Tag Archives: evangelism

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Daily Broadside | It’s My First Post of 2023 …

… and yesterday was New Year’s Day (Observed) at my office, so I had another day off. I hope your Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were wonderful and meaningful and full of warmth and pleasant memories …

… because it might be a new year but it’s the same-old same-old in the world of politics and culture and faith. Just because everything is “merry and bright” doesn’t mean we begin with a completely clean slate once the calendar turns a new page. Well, unless you’re in Christ, then “his compassions never fail. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23) and, by extension, every year.

We’ll have to learn how to live in a country that is not just fraying at the edges, but is tearing down the middle. The FBI is still the Gestapo we learned about over the last six years; the Democrats are still the political mafia they exposed themselves to be; the GOP is not the opposition party but part of the swamp (with a few notable exceptions); our economy is being destroyed by the Church of Perpetual Climate Fear as war is waged on our abundance of natural gas and oil resources for some fantasy of “carbon-neutral” energy (go back to nuclear energy!); the border is still porous and getting worse because we live under a lawless regime whose sole purpose is to destroy the United States as founded; the judiciary has become a court of rubber stamps that enable progressive lawlessness; our elections are no longer free or fair, but hopelessly suspect; the DOJ and Brandon himself have demonized patriotic Americans and keeps hundreds of them locked up in violation of their due process rights; and normal Americans should be gathering by the millions to protest and agitate against all of it but such behavior is only allowed on the Left and prosecuted against the Right.

My political awakening came a couple of decades ago and I’ve invested more time in speaking out against the lawlessness than I ever have over the last three years. I sometimes see myself as a guy running up and down the brow of a rocky island jutting up out of the sea, waving a red flag, setting off flares, and yelling at an approaching luxury cruise ship, trying to get the attention of anyone on board, warning them that they’re about to run aground and sink the boat. Unfortunately, even though I’ve gotten the attention of a few people on the promenade deck, the captain and crew don’t seem to notice or care.

It’s dawning on me that there is no solution that will immediately fix the dire circumstances we find ourselves in. What I didn’t want to grant, but what has become most apparent, is that our freedoms and homogenous cultural assumptions can no longer be taken for granted. Speech is being curtailed by political and technological ideologues; deeply evil people lie and conspire to get the political outcomes they want. The spirit of our Founders once held us together as a nation, along with deeply religious communities of faith. Those have now been relegated to specialized institutions like the Heritage Foundation or Hillsdale College or to the church or the synagogue or the mosque. You’re certainly not going to find them in the halls of congress or our schools, which regularly and naturally reinforced our national values.

The Lord foils the plans of the nations;
    he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever,
    the purposes of his heart through all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
    the people he chose for his inheritance.
From heaven the Lord looks down
    and sees all mankind;
from his dwelling place he watches
    all who live on earth—
he who forms the hearts of all,
    who considers everything they do.

Psalm 33:10-15

Nothing escapes the Lord’s notice. He’s aware of all that is taking place in our country’s capitol, in each of the legislatures in each state, of every person in a position of authority. He’s aware of the lies, the cheating, the oppression, the hatred, the incitement conflict among the people, of the favoritism and the graft and the greed.

His purpose among the nations will prevail because his plans “stand firm forever.” How I wish that we would be known as a “nation whose God is the Lord.” But those in power disingenuously say they fear a “theocracy,” even though a return to the Judeo-Christian principles that this nation was founded on would be the right thing.

They reject them at the cost of their own destruction. They are blind fools and, one day, they will shrink in horror and shame as the full weight of their foolishness bores down on them.

In the meantime, Christians should be doing three things: actively opposing the evil being done in this nation, preparing for persecution, and winning as many to Christ as they can, while they can.

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Daily Broadside | Don’t Take Scalps But Love Your Neighbor

Daily Verse | Isaiah 44:6
“This is what the Lord says—
Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.”

It’s Friday and the end of the week. Dancing in the rain is not as much fun as dancing in the shower.

I don’t typically share much that is personal on these pages, primarily because this isn’t a journal about my life. It’s a place for me to sound off about how I see faith, culture and politics — with an emphasis on politics. Anyone reading this blog for any length of time will know that I have strong opinions about our national politics and our political culture, and even stronger convictions about our rights as American citizens.

However, I just came in from cutting my lawn and am writing this for Friday morning. That’s relevant because we and some of our neighbors are hosting a block party for our street Friday night. We have about 75 people coming and we’ll have a taco truck, games for the kids, music, perhaps a small bonfire in the evening, and we invited the local sheriff to stop by.

We’re doing it because we want to get to know our neighbors. Earlier this year my wife and I invited couples near us to form a group to get to know each other around some meaningful conversation. We meet once a week for dinner and conversation, then spend an hour or more discussing a passage from the Gospel of John. It’s been a great way to build relationships with them and move past the wave and “Hey, howz it goin’?” stage of being neighbors.

The block party is another step in the process of building a community right where we live. What better way to break the ice than to bring the neighborhood together for an opportunity to do more than wave as they drive past the house or give them a nod as their garage door closes?

What surprised us is that the highway commissioner for our township was excited about what we are doing. She is fully supportive and will deliver tables, chairs, and blockades for each end of the street with “Block Party” signs. As my wife was working out the details with her, the commissioner said something to the effect of, “We need to be getting out and mixing it up after being locked down for so long.”

That’s true. The pandemic created a lot of fear and isolated people as they hid in their homes and behind masks. It’s tough enough in our current culture to get to know neighbors and the Chinese Lung Pox made it that much harder by keeping people separated.

As a Christ-follower, this is also a way to build relationships with people in whom God may be doing some work. Before his ascension, Jesus gave his disciples “the Great Commission.”

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

— Matthew 28:18-20

You can’t make disciples if you don’t know anybody, so getting introduced to neighbors is a practical way to start that process. I don’t go into the event with any agenda other than to meet people who live up and down the street and listen for what God may or may not be up to. I try to follow Henry Blackaby’s advice: “Watch to see where God is working and join Him in His work.”

That’s a different approach from what most Christians are taught, which is to “do” evangelism. “Evangelism” in the traditional sense of the term is a terrifying act in which you approach total strangers and ask them if they know where they’re going when they die, then share the “Four Spiritual Laws” with them and hope they make a decision to follow Jesus. After that you flee back to the group that sent you out and tell your story to them.

There’s no doubt the Four Spiritual Laws are biblical truth and explain our predicament in relationship to God. And it’s true that some people have come to faith through this method of outreach. But the approach — basically confronting someone with a heavy personal choice that they may or may not have ever thought about — isn’t necessarily the only, or even the most effective, way to talk to someone about Big Truth. We live in an easily offended, post-Christian society now.

Jesus certainly used different approaches in his ministry that depended on what he saw God his Father doing.

“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19).

So the problem, as it were, with the old style scalp-seeking method of evangelism, is that it bypasses what you see God doing and then joining him in it. The better way to approach making disciples, I believe, is through personal relationships and paying attention to what God is doing in those.

In order to have personal relationships, you have to spend time with people. That’s the deeper purpose behind the block party — not just the fun of eating tacos, meeting new people, playing some games and finding out what you have in common — but to discern whether there are needs to be met, questions to be answered, or connections to be made.

There is no pressure—just participation. As Blackaby also said:

Have a great weekend and I’ll see you Monday.