6/28/11 Alex, about 25
Witnessing gives us a chance to plant seeds of Gospel truth in people's lives - no matter where they are at with the Lord. I had this attitude as I struck up a conversation with a young man named Alex at our churchwide softball league, hoping to encourage a fellow believer but discoverng a confused unbeliever instead. How does one find this out at an event where it is too often assumed that everyone is a Christian? How can we avoid treating a church "insider" as an outsider? I just asked Alex how he came to know the Lord. He responded with a lot of religious sounding jargon that really didn't make much sense. I realized he probably isn't a believer but still didn't want to simply revert to the same Gospel message that he has probably (hopefully) heard many times in church. As a high school teacher I know that there is a wide gap between a student who simply repeats words like a parrot and a student who truly understands them, and an informal test of comprehension is to turn the tables and ask the student to teach the teacher what he knows. So I did this with Alex, asking him to assume I am an unbeliever who just asked him how I can be saved. What would he say to me? Alex had no idea, so we talked it through. I've used this approach with many churched people and I think it helps. It can help an immature believer to learn to articulate their faith, and it can help the churched unbeliever face up to the fact of their false conversion.

6/25/11 Mike, Ben, Hillary   20's
Out riding my bike after dark here on Chicago's south side I rode past an old warehouse whose lofts are being rented out to various groups including a production studio. On the front steps were some band members dressed Goth/punk/rage style (not sure what to call it) They were passing around a joint and talking while on a break from shooting a music video, so I asked if i could run a question by them. When they found out it was religious in nature it started a lively conversation about everything they hate about Christianity. Ben turned out to be the most knowledgeable - and hateful - of the Christian concept of God - and he held forth in judgement of God and Christians which led the rest of the group of about 8 people to do likewise. I quickly became the lightening rod for all their blasphemous, hateful, judgemental and profanity-filled statements. Every once in a while they would turn to me a ask - "So what do you believe?" - but they didn't have the patence to hear me out. One guy videoed me and the conversation, saying it would be great for some backstage shots for their music video. I think I took all this verbal abuse well. If anything it got these people talking about their beliefs that they apparently had not talked about before, and it showed clearly why God's condemnation against sinful and rebellious man is justified. When it was time to get back to the shoot, the last - and most vocal - to leave were Mike and Ben. Mike had attended a non-denominational "health and wealth" church and Ben was a pastor's kid. They both explained they had done "the Christian thing" and had rejected it now that they've been enlightened to the truth. I believe the source of their rejection of all things Christian was the easy-believism of someone in their past church experience who assured them they were Christians when, in fact, they never were.

6/25/11   Mike,  about 40
At a park on a Friday evening I was trying to explain to Marcos.- a church brother - how I try to talk to people who look like they have some time on their hands and and how, for example, the guy sitting on the picnic table watching the Little League game was probably a parent who would be too distracted by the game to talk. Marcos wasn't so sure which made me rethink my initial impression and we went over to talk to the guy - Mike. Turned out Mike was totally willing to talk about his beliefs. Every conversation is different but this one went about as close to a classic "law and grace" gospel presentation as I've seen in a long time. Mike started out believing he is good enough to go to heaven, the law helped him see he is not and needs to be saved from God's just punishment, and God in His grace made the ultimate sacrifice of His own Son on the cross for all who repent and believe. Mike received all this gratefully, obviously for the first time. As we walked away Marcos asked why I didn't ask Mike if he was ready to receive Jesus. I felt that Mike had received the Gospel on an intellectual level - without the conviction one needs to truly repent - but Marcos' question was an important one that led to a good discussion on our way home. Proverbs 27:17 says that "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another" and I was glad for Marcos' questions that led me to talk to Mike in the first place and to wrestle with my presuppostions about what true repentence and faith looks like. I am reminded why Jesus sent out his disciples in pairs - it didn't start with the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons - and we shouldn't let them rob the Church of this important part of what it means to be disciples of Jesus.

6/20/11 John, about 35
Out "fishing" for gospel conversations with Anan, a church brother from India, we struck up a conversation with a man named John on the sidewalk who looked like he was headed for the Sox--Cubs game that evening. He was open to answering my questions about his beliefs, secure in his belief that he is headed for heaven because he believes in God and tries to be a nice person, so I used some of the Ten Commandments to help personalize his sin and help him see that he has rebelled against God's authority in his life. He started out laughing about being a liar and a thief but soon turned to pointing the finger at others, saying "but everyone does it!" As I told him of the consequences of his sin I also hinted that there is still reason to hope - but he didn't want to wait to hear about it. He suddenly had to get going. I suppose I could have run after him, begging him to hear and receive the good news of forgiveness in Jesus, but something told me he first needs to wrestle with the repentance that John the Baptist preached.

6/19/11    Roberto,     about 45
One fear I have in evangelism is encountering someone I've talked with before and not remembering their name or much about their lives or beliefs from the previous conversation. Yesterday I re-encountered Roberto, whom I talked with a few weeks ago, and I simply could not remember his name or anything we had talked about. It wasn't so embarassing however. I just simply told the truth - that I talk to a lot of people and its hard to remember all the conversations. He understood and we continued to talk. I used questions about what he remembered from our first conversation to guide this second one. Roberto is a very poor reader, having only attended school up to the third grade. He is Catholic, and although he says he believes in Jesus he also believes very strongly in praying to various saints, the Virgin Mary, and angels. We talked about the abundance of false teaching in the world but because of his reading difficulties my usual advice didn't work; to check what different teachers say by comparing it with the Bible. I needed to describe false teachers by the characteristics Jesus used to describe them. Still, Roberto's authority for discerning truth continues to be "if it feels right in my heart" and he refused to look to the Bible or to trust those who preach it or teach it. This reminds me of the need to be ready to witness to people who make up a large percentage of the world's population - those lacking the ability to read the Bible for themselves.

6/18/11 Andre, about 25
It was getting late in the evening and I hadn't met my daily goal of having a gospel conversation with someone, so I parked my car after running some errands and began to walk around a city block. Praying in advance for the person God would put in my path, I ran into a young man named Andre. He was waiting at a bus stop and I used a million dollar bill gospel tract to help initiate a conversation. Andre had grown up Baptist but has now adopted the universalist belief that all religions are the same. We talked about how they all teach that our good works will earn some sort of eternal reward - all except biblical Christianity - and Andre was reminded of the Gospel truths he had grown up with. I brought him through the good person questions based on the Ten Commandments, and Andre seemed to be in total agreement not only about his guilt in breaking them but about the just punishment he deserved. Several buses came and went, but Andre declined to board them, saying he felt God speaking through our conversation. For awhile he was in silent thought, and I believe he was "counting the cost" of repentance. "You don't know what I was about to do before you came to talk to me" he said and from other comments he made he may have been referring to drugs, sex, or even suicide. I really felt like he was broken and humble - a good place to be when dealing with ones rebellion against God's law and authority - but then he started a sort of personal pity party, blaming God, church people, and others for not responding to his kind and friendly actions with the same treatment in return. It was tempting to fall into the role of a counselor, explaining or making excuses for the supposed mistreatment by God or other believers, but I soon realized that Andre's self pity was based on the reward rather than the punishment he thought he deserves. I told him about the Gentile woman who asked for "the crumbs dropped from the children's table" as an example of someone who rightly knew she needed mercy, not a reward. (Mark 7:28) Eventually I drove Andre to his destination, leaving him with some important decisions to make as he counted the cost.

6/12/11 Mike the Umpire, about 45
Today I played softball with our church softball league, made up of teams from the many locations of our non-denominational and evangelical community church here in Chicago. After the game I asked the umpire, Mike, about his church background, not sure if he was just hired by the league from some sort of agency or if he had church ties. He did, having attended our church in the past and now attending a similar church in the suburbs. I was tempted to just assume he must be a Christian, but just to be sure I asked "How can you be sure you'll go to heaven? What do you put your faith in?" Turns out he believes everyone will go to heaven, and that life on this earth is his idea of hell. Not the answer I expected but a reminder to take nothing for granted, and that opportunities for evangelism are all around us, even at church events.

6/11/11     Mike,      about 20
Today I went with Bob (from my church) to share the Gospel at the IIT campus. One person we met was Mike, an Asian-American and computer programing student. In answer to my questions Mike claimed to have no beliefs about God, no religious upbringing, and no concern about such things either way. I've heard it said that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. If true then Mike seemed about as far from God as one could get. His indifference made further conversation very difficult, so I left him with a challenge to consider the possibility that God does exist and our soul will continue to exist after we die. After leaving Mike, Bob and I agreed that he really does care, and that his attitude of indeifference is just a defense mechanism. But it was an effective one and something I'll have to think about in order to be ready for the next person who uses it.

6/8/11 Stu, about 20
I was approached on the sidewalk by a young African-American man named Stu who asked to use my cell phone, as his wouldn't work. After helping him I used this as an opportunity to ask about him and his beliefs. Stu is involved in a dance troupe that performs for both private parties and in downtown Chicago at tourist hotspots. He believes in God but not in Jesus, and the reason he gave was that native cultures all around the world have their own version of a "Jesus", a god-man who gives his life to save us, many of which pre-date the historical Jesus of Nazareth. I personally don't know how true that is, but Stu viewed it as evidence against Jesus, that he is just a product of wishful thinking. I talked a little about the historical evidence for Jesus, but focused mainly on Stu's need for Jesus, how he has sinned specifically against God by breaking the His laws, and how only a perfect and infinitely worthy sacrifice could satisfy God's demand for justice. The way I see it, Stu wants to dismiss and reject Jesus in order to free himself from the obligation to obey and follow Him, and he has found in revisionist history sources a good excuse to do so. By focusing on his rebellion against God's laws and his need to restore a right relationship with God, I hoped to give Stu good reason to want to affirm his need for Jesus instead. Stu's reaction? It definitely got him thinking, but I think his experiences on the streets with dancing have left him more hardened and slow to trust every new thing he hears.

6/7/11    Trie, about 50
At a grocery store Starbucks I used a MDB as a conversation starter and met Trie, who told me he had come to Texas as a refugee from Vietnam in 1975. He and his family were Buddhist, and he had also been under Communist teaching, but his family was "adopted" by a Lutheran church and helped him come to faith in Christ. From our conversation he appeared to be a sincere believer in Christ who has somehow become stuck in a holding pattern for many years. He says he is too busy to be a part of a church, and he hasn't been reading his Bible, and this soon became evident from the lack of humility I sensed as he told different stories about himself and his good works. I could tell he has repeated his litany of beliefs about his own goodness because he began repeating himself after awhile, like a scratched record that keeps skipping back to the beginning. I think he is in a sort of spiritual holding pattern and has stopped growing in his faith because he hasn't been under solid biblical teaching and he hasn't been exposed to and challenged by other believers. The Bible says that we believers help each other's faith "just as iron sharpens iron" and I spent much of the conversation trying to persuade Trie to take advantage of the opportunities for fellowship and growth that involvement in a local fellowship can give him.

6/6/11 Damien, Davee 19,17
In our American church culture that too often believes in cheap grace, how do we make the possibility of hell real to people? At a park where our church was holding it's softball league, I had met Damien and Davee - two teenage brothers who had grown up in a mixed church background and now reject religion - and as a result of our conversation they had agreed they would be found guilty on judgment day, but they still weren't concerned, clinging to a belief that God would just forgive them. Damion said "So everyone is guilty then, but I know God won't send everyone to hell." I could see his point, that a God who would create mankind only to condemn us all to hell does seem too unbelieveable to take seriously. I'm starting to think that just as the good news of God's grace doesn't make sense without the bad news of the just punishment we deserve for our sin, the reverse is also true:- the bad news doesn't make sense without the good news. The idea of hell sounded crazy to Damion and Devee, because their trust is in a different god who will simply give cheap grace and forgiveness to anyone who asks. I had felt they weren't ready for the gospel since they hadn't taken their own guilt seriously, but then I found myself telling them about Jesus and the cross for that same reason; because the cross reminds us that there is grace but in no way is it cheap.

6/3/11 Dave, 67
I found an older man named Dave at the park, out of his wheelchair and practicing walking with the help of a low fence. We talked for perhaps ten minutes about natural things before I swung the conversation over to the spiritual. He had almost died from a heart attack and/or stroke ten years ago, and has been in the wheel chair ever since. He knows his own bad habits led to his condition. We talked of our different views on how one can be saved. He is a Catholic and puts a lot of emphasis on his final thoughts or prayer before he dies, feeling that if he dies having confessed all his sins and asking for forgiveness he will be saved. I explained how this is really faith in one's own humility or confession rather than faith in Jesus. He asked how my Christian faith was different from Catholicism. I try to avoid sectarian "rabbit trails" and debates, and I usually just say that the older a church denomination is, the more likely they are to rely on their man-made traditions rather than the Word of God. But Dave kept asking about praying to saints, telling how he goes to pray for healing at a shrine of St.Jude here in Chicago. I told how it is tempting to try to find someone else to put in a good word for us when we don't feel we can approach an authority ourselves. I wish I had explained how Jesus is our advocate before the Father (1 John 2:1  "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.") but didn't think of it at the time. Interestingly, Dave eventually asked "So what are you saying I should do?" - but when I told him about repentence and faith in Jesus, I don't think he liked the repentance part too much and seemed to dismiss the whole idea.

6/1/11       Lou,    about 20
On a sidewalk I met a young Asian man named Lou, who told me he rarely thinks about God and doesn't see any reason to believe in Him since we can't be sure if He really exists. Lou was very stoic and listened to everything I said without comment or question. He responded to my questions about his beliefs with short answers, so it was hard to get much of a conversation going. Yet he stayed to listen. He grew up with no religious background, and is now a college math major. He said he won't believe in anything that can't be proven, so I talked about why I believe in God's existence from the evidence of creation, and how we can only know about God as he reveals Himself to us, rather than create ideas about God from our own imaginations. Still no facial or verbal cues from Lou that might indicate his interest, yet he still stayed to listen. I talked about our sin, our accountability to God as our judge, and our need for forgiveness. Still no sign of agreement or disagreement from Lou - but he was listening. I think this young man really didn't know what to say or what kind of questions to ask about God because he really doesn't think about Him, having long ago dismissed such thoughts as non-scientific. There are many people out there like Lou, who don't give God a second thought, and we need to get their attention.