Sharing My Faith

Dear Friends,

I include this month an article I was asked to write first for my National Church's paper, and then for the Sower's Chapel (my church) newsletter. I thought you might be interested to see how the pastoral role impacts authorship, and visa versa. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to write about one of my favorite topics - evangelism. I hope you enjoy reading the article as much as I did writing it.

Sharing Our Faith

This is a subject that’s close to my heart, because its something we’ve seemed to have a lot of struggle with in the church. Our difficulty (even at times our embarrassment) in talking with others is, I believe a function of a number of different factors: our size, limited name recognition, denominational confusion, and even lack of “passage trading” ability next to our other Christian neighbors. So, what do we do?

When I was asked to write this article, frankly, I was a little scared myself – because there’s such a broad range of opinion on what’s most effective, appropriate, or even perceived as more or less doctrinally accurate. So, I decided the most I could do was share an approach that’s not only seemed to reach people, but is the most moving to me.

It all comes down to one word: Witnessing. It gets some bad press at times because of the “revivalist” movement. But it also has some wonderful qualities. When you look it up in the Dictionary (I used quotations from the American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition, 2000) – definitions 4 and 5 were what really stuck out to me:

4. An attestation to a fact, statement, or event; testimony.
5. One who publicly affirms religious faith.

An attestation to a fact, statement, or event. When you testify, as when you are asked to testify in court, you report what you saw. You “bear witness” to the impact that it had on you, and its on that basis that you have credibility. And when you do it publicly, you have witnesses to the witness – you have a group of people that you are now accountable to, because they’ve heard what you said.

But we are talking about all of this on a spiritual level, right? And yet, the principle still holds true – people want to hear about what matters to you, what changed your life for the better, what moves you from the inside out as a human being. Just like a court setting, the witnesses credibility is determined through how much the event shaped or reshaped their perspective, their worldview. I think the same is true about “witnessing” to our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.

People want to hear how that belief has changed your life. Its on that basis, and not on the basis of how many theological “proofs” you can utter, that you will have credibility to the average person. They want to hear how your worldview is impacted by your spirituality, and not the other way around. Knowledge is important, in fact its essential, but it only becomes living to the listener when they understand “why” that knowledge is so important to YOU.

And I think the most powerful why is: You were created to be in union with God. Everything He does to guide you, and every decision you make in the scope of that guidance is for the sake of union with Him. God wants a living and vital relationship with you – and its at the times you least believe that where He is closest to you – in mind heart and life. (* See DLW 170, and TCR 126). Its at those times that you understand most clearly that you are not alone, but that the Lord God Jesus Christ wants to know and be known by you. And its this living knowledge we need to share.

So when I share about my faith, I think about these things. Think about how your belief in the Lord has shaped the purpose of your life, has refocused the way you make decisions, has driven you to a more open and honest relationship with yourself, your God, and all those around you.

THEN SHARE THAT. It’s the good news that the Lord Jesus wants the whole world to hear!