I Once Was Lost
A servant evangelist washes the feet of the non-Christian in humility and great empathy, rather than just doing evangelism in a way that the evangelist is most comfortable with. In order to avoid wasting our energy and risks and desperate prayers on self-serving actions, we suggest always asking three simple questions before entering into an evangelistic relationship or event:
1. Who is our audience?
2. What do they need at this stage of their journey?
3. How can we help them take the next step toward Jesus?
(Doug Schaupp and Don Everts, I Once Was Lost, 133.)
Staff and students have been both challenged and encouraged by this book, so I picked it up at Urbana. I quite enjoyed it.
I Once Was Lost is all about the journey to faith many postmodern people take on their way to Jesus. The authors, Doug Schaupp and Don Everts, are seasoned IVCF staff; through their many years of seeing people come to faith in Jesus, they have identified five distinct “thresholds” that many postmodern travelers pass through on their way to a relationship with Jesus. This book challenges us to think first of where people are at on their journey before attempting to share the good news about Jesus with them.
The five thresholds build upon each other. For example, it’s highly unlikely that a person will express interest in Jesus if they don’t know a Christian they can trust. Nor is it probable that a person will enter the kingdom if they have no desire to experience change in their lives (or at least, one would hope they wouldn’t . . .). They base these thresholds upon 2000 or so people’s stories of coming to faith in the last decade.
The Five Thresholds:
1. Trusting a Christian
2. Becoming Curious
3. Opening Up to Change
4. Seeking after God
5. Entering the Kingdom
Hey Tom,
What do you mean by this…
Nor is it probable that a person will enter the kingdom if they have no desire to experience change in their lives (or at least, one would hope they wouldn’t . . .).
Yeah . . . that wasn’t very clear.
Two things: 1. The main point of the book is that by and large people begin to express an openess to change in their journey toward Jesus. So, along the way, people begin to talk about ways they want to live differently, things they want to stop doing, ways they want to relate differently, aspects of their life they are unsatisfied with, etc, etc. The authors found this to be an important part of their journey (a threshold) that people pass through, crucial to them becoming more interested in Jesus and entering the kingdom. In all the stories they heard, it was a consistent theme. So that’s what the book says.
2. My parenthetical comment is my own concern that isn’t really connected to the book. (In fact, I may have been diluting the main thrust of the argument by adding it!). When I said “one would hope,” I was reacting to the often-given “soft sell” on the gospel or kingdom of God–i.e., “come to Jesus because really it won’t represent a huge change in your life” or “following Jesus is all gift and no cost”, which are complete mis-representations of the call to follow Jesus. All I meant was “one would hope people weren’t told that entering the kingdom was cost-less when it actually is super-costly, both to Jesus and to your own life.” The “just add Jesus” philosophy of gospel and kingdom is false and misleading. In fairness, not the point of the book’s presentation.
Gotcha! Interesting stuff.
As time goes by, Luther’s words from confirmation class get more and more intriguing to me: “I cannot by my own reason or strength come to God or know him.” It fascinates me to think of how he said that in a day when absolutes were very absolute, and yet, it is still strangely pertinent in today’s postmodernity.
It runs in my mind Luther’s epiphany came by lightening strike…or so the story goes. And in that respect the traditional Lutheran concept of evangelism often tends to cut out the middle man, praying and waiting for God to speak to people…much to the chagrin of evangelical denominations sometimes.
I guess I don’t really have a point I’m trying to make. Just find all the dimensions of the path to faith very interesting.