Breakout B
Description: How do people come to Jesus in today’s postmodern culture? Over the last decade, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp have listened to the stories of two thousand postmodern people who have come to follow Jesus. While the stories are diverse and varied, certain common themes emerge, which they describe in their new book, I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus. Come hear Don give an overview of the “Five Thresholds” that most postmodern skeptics cross on their way to faith in Jesus.
Speaker’s Bio: Don Everts recently began serving as Minister of Outreach at Bonhomme Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, after working with university students for over 14 years as a campus staff worker and Area Director with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. A poet and preacher at heart, Don speaks at conferences and churches across the country inviting skeptics and believers alike to gaze at the person of Jesus and be thrilled. Don has written nine books, including Jesus with Dirty Feet, God in the Flesh, and the One Guy’s Head Series of postmodern apologetics. His latest book, co-authored with Doug Schaupp, is I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus.
My deepest hope for our time together is that I might be the bearer of stories of people who were once jaded and far from God but now know Jesus.
Notes:
Evangelism as we understood it didn’t work after the postmodern shifts in the early 90s. Everyone in campus ministry was experimenting.
Doug Schaupp was one of the people who just started trying anything. Over the next decade they saw around 2000 new believers come to Christ in a group of SoCal colleges. But these weren’t just people who raised their hands. They were people who went on to become foreign missionaries, lead inner city churches, etc.
They started asking questions about the postmodern path to faith. People would tell their stories about how they came to faith. They would tell the whole story. They would do informal interviews with people who had made it the whole way? What happened to you?
They found a surprising consensus among the people. They didn’t come in with some academic theory or preconceptions.
- Mysterious
How did God know them that well? Every one of them you couldn’t have thought out ahead of time. - Organic
It tended to grow from small to medium to large. It tended to progress in a certain way. - There appeared consistent themes in the stories. People went through similar stages.
They started writing some white papers on this. They circulated them around the world to try to find out if this held true everywhere. They expected not to. They were skeptical. These were people who were skeptical among everything.
Growth is organic
Parables
- Parable of the soils: How growth happens differently given the context
- Parable of the growing seed: How things grow
Mark 4
The farmer spreads seeds and then goes to sleep. Then there’s green stuff.
Growth is mysterious. We don’t exactly understand why it happens.
I used to think that people coming to Christ was psychological. If you argue it just right, if you do it just right, people will come to faith.
Jesus says it’s mysterious. It’s soul deep. It’s bone deep. It involves the emotions and the body, and a bunch of other things, but it’s also mysterious.
But, Jesus also says that workers gather the harvest once it’s ripe. It grows over time.
I used to think conversion is binary. My most nuanced painting of someone was “you’re a Christian” or “you’re not a Christian.” If conversion is binary, then evangelism is awkward, because everytime we’re together, my only goal is to flip the switch, but Jesus says what are you talking about? First there’s a little green, then there’s more green. Then there comes a time when the harvest is right. If conversion is organic, then evangelism gets to serve people where they’re at. - Parable of the Mustard Seed: Exponential growth
That’s what we asked our friends, what was your story.
Five Thresholds
- Trusting a Christian
I met with a guy named Matthew who grew up with an atheist and Hindu as parents, and he distrusted Christians. But I met with him, and he trusted me.
He didn’t understand why I would want to live among the poor and serve them with a pregnant wife and baby son. I told him that’s what Jesus said we should do. Somewhere in that conversation he became interested about Jesus. - Wondering about Jesus
I gave him a Bible and asked him to read Mark. He came back and said, you know Christians are nothing like Jesus. He loved Jesus. People always do. Jesus is much more interested than we are. So I asked him if he would like to get together with me, so we met weekly to study the Scriptures. After a while I felt like I was running in sand. He was interested in Jesus, but he wasn’t open to change in his life. Matthew told me one time: I’ve never met a Christian who has something I don’t have. He was at this place where he was open to change. He didn’t have any holy dissatisfaction.
Two things happened in his life. He started getting in fistfights with his roommate. Second, I started sharing about my summer. I came back with these intimate relationships with these poor people. He told me that he had been thinking about what I was saying and said that he never had anything like that. He finally became open to change in his life. He became aware that Jesus might have something he was missing. - Opening up to Change
This was a subtle thing, but he would only get together with me when I initiated it. He wasn’t seeking God actively. He was just meandering. He wasn’t seeking. He wasn’t looking for final answers.
We met to study one cold night, and I didn’t want to be there. But he finally asked me, “How can you know?” Out of sin and just wanting to go home I just said, I don’t know, why don’t you ask him? He told me he didn’t believe in God. I’ll be honest, that was just out of sin and wanted to go home. I told him that if God wasn’t real, then he wouldn’t get an answer.
I met with Matthew a while later, and he was acting strange, and finally he told me he got an answer. God redeemed me not willing to be with him. - Seeking after God
(There was a subtle difference between people who were meandering towards God and those who were on a quest.)
Somewhere in there he started seeking God. I missed this. It was somewhere over Christmas break. - Entering the Kingdom
(There came a moment when the harvest was ripe, when people wanted in, when they wanted Jesus as their Lord and Savior.)
Finally he got baptized.
Matthew’s faith grew over time. It’s always mysterious. Story after story people shared, and people crossed these thresholds in this order.
- Trusting a Christian
Moving from distrust to trust
Skepticism is part of the DNA these days. We’re not on a level playing field. We’re in a hole.
They don’t trust the Church, but they begin to trust one believer.
We must avoid knee-jerk reactions to distrust. It’s hard when someone distrusts you. - Wondering about Jesus
Moving from apathy to curiosity
Some people still hate Jesus, but mostly they don’t care. All they’ve done is interact with stereotypes and caricatures of Jesus.
They became Jesus fans, and it’s okay to celebrate that.
People think more globally. They don’t ask the modernist question of “How does this affect me?” They ask “How does this affect the world?”
We used to have people come over our house and weep about the environment. You could dismiss that, but it’s not about individuality. Perhaps that is the beginning of their regeneration, mourning corporate sin.
If there’s someone who trusts you but isn’t interested in Jesus, keep talking about Him.
Live Curiously – Matthew was interested in Jesus because he saw me do something strange.
Most of the language we use doesn’t help clarify Jesus or help people understand Jesus. We need to stop using Christian cliches. After my first book I had someone write me and ask me if I was a Christian because I didn’t describe my relationship with Christ in cliched ways. I actually used more biblical language. We should not force non-Christians to stretch and strain and translate to understand what we’re saying. - Opening up to Change
Moving from closed to open
This is the hardest threshold. Most people get stuck here. People don’t like change.
One thing we recommend is patience and prayer.
The other thing is to challenge as Jesus challenged. He reached people where they were. He touched the hurting. He shoved those wallowing in self-pity. - Seeking after God
Moving from meandering to seeking
I used to call every non-Christian a seeker, but then I realized that very few non-Christians are actually seeking.
Many of them will ask questions, but they may not be actually seeking. They ask questions because they have learned that it is a safe expected way to relate to a Christian, but it doesn’t mean they are seeking. I used to have a friend who did this, and one day I asked him if this was just a game to him. He said yes.
People who are seeking don’t just want to have answers to questions. They want to come to conclusions.
There are ways we can help people:
Live out the Kingdom of God in front of people. This way it’s not just theoretical questions. Invite people to see the Kingdom. I don’t know why we don’t bring more non-Christians on mission trips.
Part of living out the Kingdom is to model seeking. I was studying John 1 with a buddy. The first time we did it, I gave him pens and asked him to mark it up. The Bible is a weird thing to non-Christians, two columns per page, onion paper, books with ribbons. A little while in he asked me what I was doing. I said I was studying the passage. He assumed I already knew it. I told him I did, but that the Scripture is so deep and I gain more from it each time.
We need to create safe places for seeking. Seeker service is a pair of words we’re all familiar with. It is possible to create places where it’s safe to seek.
There’s a difference between guiding seekers but still doing church, whereas seeker sensitive is changing the content for them for it’s safe. We find that that for people at threshold four, translating rather than stripping content is more helpful.
How do you do apologetics these days. Most apologists are from the modern era with solid concrete answers. These days it’s about experience, subjective point of view, community, the globe, and skepticism. When someone asks you a question, the last thing to do is answer the question, mostly because that’s not their real question or there are reasons behind it.
ATTIC- Affirm – Mo matter how dumb, affirm their question. Do you want them to ask more questions? Affirm their first question.
- Translate – Translate the question into your life. Don’t just check the argument bank for the right answer.
- Transparent – In your answer, be vulnerable, admit mystery. Be honest about what you know and what you don’t.
- Insert Yourself as a Case Study – Insert yourself as a case study. If someone asks if there’s a difference between Buddhism and Christianity, don’t just make an argument, use an example from your own life.
- Challenge – Challenge them in their own life
- Entering the Kingdom
Lost to saved
If someone is at the 5th threshold, it is appropriate to be urgent. It is exhausting to seek, to hold up in the air your entire worldview.
It is helpful when we are clear but don’t oversimplify. There is a line, what will happen when I become a Christian.
It’s unfair to people’s process if you make it all about people’s lives, but then oversimplify what Christianity about.
James Choung’s book
It’s indicting if you have someone in your life who doesn’t trust a Christian.
I don’t know how this works with the model, but for people who are saved at a young age, there’s a process of backfilling that happens. They have questions that they never asked because they didn’t have them. They’re not centered on Jesus. They may not trust Christians. It’s confusing for them because they’re asking themselves if it took.
Relationships are messy. Projects are easy, so when it comes to evangelism we have a tendency to make people projects rather than relationships. Person after person who have come to faith have said that it is because people have come alongside them.
This model:
Can help you ask questions of people that are appropriate.
Can help you figure out what type of “seeker” event your’e having. People who just trust Christians need a different event than those who are seeking after God. Are we having spiritual awakening types of events. Alpha is great for people in steps 3-5.
There’s a fellowship in SoCal that’s well trained in these 5 steps. WorldVision has an AIDS experience tent that the fellowship runs. After the presentation they have a quick conversation with people. They have 5 different color index cards representing the 5 different stages and ask people to fill it out. They follow up based on what color card the person is on.
