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The Essential Gospel

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Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. – 1 Peter 3:15

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. – 2 Peter 3:9

It dawned on me recently, we don’t share the good news we have, because we don’t know how to. Years, maybe even decades of sitting listening to sermons, and we still can’t explain why we believe what we believe.

When we sense the burning inside of us that tells us we must open our mouths to what is such a gaping opportunity, we stumble along inside our heads, and end up saying nothing. We live in frustration. So the debate about whether or not I should go out on the streets becomes moot, because we cannot stand in front of a group of family and friends even, and explain what we believe. It is tragic, if not even a little amusing.

When we listen to another religion at our work, are we able to give an account of why Jesus is so central to all and everything; is our confidence to defend our Lord so high, that we jump to his defence as he asks us to, to give an account of the wonderful hope that is in us? Let me let you into a little secret, it is because the servants of the Lord have for so long kept their mouths shut at opportune times, that so many have become cold in the faith, unsure even themselves what they believe. In turn, this has had a profound impact on our society. We are on the defensive all the time.

When I shared once my faith with a man who works for me, he astounded me by saying he knew many friends of faith, but none ever shared with him and he was disappointed. He wanted to know what they believed, but they never took the time. Imagine that. Then again, maybe it’s not so uncommon.

So, for those who are interested, here’s a few tips;

Firstly, take the time to learn something by heart. Practise it by yourself and with some friends. There are some wonderful tools around, the internet’s not all bad! Google around for the ‘3 Circles’ a simple Gospel presentation that you can do with a pen and paper in 5 minutes to a non-believer. It may not be super comprehensive, but it will at least get us started, and most people will understand and ask questions.

Also, understand what some of the other religions believe. If you’re not sure, go and ask them! We speak with many Muslims and I wonder sometimes if they know more about Jesus or ‘Isa’ than some believers do. They seem only too willing to talk about Isa, which in turn is a great opening for us. We build bridges with people when we understand at least the rudiments of another’s faith, and it gives us an opportunity to contrast our faith with theirs. Why do we believe what we believe?

Then, understand Scripture and try to frame what Christ says about himself, so that we can reference the Bible in our explaining. Jesus did this all the time in his discussions and debates with others. ‘Scripture tells us…’ What can we explain to someone about the nature of God, or his character. Does God expect anything of us, what happens to us when we die, how can we answer the 7 most common questions of the sceptic (‘why does God allow suffering etc’). All of these are found in the pages of Scripture, we need to look for them with the intent of answering an unbeliever.

Personally, when I explain the Gospel, I always keep in mind the single-mindedness that we will all face God, and what will we need to do? After all I explain, surely a loving God would let us know what he expects of us? So then:

  • Keep the law, escape the penalty
  • Break the law, pay the penalty

I find that everything cascades down from this, even if I am not explicit in saying it this way. It allows me to explain the story with God at the beginning, and myself in relationship to him. It also puts Jesus at the very centre, and distinguishes him from all of the ‘also rans’ of other religions. Nobody else could, or would, pay the penalty for me. It leaves the listener under no illusion that they are ‘good enough’ but also that even though God has no choice, he has given us one. I can explain the one tenet that separates Christianity from all religions and philosophies, and that is the Grace of God through his Son. When we have done this, we can leave the rest to the Holy Spirit, who will lead us throughout all of this.

So, will we take the time to learn a simple story, maybe even just our own? Do we take Jesus seriously enough to listen to what he asks us to do? Come on friends, let us give honour to him by explaining to someone this week, why we believe what we believe.

You’ll never experience greater joy.

Are we all called out onto the streets?

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This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” – 2 Cor 5: 17-20

Moses came to visit us on Sunday. Yes, that’s right, Moses. A fine young man from Africa, he had recently decided to take God more seriously and wanted to get baptised and learn to share his faith. So, after joining our gathering last Sunday, a group of us went down to a beach on Sydney harbour and prayed. In front of bystanders and curios, in the middle of winter, we walked into the sea and baptised Moses. Moses in the water, marvellous!

After that we went out on the streets, and began to share the Gospel of Jesus with strangers.

Earlier in the week, a dear friend whom I respect enormously suggested to me that not all believers are called out on the streets, that the gift of evangelism is just one of several, and that we are all called to participate in support for those who evangelise in different ways. I thought long and hard about this; is it correct?

In recent weeks, a group of young people who go out onto the streets to share their faith have led half a dozen others to Christ and baptised 4 of them straight away. A woman we spoke to some weeks back has met us again, and wants to start a discovery Bible study with some of the women in our gathering. As a result of our work on the streets, we have begun to see others, non-believing enquirers joining us in Discovery Groups, wondering what a relationship with Christ might mean.

Around the world, we read stories, just about every week, of ordinary people going out into the marketplace talking to people about the love of God through Christ. I’m not talking about India, Africa or other developing countries, but Western nations like Australia or Britain. In some instances, over weeks and months, dozens are responding to the Gospel message in different ways. They become disciples.

Is going out on the streets though, even with all this, that important? Is it not really the domain of just a few evangelists, supported in prayer and other works by those presumably who aren’t evangelists? I find that difficult to swallow.

Aside from what appears to be a clear command from Christ, and overwhelming support throughout the entire Scriptures of the importance of sharing the incredible grace of God through Christ Jesus with non-believers, why else would we share the Gospel on the streets?

Surely one of the most compelling reasons is to counter the statistic that 98% of church-goers have never shared their faith with another. We see so many, meet so many, whose faith over the years has withered, even died. A lifetime of hearing about a God who is powerful, praying to that God, singing praises to Him, listening to incredible stories – but never actually experiencing it, will cause any believer to doubt. Why share with anyone such a God?

Yet, and we have seen it time and again, encourage such a person to begin to open their mouths with another about the person of Jesus Christ, and suddenly their faith comes alive. Their faith moves from a position of just knowledge, to one of obedience as they begin to encounter the joy of sharing with someone who is desperate for answers in this life.

Over and over we have been out with the shy, the unassuming, the sceptic even those with such little faith, and seen their lives change. From every understanding of the word, there wasn’t an evangelist among them, yet they could share with a total stranger. They became alive in the process.

I could go on. We have found that going out of the streets, sharpens us such that we are able to pray and share constantly with those in our everyday lives. Sharing the Gospel becomes a way of life, only after we move out into the marketplace. Jesus becomes our everyday, for reasons of which we are unsure, other than we obey.

Does it have to be the streets? Perhaps not; the grocery store will do, the shopping mall, the tower block next door, or just the neighbourhood. For those unwilling, the excuse is usually that they are praying and sharing with their family and friends and prefer to keep it at that, after all so they tell me, we must evangelise those first. In our experience though, such people are the hardest to share with, and after a few rebuttals, most give up.

We have come to see Christ’s call to make disciples as a labour of love; making disciples seemed to clearly start with non-believers in the Scriptures, moving them to conversion and through to maturity – a big part of which, must surely be to make more disciples. A movement is started.

There would be more stories, even from our own meagre experiences that would fill this blog for evermore. Disciple making is for keeps, and that means going into the harvest to search for them. It would seem nothing is clearer.

In the book of Daniel, it says those who lead others to righteousness shall shine like stars for all eternity. Who wants a piece of that?

Life in a Day

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Can the darkness speak of your wonderful deeds?  Can anyone in the land of forgetfulness talk about your righteousness? O Lord, I cry out to you.  I will keep on pleading day by day. O Lord, why do you reject me?  Why do you turn your face from me? – Psalm 88

We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy. This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. – 1 John 1

Over the past months and even years, there have been some incredibly dark times; as we look to go into the world and make disciples, to build a different sort of community, we have at times felt so lonely. Perhaps our writings portray something different? I hope not. At times, the darkness has been overwhelming. Recently especially, we have felt attack. The enemy is very real.

I don’t want to malign any church, but it would have been easy at times to walk into a ready made ‘fellowship’ and commit to the programmes on offer. But is that what we are called to do? We don’t believe so. For anyone pioneering disciple making and ultimately church planting, I would suggest that it can take years of seemingly fumbling around in the dark, wondering which way to go, how to structure things, where to find the support? Are we sure we heard the Lord correctly (let’s ask him one more time, just in case).

The times where people have wandered into our fellowship, speaking of the desire to do something different, out of the ordinary have been numerous. They are tired of church, how their church looks so different to the church in the Acts. But we have no building, no pastor, no sermon, only occasional music and a desire to be intimate and all share the load. We try to be a kingdom of priests here on earth, each one of us. We expect our everyday lives to reflect our beliefs, and give each other permission to speak into each others lives. While Sunday is a special day, we try to meet throughout the week, and on Sunday, our ‘service’ might last most of the day, with a good part of it spent on the streets and in the neighbourhood talking to people about Jesus. We take Jesus’ final words, ‘go into the world and make disciples’ quite literally.

Needless to say, most have not stayed and have moved on. Many move back to church. On the odd occasion, we have even asked some to leave.

Read through the Acts and Paul’s letters carefully, and you may realise that the description of the early church seems more like a family than a service, where people interacted with Jesus and each other, moment by moment. If it’s anything like ours, it will be messy, disorganised and spontaneous. We spend time looking across from one another, rather than at the back of each other’s heads; everyone has an equal voice, an opportunity to share what the Lord has been saying, and what they in turn have been saying to others. The question, “who are you speaking to about our Lord this week?” is a common one you will hear. There is expectation, even a demand perhaps. How are we obeying?

For some, this is too much. On the odd occasion, when we have had no interest from those we talk to on the streets, and nobody has turned up to a gathering, life has been very bleak. Darkness is not far away. Is this really what God wants us to do? Have we been disobedient? Loneliness.

We say this to those reading, wondering whether it will be worth trying something different, or for those who have tried or are trying to move into the realm of making disciples and feeling they are getting nowhere. Is this what it is meant to be? The truth is perhaps yes it may be.

Yet pursuing Christ is not an exercise in darkness, but an activity filled with light. Take last week as just an example. In our small group, we had children and older people mixing together throughout the morning. We prayed into each other lives, beginning to confess to each other some of our fears, hurts and joys. As we talked, we stopped throughout to pray, to invite Jesus then and there to speak and move on the issues as they came up. We celebrated and prayed specifically for those each of us were ministering to in the world. We discussed when we would meet, and asked for continual prayer. We celebrated communion, along with Christ.

Later we went through a ‘Discovery Bible Study’; we read a small passage, seeing what the Holy Spirit says as he leads us together through the passage. Is there something to share, to obey? What does the passage tell us of God, or of man? What questions do we have, what pierces our heart? Then, at the end, a challenge – who will we share this with this week?

Some left us at this point, while others of us had a brief lunch before we headed for the streets for the afternoon. There we spoke at length with a young Muslim man about Christ, convicted by the Holy Spirit to continue on, even when we felt the urge to stop. In the end, we prayed for the Lord to open his eyes, after we had explained the Gospel. Others spoke with a woman, and brought her up to the step of turning towards Christ, before we decided it was better to meet with her again later this week. We pray she will be available as we spoke to many others as well.

This is our Sunday, our church – a family of believers, living and sharing together, and moving out into the world filled with the Spirit with “God making his appeal through us.” It is the Light breaking into the ‘sometime darkness.’

We hope to share more of the real life we have over the coming weeks, but let us be truthful as well. There are times when we feel isolated, when God seems to have deserted us, surely as Christ must have felt often. Yet there are times of indescribable joy, when we get a glimpse that we are moving, walking, right where God wants us to be.

It doesn’t get any better. We are learning to be content.

Life and Death

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So you must remain faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will remain in fellowship with the Son and with the Father. And in this fellowship we enjoy the eternal life he promised us. – 1 John 2: 24-25

We had a death in the family this week. As far as death goes, and I don’t want to be insensitive at a time of grief, it was a pretty good one. Peacefully, the person fell asleep with family beside them, praying. Death is the great separator though isn’t it, for all of us there is a time when we leave our home, those we know and love and we step into the unknown. I used to wonder, and still do at times, whether I will be able to find my way around the streets of heaven, and what the buildings will look like. Funny isn’t it, our imagination.

But death is also the great unmentionable in our society. We speak of ‘passing away’ or ‘moving on’ or if you’re really desperate, ‘being reincarnated.’ Most of us, all of us really hope we will go to a better place. The Bible though, is much less wavering and watery in its summation of death. It says each of us will stand before a Holy God and give an account of our lives, how we have lived and advises us accordingly that we should be thinking about this beforehand. It is more important than life insurance.

Further, it tells us that Jesus, who existed from the very beginning with the Father, was briefly separated from the Father at death. They must have been grief-stricken beyond imagination, yet because of that, we are able to live for eternity. Jesus’ separation, meant our connection in. Whenever I talk to strangers about the Gospel, I always try to bring these facts into the conversation. Death is a reality, will we be separated eternally, or connected in? How we respond is crucial.

But in this passage in John’s letter, he talks of fellowship here, being eternal. It is aimed at believers, but it has implications for an unbelieving world. It’s been two years since we came to Sydney and started a work we believed the Lord called us to. There have been ups and downs, highlights and lowlights. Part of this has been understanding the meaning of the type of fellowship that Jesus wants us to live in with other believers. The fellowship Christ talks of here, is far more than just an event. It is an existence, lived out day to day, week to week in our lives. Eternity, apparently and according to John, starts in this life.

It seems to me that deep down, both the world and the believer wants this above everything. More than anything else, heaven will be defined not as a place, but as a community centred around the Godhead. But Christ wants us to live this out now. Our small gathering here in Sydney is beginning to prayerfully work through this, to understand what it looks like. We are making progress.

At the core of it, is Jesus Christ leading us day to day through his Spirit. It means that we must be prepared to live within each other’s lives, and hold each other accountable as to how we live. A quick scan particularly of this letter of John will show us that is how we are supposed to live. It should be a Holy community, one fit for Christ to be part of. He will not tolerate blatant sin, and so we must be prepared within that community to confess to one another how we live. Scary stuff, but Biblical, as James calls us to ‘confess our sin to one another.’ Confessing my sin to my Christian brother who stands before me is quite different to confessing my sin to a God whom I cannot see. Perhaps though, if I do the former I may be spared the later embarrassment of the latter.

It should be governed by love for each other, where we love each other as family, real genuine family. There would be no need within such a family as we would all share what we have openly, honestly. Further, there would be healing within such a family, because as a family we would come to the one who does heal and ask that he heal our brokenness, whatever that looks like. There would be praise, song, teaching and daily walking together with Christ and each other.

Out of this family, which would be something the world would never see anywhere else, would be a natural tendency to minister into the world. Such a devotion to Christ and each other, would naturally spill over into our neighbours, the streets, the pub, the housing commission block – everywhere God sends us. At the centre of it all would be The Christ, Jesus as head of his ‘church’ breathing life into us, ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’

For most of us here, this seems like something we will have to wait for and so in the meantime we continue to bring God into our lives on certain days, at certain times. Our isolationist, independent society here in the West will prohibit such a family as this. Think so?

I don’t share that, in fact I am convinced more than ever that Christ wants this to become a reality in my life, in my small village here on this earth, now. That he wants us to be part of a community that is daily connected to each other and him, and in so doing that our love spills out onto those around us.

That’s what you want really as well, isn’t it? Let us pray fervently that it becomes a reality in each other’s lives. Watch this space for more adventures with Jesus.

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