding the true things that it’s taught about God and the untrue things that it’s taught about God, gives you a great place to show that the Gospel gives a superior answer to these questions.

Trevin Wax: In your book, you write about the time you spent in a predominantly Muslim country. Looking back over your ministry to Muslims, what are some things you’d do differently were you to start over again?

J.D. Greear: I didn’t realize this until I had worked with Muslims for nearly two years, but a “win” in sharing Christ with a Muslim should not be just getting them to pray “the sinner’s prayer.” A “win” is getting them to study the Bible with you.

People with worldviews that are as entrenched as they are with Muslims will not likely be brought to Christ with one conversation. Rather, it is seeing the glory of God revealed in the marvelous plan of redemption in the Bible that can open their hearts to see the glory of Christ.

So have as your goal getting a Muslim to study the Bible with you. Study the stories of the prophets, walk through the Old Testament and show him or her how everything points to Christ. Do it in the form of a dialogue. I think it’s less effective to take the role of teacher, and more appropriate to take the role of “let’s read these together and both learn from the Holy Books.”

Trevin Wax: What are some things you did right?

J.D. Greear: What I did right was really nothing profound, just simply to love people and to pray for them and to be involved in their lives. The more that you listen to people and the more that you get to know them, the more they begin to bare their souls and it becomes much easier to speak the Gospel clearly to them.

Trevin Wax: What kinds of misunderstandings and misconceptions get in the way of starting and maintaining these kinds of relationships?

J.D. Greear: The thing to remember is that these misconceptions and misunderstandings go both ways. There are general misconceptions that Christians have about Muslims, namely that they’re terrorists and that they think about God totally differently.

Some of the misconceptions that Muslims have about Christians that are good to know is that Muslims believe that Christians are morally loose and do not show proper respect for God. In part, that is because they watch TV and see people who wear crosses around their necks like on MTV and they think this is what Christians are like. So entering in with that kind of knowledge and knowing how to overcome those misconceptions is helpful.

Another misconception to overcome is what Muslims believe that Christians believe about the Trinity. They think that our idea of the Trinity is that God the Father and God the Mother had God the Son. We need to explain that we would disagree with that very strongly, and that we hold very firmly, as tightly as they do, to the oneness of God.

Probably the greatest area of misconception and misunderstanding is just simply realizing that Muslims think about salvation differently than we think about it, which means that we need to frame the questions of salvation differently so we can show them that the Gospel provides better answers than Islam does. What this book tries to do is to show the reader that Westerners approach salvation from one front and Muslims approach it from a different one. The Gospel answers both equally, but knowing the separate approaches is helpful.

Trevin Wax: It’s helpful to lay these misconceptions on the table and to talk honestly about our differences. You make the case that Muslims do worship the same God as Christians, although with obvious errors in understanding. Can you elaborate on how you came to this conclusion and how you would maintain major distinctions between Muslim and Christian understandings of God?

J.D. Greear: This is a tough question that has a considerable amount of complexity to it. But at the end of the day, I think the question of whether or not you use the Arabic name for God – Allah – is more of a practical question than a theological one.

Theologically speaking, there is of course only one God. But as I note throughout the book, we see several places where Jesus or the Apostles confronted someone who believed wrong things about God, yet Jesus and the apostles engaged them with the common ground of, “let’s talk about that God you think you know and He is really like.”

For example, in John 4, when Jesus deals with a Samaritan woman who was considerably off on several points about God, Jesus told her that the problem was she did not understand the God that she claimed to worship. Many of the Jews to whom the Apostles spoke did not believe in the Trinity and found it blasphemous. Does that mean that the Jews worship a different God? A better, and more Biblical approach (in my view) is to take the God that they claim to understand and show them what His true revelation is like.

Practically speaking, however, you have to determine whether or not it is more helpful or more harmful to use the Islamic name for God. It is harmful when use of the Islamic name for God cause people to assign the false characteristics to God. But that doesn’t have to happen just because you use the name. For example, Our English word, “God,” comes from German Gott, the name of a false deity. But no one would say that today we confuse the two and assign the qualities of Gott to God.

With Muslims, I would say that more often than not it is more helpful to use the Arabic name for God. They understand that to be the God of Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. That’s a good place to start. Then you can say, “This God you worship, here is what He is really like, according to the revelation.” That said, I would leave this question mostly to the discretion of the person who is on the field in a given situation.

Trevin Wax: Thanks, J.D. for taking the time to talk about these important matters. May the Lord bless our efforts to reach people with the gospel!

One of the questions I’ve encountered while writing a book on the gospel is whether or not I should create a new diagram that would help present the gospel to an unbeliever. Though I’ve had a few possible diagrams come to mind, I’ve decided against creating a new formula. Instead, I’d like to point readers to gospel presentations that introduce people to Jesus in a way that keeps the Bible’s grand narrative at the forefront.

A few months ago, I wrote about some recent approaches to “storied evangelism” and discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each. One of the approaches I recommend, The Story, is being promoted by a variety of pastors and church leaders (David Platt, J.D. Greear, Ed Stetzer, Alvin Reid, etc.) . Check out their promo video below.

“The Story” Promotional Video from The Story (ViewTheStory.com) on Vimeo.

Yesterday, I wrote about traditional evangelistic strategies and the tendency for us to assume too much when we engage in personal evangelism. Today, I’d like to review three gospel presentations that have recently been developed that seek to combine the theological truths of Scripture with the Grand Narrative:

The Story: How it all Began and How it will never End

“The Story” is a web and print-based tract that explains the gospel message in terms of four worldview questions:

• How did it all begin? (Creation)
• What went wrong? (Fall)
• Can anything be done? (Rescue)
• What will the future hold? (Restoration)

In the space of a few pages, the tract explains the story of the world – from creation to new creation. The final section calls for a response (repentance and faith), but does so in ways that explain these concepts clearly to the lost person. Utilizing materials from Tim Keller, D.A. Carson, and others, the developers of “The Story” provide a biblical presentation of the gospel that explains this announcement of good news within the Grand Narrative.

The strengths of this approach are numerous. It empowers laypeople to share the meta-narrative in which the gospel makes sense. It sets heaven and hell within the biblical context of God’s renewal of the cosmos. It seamlessly unites repentance and faith with the call to recognize the lordship of Christ. The presentation is brief and memorable.

The weakness of “The Story” is that in its pursuit of brevity, the tract skips from Adam and Eve right to Jesus. The exclusion of the Law and the story of Israel deletes an important part of the story, a part which should serve to reinforce our condemnation as well as spotlight the perfect character of God. But even as it stands, “The Story” is a very useful tool for those who want to present the gospel message within the biblical worldview.

Good Soil: The Story of Hope

The Good Soil curriculum is inspired by missionaries who have ministered in oral cultures where storying has been an effective means of evangelism. The Story of Hope is a booklet which takes the reader through 40 essential Bible scenes (20 Old Testament and 20 New Testament), while distilling eight propositional truths from the stories:

• God
• Man
• Sin
• Death
• Christ
• Cross
• Faith
• Life.

In this way, the curriculum combines the biblical and systematic approach to theology. The pictures in The Story of Hope are beautifully done, and the story itself traces the theme of sacrifice from the Old Testament to Jesus – the dying Lamb.

This presentation has many strong points. The curriculum is flexible. If you’re pressed for time, you can present the story in 10 minutes. If you meet with someone for an hour or two, you can present the 20 most important stories. If you have more time, you can present 40 of the stories. There is even an option for presenting a hundred biblical scenes. The best part of The Story of Hope is its ability to connect the dots for people who have little to no Bible knowledge. It presents the Bible as a unified whole.

Still, there are a couple of weaknesses to this approach. It’s not as handy and memorable as “The Story,” though it can be adapted if need be. At times, the reasoning behind the choice of stories is not always clear. The story is told through the lens of atonement (from sacrifices to the cross). But there are other ways to tell this story too – through the lens of death needing new life (resurrection) or creation needing God’s kingdom (the reign of Jesus).

Sometimes the stories are a bit too specific in their detail. For example, instead of leaving the origin of evil and Satan’s fall to the realm of mystery and biblical summarization, the curriculum recounts Lucifer’s story as if the Bible presents it as straightforwardly as it does Moses and the Passover. Likewise, instead of simply focusing on Christ returning to judge the living and the dead, The Story of Hope commits one to a pre-tribulational rapture.

Overall, this presentation is very effective in telling the Bible’s Story to those who are unfamiliar with Scripture. It is also effective in connecting the dots for those who may know isolated Bible stories, but are unsure of how it all fits together. Highly recommended!

Two Ways to Live: The Choice We All Face

I have been using Two Ways to Live for a couple of years now. Like the other two presentations, this tract combines the narrative of Scripture with propositional truths about God, although it tends to lean a bit in the second direction. The history of Adam and Eve, Israel, etc. are passed over for a brief presentation of our problem and God’s solution.

I like Two Ways to Live because of its emphasis on our need to live under God’s rule and the good news that Christ has fulfilled this requirement in our place. The tract clearly lays out the choice that we must make is ultimately about being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. Repentance and faith are rightfully defined in terms of submission to Christ and trust in his sacrifice.

The weakness of this approach is that narrative takes a backseat to propositional truth about God. There is also very little in terms of the story, even though it is presented in narrative format.

What about you? Do you see storied evangelism on the rise? What tools have you found most effective?

A few months ago, I wrote about the decline of the vocational evangelist and made a few suggestions about what the future of vocational evangelism might look like.

Today, I’d like to share a few thoughts on personal evangelism, particularly the tools being developed to assist Christians in this task.

The Problem with Traditional Evangelistic Tools

In previous generations, tools like the Four Spiritual Laws and Evangelism Explosion dominated the field of personal evangelism. These tools have been effective for many people, and we can be grateful that the Lord continues to use these methods. But now that our society has moved in a direction that is increasingly post-Christian, these methods have begun to show their age.

Traditional evangelistic strategies are not necessarily deficient in what they say, but in what they assume. These methods assume that the lost person already has a basic amount of Bible knowledge. The presentation makes little sense unless presented within a religious framework in which the character of God is largely understood, the nature of sin is acknowledged, and the need for forgiveness is felt.

Unfortunately, we no longer live in a world in which people understand these truths.

The Romans Road

Take the Romans Road for example. As good as the Romans Road is (I’ve used it on many occasions, and it is Scripture after all!), the presentation usually begins with Romans 3:23 (All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God), before moving on to sin’s penalty (6:23), God’s intervention (5:8), and our response (10:9-10, 13). Surely one can’t argue against the Bible as a gospel presentation.

But the problem with the Romans Road is that even Romans doesn’t begin with Romans 3:23. In Romans 1, Paul speaks of the character of God and the devastation of human rebellion. Romans 2 indicts all of us – Jew and Gentile alike. Romans 3 underscores the depravity of human nature.

In other words, even the Romans Road (at least as it is popularly used) makes sense only within an overarching narrative that is Scriptural. The presentation assumes that people know who God is, what God demands, who we are, what our problem is, and how God has acted in history to bring restoration.

The deficiency of the Romans Road is not the verses of Scripture, but the disappearance of the framework in which these verses make sense. When the people around us no longer hold to a biblical framework from which to make sense of these truths, the Romans Road turns into a series of cobbled-together propositions that are disconnected from the Story of Scripture.

Evangelists today are looking for ways to hold together the propositional truth claims of Scripture and the Grand Narrative within which these claims find their meaning. Tomorrow, I’ll review three of these presentations, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Related Posts:
In Defense of Proselytism: Talking Points for Brit Hume
Walking and Talking Evangelism
I’m Afraid to Share My Faith