Under Valued gifts (5)

5. Talking about Jesus.

I don’t think we are very good at evangelism in Sydney. I don’t think there is at lot of evangelism going on at PBC for that matter. There are many things that we do well, but sharing our faith isn’t one of them.

So what do you do about it? I met up for a coffee with the Pastor of Castle Hill Baptist this week and he said that he was tired of training courses. “Church needs a kick up the pants about evangelism? Get them to do this course!” Courses can be helpful but I agree that the problem runs much deeper than that.

I think that the reason why we find it so hard to tell our friends and neighbours about Christ (and we do, or at least I do) is that we even find it hard to talk to other Christians about the gospel. Quotes from the Early Church Fathers suggest that the early Christians couldn’t help talking about Jesus all the time - and so it naturally spilt out in conversations with non-Christians.

In fact some of the most interesting descriptions of early Christianity come from pagans! For example Celsus was a second century pagan who argued with Origen. Despite their cynicism even those opposed to Christianity had to concede that the Christians both lived the gospel and kept talking about it.

So let’s start by talking about Jesus to one another. How did you become a Christian? What difference does Jesus make to your week? Those are the kind of questions we should get so used to they become second nature.

• Practice - write out your testimony and share it with another Christian
• Encourage - how about asking someone how they became a Christian over morning tea?
• Encourage one another in conversations to apply the gospel to our lives in simple and practical (and therefore visible) ways.
• Don’t avoid people who talk about Jesus as ‘weird’ and ‘super-spiritual’. Actually, when it comes to Christians, they are the ‘normal’ ones.