Introduction

A few decades ago C. S. Lewis wrote a pretty radical book called, “Mere Christianity.” In it, he makes a very good point. That it’s not about Christianity and vegetarianism or Christianity and submersion baptism, etc. it’s just about Christ.

The Apostle Paul, who is perhaps our major source for explaining what is and is not Christian, made an ironically similar comment. In Corinthians 2:2 he wrote, “I came unto you determined to know nothing, but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.” The purpose of this site is to strip away the walls of denominationalism, or culture and let people of radically differing ideas rest a bit. I’m going to invite a few friends to post here with the intention opening it up as a moderated forum in a few weeks. Our goal is to inspire each other and the occasional visitor with pure, simple intimacy with God.

These are my belief statements, there is only 2 in keeping with the theme of this site.

My belief statements:

  1. That everyone sins and falls short of what God intended for them.
  2. That Jesus Christ is the son of God, born human, and though he lived without sin he died to pay the price for our sin.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Sharing Faith

I woke today at 550am, thinking about sharing faith. It occurs to me that most groups that are militant about evangelism are actually trying to convert people to a "Christian" way of thinking, or worse "their" way of thinking.

The former is sharing a religion, the later is trying to win denominational converts, neither one is sharing the gospel.

Its tough when you think that this is all about how bad you were and how good you've become. I'm not a fan of that. For one thing, the only time it helps to tell someone how bad you were is if they feel beyond redemption. Most people are miserable, but unaware that redemption would help at all. So after we convince them that God forgives them no matter how bad they are we often follow it up with a description of God as a disapproving judge. Besides, we are all still human, and therefor, we continue to sin. If we use this method of evangelism we need to pretend like there's nothing wrong with our lives now that Christ is in it. We end up as posers and no one wants to listen to a poser.


We have been guilty of putting the great commission ahead of the first commandment. We have defined the great commission as "go and make disciples in every nation." The great commission is our Co-mission with Christ. Christ's mission statement is found in Luke 4:18, 19, when he quoted Isaiah,
18"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

The key here is love. If you can't love God, yourself, and your neighbor, don't share the Gospel with him. You only end up abusing him. Truth without love is always abusive. If we share our faith without love its just another MLM (multilevel marketing) scheme--an exciting presentation followed by a haste decision.

Our testimonial should be, "here is who God is for me right now." Nothing is more important, when spreading the gospel then what we think about God. If you worship a God who is distant and angry that's what you'll share with people. If you are madly in love with a God whose been over our sin since before He made us, then you might have something to share.
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