Monthly Archives: July 2009

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Communication 101…How often do you flunk?

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Communication fouls up everything…and…helps make everything work! My personal conviction from Genesis (see Babel incident) is that God put a judgment on communication so we wouldn’t accomplish near so much (and gloat in our own press releases!). Well, here’s a little way in which we flunk communication 101 as we battle the judgment.

We tend to assume that

DISAGREE = DON’T UNDERSTAND

Have you noticed how often people keep telling you and telling you something…and you simply disagree? The reason is simple; they think you don’t understand. I’m mean, let’s face it, “if you understood me, you’d surely agree with me!” Of course, this presumes we are right.

What would happen if you really began to explain to people exactly what you understand them to be saying to you? What would happen if they BOTH knew you understood their view AND disagreed with them?

It’s pretty obvious…you both could talk about the real issues and maybe get somewhere instead of explaining, and explaining, and explaining!

That’s one beauty of my friends who disagree with the Bible…it often means they at least understand something it says well enough to disagree with it. Sometimes, I think we believers are actually busy agreeing with things we don’t understand (but that’s another discussion).

Fred Lybrand

Biblically Speaking

Should Christians Try to Make Converts?

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Well, I know it sounds a little odd, but consider a conversation I had Sunday after church with a visiting couple.  They had visited another bible-believing church near their home, but found that the church was against ‘evangelism’…just for ‘friendship evangelism’.  I really didn’t know that idea was still around, but it is very scary talking to others about our faith.  We don’t want to offend, but we do want to be faithful to tell them what we care about…and we want to be faithful to the Lord’s directive to ‘go…’.

I’ve been in both ditches.  I have taught and done street evangelism…and…I have taught and done ‘friendship’ evangelism.  The truth is that there is another option.  Most of problems arise from TRYING to CONVERT people.  At some level or another we all must recognize some role of freedom and will in the matter.  Regardless of your extreme views of Calvinism or Arminianism…it is still an individual thing for the person to come to faith in Christ and His work for his eternal destiny.

A phrase we started using a few years ago is ‘we’re concerned about contacts not converts’.  Of course, we all hope people will embrace Christ; but really, it’s really only our role to clearly and graciously share the message.  Focusing on converting others invites us toward a hard-sales approach.  Focus on friendship invites us to (often) never get around to the subject.

Why not learn a clear way to explain your own faith and just explain it?— truly, indeed, aren’t the results God’s business and the individual’s concern?  Can’t we share our heart while respecting their autonomy?  This includes NOT SHARING if they don’t want to hear it (of course)!

I’ve notice in Uganda was see thousands each summer put their faith in Christ.  Those who go seem to think it is about how ‘open the people are’–maybe.  All I know, is that we can’t compare America to Uganda until we do in America what we do in Uganda.

Make sense?

Fred Lybrand

P.S.  My friend Larry Moyer has some excellent material with this line of thinking at  www.evantell.org