The hordes of street evangelists

I keep getting targeted by street evangelists, trying to get me to convert to their brand of Christianism: Bible-believeing, spirit-filled, faith-healing or New Testament Christianity - the list goes on. The guy this evening was trying to tell me that people aren't saved unless they speak in tongues.
Ahhh, Melbourne!

Helping children and young people respond to God

That is what I'm supposed to be talking about Friday morning at New Life Centre's Bible school, in Warrnambool. They asked Trav to, but he can't, so he asked me to.

Our experiences of evangelism influence our understanding of evangelism. We develop the way we evangelise based on how what we have seen work or fail in other situations. What positive and negative experiences of evangelism have you had?

Scripture Union has ten principles of conversion:

Holy Spirit is responsible for conversion

'And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.'
Romans 8:28-30

'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: "They will all be taught by God." Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.'
Jesus, John 6:44-45

If it is God that brings people to himself, then what's our role?
If we can leave the responsibility of changing people to God, we can also concentrate more on our own relationships with God.

Kids are different to adults
Kids aren't able to respond to God in the same way that adults do.
For example, younger kids usually find it hard understanding abstract ideas. For example, last year when Trav was a Religious Education teacher, a lot of the kids reckoned that God was a person, a kind of superhero.
However, just because kid is unable to understand the human ideas about God doesn't mean that they can't have a relationship with God. In the scripture I quoted earlier, Jesus refers to Isaiah's prophecy:

'All your sons will be taught by the Lord,
and great will be your children's peace.'
Isaiah 54:13

This implies that God is already in a relationship with a person before they can understand him. In that case, perhaps we need to provide an environment where kids can experience God and continue to learn from him.

Darren Wight has post on this here.

We need to avoid manipulation
I think that's pretty obvious. I think this is particularly relevant in helping kids and teenagers respond to God.
Why do you think people use manipulation? Would they necessarily think they are being manipulative? Could any of our evangelistic methods be seen as manipulative?

Children are concrete thinkers
As I mentioned earlier, most kids have a hard time understanding abstract ideas. This can make it hard for them to understand the Bible, because it wasn't written for children, so it contains a lot of abstract stuff. So how do we explain the content of the Bible with kids?

Kids are part of families
Often we forget that kids are part of families, and that this has implications on conversion. For example, if a kid's parents don't want them to go to Sunday school (or whatever) there's not much the kids can do about it. Conversely, sometimes parents send their kids to the Scripture Union Family Mission program in Warrnambool even though they don't want to go.

Kids need to respond individually
It's no good if a kid decides to 'respond' simply because all of their peers do.

Relax
We need to be relaxed when helping other people respond to God. This isn't easy. It helps to remember the first principle - that it's not up to us to make someone respond to God.

Conversion is a process
A lot of the time we see God's kingdom as being like a farm with a fence. We see each person as being inside of outside the farm by whether or not they display different characteristics that we see as 'Christian'. This way of understanding God's kingdom means that we see it as our task to get people who aren't Christians onto the inside of this fence.

In the desert the farms are so big that fences aren't very useful. Instead, the farmers dig deep wells, because they know that the animals won't go to far away from their source of water.
We can look at God's kingdom like this. Instead of regarding each person as either inside or outside the kingdom, we can look at in terms of how close they are to the centre of the kingdom (Jesus) and whether they are getting closer or further away. This model acknowledges that every decision a person makes is important, as in bringing someone closer to God.

Earlier in the year I did a more in-depth post on this here.

Males should counsel males; females should counsel females
Obviously, so it doesn't look like there's anything dodgy going on.

Presume nothing
Just because someone responds in some way (at an altar call or whatever) doesn't necessarily mean they've decided they want to be a Christian. It might be that their dog died, and they want to talk to someone about it. We need to find out what they want.

Valuing every decision

Tonight I'm going down to Montrose, in outer-eastern Melbourne, for the Warrnambool Mission core leaders' weekend. Trav's asked me if I could talk about valuing every decision a person make that brings them closer to God. So here is some of the stuff I'll be talking about.

A farm with a fence
A lot of the time we look at God's Kingdom in terms of who's in and who's out. We work out whether someone's in or out by whether or not they display certain traits that we consider to be Christian. This is kind of like your generic farm, where the farmer keeps the animals together by putting a fence around them.


This point of view has a significant effect on the way to we do mission. It means that we focus almost entirely on getting people who aren't Christians to pray the sinner's prayer (which isn't actually in the Bible).

A farm with a well
Out in the desert, the farms are so big that there isn't much point in having fences. Instead, to keep the animals wandering off, the farmer digs a deep well. The animals will stay near the well, so that they don’t die of thirst.
We can also look at God's Kingdom like this. Rather than looking at each person as being inside or outside the boundaries, we could look at how close each person is to the centre (God), and whether they're moving closer or further away from him. If take this point of view, everyone is potentially part of God's Kingdom, and nobody is excluded.


Every decision is important
Instead of focusing on just getting a person to pray the sinner's prayer we should be concerned with each decision that brings a person closer to God.
The scale below shows some of the stages leading up to a person becoming a Christian. But the journey towards God doesn't stop with the person being reborn.


This scale is also helpful. It shows that a person needs to have more than just knowledge of the gospel to be converted. They also need to have a positive attitude about it.

The person in the bottom left section has little knowledge of the gospel, but still has a negative attitude toward it. The person in the bottom right section thinks the gospel is good, but doesn't know very much about it. The person in the top left section knows heaps about the gospel, and doesn't like it. The person in the top right corner is well-informed about the gospel, and thinks it's good.

So, for effective mission, we don't just need to get the story across, but to make it look attractive. If we do or say something that doesn't make the story much clearer, but makes it seem good, that is still evangelism.

If we can work out roughly where someone is on these scales, then maybe we can work out what is needed to get them to the next stage. We have to take into account what knowledge they already have of Christianity, and what attitudes they have towards it. It might not be appropriate at this stage to try and get them to commit to Christianity. First they need to make a heap of other decisions, and they'll have to keep making important decisions after they become a Christian.

Sources:
'Gray's the color of life', Gospelcom
The Shaping of Things to Come, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, pp 47-48
Some stuff Naomi Swindon talked to us about at core leaders' weekend last year