Our entire, post-modern culture-of-the-short-attention span has been Satanically designed to resist the sharing of the Gospel. Many in the church are consumed with trying to break Truth up into easily digested, bite-sized sound bites, avoiding the hard-to-chew truths.
People want to have their ears tickled with a smooth and pleasing gospel so they can feel close to God. Man-centered doctrine gives the illusion that one is spiritual, intimate with God. They want the benefits with none of the requirements; such as repentance and obedience.
How do you share Truth in sound bites?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hm.
1. God created the World & everything in it
2. We were created to have a relationship with God
4. Sin caused us to be separated
5. God sent Christ to die for our sins so we can be reunited with God
6. Only way to God is salvation to Christ.
Although, I’m guessing these sound bites aren’t warm and fuzzy, nor “politically correct”. People who tell me that being a Christian is too hard, I just say, “yes. were you expecting anything else? After all, we’re followers of Christ. and look at Christ’s life on earth. It wasn’t a walk in the park.”
I don’t always feel in love with my husband, but I do know that I love him.. it’s a choice.
You cannot have intimacy with God without repentance and obedience. It all comes hand in hand.
I don’t think, however, that you have to walk around condemned about sins that you might not be aware of yet.
God has called us to a life of freedom in Him.
Freedom to love Him.
Freedom to live for Him.
Freedom to walk with Him.
Freedom to know that grace covers me, and He will show me those sins that I need to turn from and walk the other way.
Isn’t that what repentance is? To turn away from and walk the opposite direction?
Tho, I don’t always “feel” close to God, I know that He is always there. I do love it tho when my senses are filled with His presence and I can hear the songs of His heart. I love it when He shares the secrets of His heart with me. To know that I am the friend of God draws me to my knees.
The world needs to “see” Jesus in His people. Christians have done some really dumb and out right hateful stuff. You say your a Christian, and the unbeliever already has a stereotype for you and the walls go UP!
I guess all that to say is, make sure your life is filled with Jesus’ love and that your talk lines up with it. The generation that we are dealing with is a “I need to see it, while you talk it” generation.
I agree that our culture lends itself to a feel-good type of Christianity with very little depth. One thought I have on this is that people view it as the job of the church (as in the organization and its paid leadership, rather than the people) to spread the gospel. We feel we need programs and Power Point slides, bullet-pointed sermons, and attractive worship teams to reach the masses. However, the early church of the New Testament did not meet on the first day of the week to bring in the masses. According to Acts 2:42, believers met together for teaching, worship, fellowship, and prayer. For these things they gathered. For evangelism, they scattered – meaning they ministered and witnessed to people one on one in their daily lives. Evangelism was about relationships, not sound bites, and I think the same hold true today. Today’s trend of sound bites in church not only fails to effectively share the gospel, it also cheats believers out of real depth of teaching leaving them ill-equipped to disciple and witness in their personal lives.
Instead of reaching people through a customized church service, I feel it’s important to reach people by being their friends, being a godly example, by meeting needs, and showing compassion. Obviously this isn’t the only way to share the gospel, but it’s one way that I think has fallen by the wayside.
Fortunately, sharing the Gospel isn’t overly complicated and can be done fairly quickly. But it does take practice to do so (I need more). I completely agree that our culture wants feel-good sound-bites, which the Gospel will never be.
Trying to give someone a sense of the “whole counsel of God” as opposed to giving sound-bite verses here and there (easily taken out of context) is also a challenge, both in the church and out of it. I love what Susan Hunt says about the “whole counsel of God.”
For instance, “God is Love,” is taken often to imply that God has no moral standards.. he simply loves everyone and everything. Therefore, His love disables His other qualities. What a perversion of His character.
I’m trying to do better at sharing the Gospel in person and online.. for the glory of God and the joy of His people.
http://abigailsleftovers.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/have-you-heard-the-good-news/
Well done so far, in terms of comments. Right on!
Here’s my ‘elevator’, 30 seconds or less, what do you believe spiel:
1. We lost it all. (Not some, not a little, but everything – totally helplessly 100% sinful)
2. He gave it all. (Not some – but everything. Sacrificially, painfully, heartbreakingly)
3. We get it all. (By no virtue of our own, and through no power of our own. Remember? We. lost. it. all.)
As for why we as a culture don’t share truth, there are so many reasons. First, we don’t know it, at least not well enough to share it. How would we? Most pastors don’t teach it. And they don’t teach for numerous reasons. First, it’s hard stuff. It’s just easier to talk down to the congregation. It’s easier to feed milk than meat, or a feast for that matter. Second, it’s counter-cultural. Much of the truth goes directly against popular culture. And going against popular culture means ruffling feathers. And that means more conflict and often less tithing. (Sadly). Thirdly, most congregations expect to ‘put their brain on the shelf’ at church. It’s that concept of “I know Jesus and that’s enough for me. If I don’t get it, Jesus. If it doesn’t make sense, Jesus. If it’s confusing, Jesus is enough.”
Even though we live in a world rich with resources (that is, those of us in N. America with streaming internet, public libraries, seminaries in every state), we take them for granted. I think Christians in countries rife with persecution and places where there’s a handful of Bibles hand transcribed for the entire church to share would be dumbfounded to see how we disregard the amount of truth available to us.
Most of the truth we’re talking about here is hard to share in ‘nuggets,’ or if it is shared in nuggets it needs follow-up to ‘massage’ it in.
I’ll be keeping tabs on the comment meta on this one! Great question!
Wow. You know from past comments from me that I am Catholic. While I am not devoute – becasue truthfully ome of the things that are “Catholic” are illogical to me. I am a child of God and I was raised in the Catholic Church and I will remain there because I am comfortable there. That does not mean I am without opportunities. I used to lunch with serveral ladies who are from various walks of faith. What tickles me is how short sighted these Christian woman are. We regularly talk of the word of God and how each ‘branch’ if you will has their own special way of doing things.
I found it appealing that we are somewhat on the same page and just because I am Catholic they dismiss me because of it not realizing that some of their traditions are right out of our play book.
I know that I am a child of God and therefore by his grace alone I go. I share when my heart strings are pulled and his word is on my tounge. There is no special place or time.
I hope this all makes sense. At least it did in my head.
and for the record, I agree with what you said. Too often people want their truth like fast food when a good sit down meal is needed.
Wow, a food and sports metaphor in one comment…I think the superbowl is just around the corner!