Saturday, August 28, 2010

College: Best Evangelistic Opportunity You'll Ever Have

"Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity." Colossians 3:5

Until you find yourself confined to a nursing home, college is best evangelistic opportunity you will ever get. In college (even a Christian college) you live with non-Christians. These non-Christians will listen to your words (words they would never otherwise be willing to hear) because you live with them. You support your words with a powerful visual aide: because they live with you, the people you are evangelizing get to observe how your membership in Christ's church affects every aspect of your life.

Once you graduate, everything changes. Americans are thoroughly committed to rugged individualism. If I walk next door and try to talk to my neighbor, he thinks I'm crazy. People are supposed to keep to themselves. This is America. Don't I understand that?

After college you'll meet people at work, of course. There may be a bit of time here and there to share the gospel, but for the most part your coworkers will be distracted by their work (that's why they're at work, after all). Plus you won't be living with the people at work. They don't get to see your faith in Christ lived out 24/7 like your dormmates do.

The students in your dorm leave their doors open for a reason: they want people to stop by and talk to them. They want to be distracted from their homework. What better way to distract them than by forming a relationship that can serve as a foundation for evangelism?

College students complain about how busy they are. They are not busy. Unless a student is working himself through college, no one uder the age of 65 has as much free time as a college student. This provides something absolutely essential for evangelism: time. Explaining the gospel takes time. Lots of time. After college, non-Christians are generally not willing to give believers sufficient time to share Christ with them.

While still in college, they will give you the time. They will sit and talk with you for hours about evolution vs. creation, postmodernism vs. being able to possess certain knowledge of absolute truth, the religious claim that man can earn salvation vs. the Bible's teaching on the necessity of Christ's atonement, etc. After college non-Christians will not spend hours sitting on a couch discussing such matters. In college, they are willing. Make the most of this opportunity.

If you are a college student, you have opportunities we older Christians can only dream of. You can engage in more evangelism in the next four years than all the rest of your life put together. Make the most of this opportunity.

Evangelistic tips for college students:

1) Become an associate member of a local church and attend that church faithfully (every week, even when you are tired or moderately sick). Make sure the church is committed to Biblical inerrancy, and to the gospel of justification by faith alone, through grace alone, because of Christ alone. Make sure it is a church you would invite non-Christians to without any hesitation. In other words, make sure the preaching and music are both excellent. The church should be committed to pastoring and shepherding its associate members (college students). You are a sheep. You need a pastor to feed and protect you. You must be humble enough to admit this, or you are going to starve and/or get eaten (not necessarily in that order). If no pastor is willing to pastor you, move on until you find a church that is willing to provide genuine pastoral care to its college students. (Note: Reformed University Fellowship - RUF for short - is the campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church in America - PCA. The RUF staff worker is an actual ordained pastor. He is a shepherd, bearing both rod and staff. If your campus has an RUF chapter, I urge you to join and receive the benefits unique to RUF.)

2) Taking a person to church is the most effective method of evangelism the world has ever seen, or ever will see. This is true for two reasons. First, God has made the preaching of his Word the primary means by which he convicts and converts sinners. This is not to denigrate the importance of one-on-one evangelism. It's just that hearing the Word preached is more powerful, more central - it is how the Holy Spirit most prefers to bring people to Christ. To put it as simply as possible: if you want someone to become a Christian, you need to get him to church. Second, Jesus came preaching the gospel of the kingdom. "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." The kingdom of God is not heaven. The kingdom of God is the church. Jesus did not preach, "Believe in me so you can go to heaven." He preached, "Believe in me so you can be part of my church." This distinction is critical. If the church is the good news (in other words, if being part of Christ's body is what we are saved unto), then your evangelism has to be church-centered. It is your church as a whole leading a person into Christ's church.

3) Evangelism is a slow process. Do not try to rush it! Most of the evangelistic task is really what we would call "pre-evangelism." There is a great deal an unbeliever must be taught about the nature of God, man, sin, Christ, and the world in general before he can understand the gospel well enough to respond to it. So don't just jump in and start talking about how Jesus died for our sins! Instead, find out about a person's worldview. How does he define the word "God?" What is his definition of sin? Does he cling to the generic religious worldview (that human beings can earn salvation through some combination of good works, religious rituals, and trying one's best to avoid the really big sins)? Or is he committed to philosophic naturalism (humanism, secularism, postmodernism, whatever label you prefer)? Regardless, you have to find you where he is and proceed from there. There is no point in talking about how Jesus died as our substitute if the person does not believe in creation, or does not know the correct definition of sin, or does not understand the necessity of a Mediator between Creator and fallen creature.

4) Avoid Christianese. Do not use words or phrases like "saved" or "ask Jesus into your heart." Also, remember that even if the non-Christian knows some biblical terms (God, sin, hell, etc.), that doesn't mean he has biblical definitions in mind for these terms. Likely to him the word "God" means the wimpy, sentimental, Unitarian pansy mentioned on greeting cards in Hallmark stores. So you have to define everything. This is why evangelism takes so long. Much of evangelism is, in fact, teaching non-Christians the Biblical worldview (meaning the Biblical definitions for Biblical terms).

5) Avoid emotional manipulation and hasty decisions. The evangelist George Whitefield urged his listeners not to make quick decisions to convert. He did not want impulsive commitments made in high-emotion situations (like what people can feel in the middle of a revival meeting). Instead he told potential converts to go home and think the matter over in private. Did they really understand what they were getting themselves into? Becoming a believer is the most important decision a person will ever make. How much thought and consideration should go into deciding whom to marry? Even more thought and consideration should go into deciding whether or not to covenant with Christ.

If you are a college student, I am so happy for you! You are living with non-Christians who have lots of free time, and are willing to spend much of it having long, meaningful conversations.

May God grant you great fruitfulness in sharing the gospel of the kingdom with your fellow students. May your labors make the Church of the living God bigger and better. May your feet be counted beautiful indeed.

When you stand before Christ, may He find that you made the most of every opportunity!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Relevance of Six-Day Creation

Is it adequate simply to "believe in creaton," or is there some value in embracing the specific details recorded in Genesis 1-2? I am a Young Earth Creationist (YEC), which some consider the more remarkable given my chemistry background, interest in amateur astronomy, study of formal logic, and authorship of several science fiction novels (not silly end times nonsense, but real SF, set far in the future and showing the church alive and well).

The Bible teaches that the universe is about 6000 years old. Scientific observation shows that the Earth appears to be about 4.5 billion years old, while the universe as a whole appears to be about 14 billions years old. One can quibble on these numbers a bit, but it is obvious that we are dealing with two radically different views of the world.

Thus the many efforts to reconcile Genesis 1-2 with the competing conclusions reached by modern scientists. Some Christians question the literal interpretation of Genesis 1, preferring to think of the word "day" as symbolically referring to long periods of time. Other Christians attack the methods and interpretive paradigms of modern scientists, asserting that perhaps the universe does not really appear to be that old after all.

Although this post is not intended to defend my own attempt at reconciliation, let me say in passing that I believe God has made a young universe that appears old. This is the "appearance of age" theory, and it has many detractors. Let me suggest, however, that unlike all the tortured treatments of Genesis 1, the "appearance of age" theory does flow naturally out of the text. On the day they are created, Adam and Eve are clearly portrayed as looking older than they really are (they have adult bodies, not infant bodies). But more on this another time.

What I'm really interested in discussing here is why the whole topic matters. Some of us have a natural aversion to controversy (not always a bad thing), and the issue of the earth's age can needlessly divide and distract the church (aren't there much more important matters worthy of our time and energy?). Nevertheless, I would be so bold as to assert that the age of the earth actually matters. The issue is relevant, in other words. Please allow me to explain why.

The Doctrine of Original Sin teaches the following:
1) God made a world that was very good, a world very unlike the one we now inhabit.
2) Adam sinned against God, resulting in negative consequences for the creation in general and mankind in particular.
3) As a result of Adam's sin, all humans descending from him (by ordinary generation) inherit a sin nature - we are sinful from the moment of conception.
4) Because Adam carried the office of Federal Head for humanity, the guilt of Adam's first sin is credited or imputed to the whole human race. This means God considers all people guilty of Adam's first transgression.
5) Adam was not only head of the human race; God made him king over the entire physical creation. When Adam fell, the creation fell with him. Death and decay entered the world. The creation is now in bondage to decay, and awaits the day when it will be redeemd and transformed.

The key idea I'd like you to focus on is this: the world as we see it now, as we experience it now - this is not the way God made the world. The pre-Fall world was radically different. A world without decay. A world without death. Given how all physical processes in this world are governed by entropy increases, it is frankly impossilbe for us to even imagine what the pre-Fall world was really like. But the key idea is that it was nothing like this world.

Why is the current world so horrible? Because we screwed it up. God made it very good. We rebelled. God is now keeping his promise: the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.

It is essential to guard this Doctrine of Original Sin, that all the blame for the world being the way it is stays where it belongs: on our shoulders. God did not make the world this way. It is our fault that the world is the way it is.

Now this is why the age of the earth matters. It seems to me that the idea of the earth being 4.5 billion years old is linked pretty tightly with the idea that the world has always been as we see it now. A world governed by death and decay. A world that has experienced no radical discontinuity between the way things are (meaning the basic physical laws of the universe) and the way things were.

For example, let's examine a layer of sedimentary rock full of fossils. Fossils = death. If you claim that the layer of rock of 300 million years old, then you are claiming that death has been around for at least that long (i.e., long before Adam and Eve showed up on the scene). Then the presence of death and decay is no longer Adam's fault. It is God's fault. The world is the way it is because God is a lousy Creator.

So far from being some secondary issue best shunted to the side for the sake of unity, the age of the earth actually finds itself inextricably bound up with the core Doctrine of Original Sin. This is not a secondary matter. It is, rather, the very issue of blame bantered back and forth in Genesis 3. Who is to blame for the world's fallen condition? (This planet is a horrible place. If you think otherwise, just give it a little time.)

According to Genesis 3, Adam (and by extension, the whole human race) is to blame for the world being the way it is. Before Adam sinned, the world was not like this. We need to guard this piece of the Biblical worldview, for what is at stake is not only God's reputation as a good and wise Creator, but also the sufficiency of Christ's redemptive work. For only if the sin of the First Adam is the cause of everything wrong in the world, only then is the obedience of the Last Adam the solution for everything wrong in the world.

Those fossils can't be older than Adam, because before Adam there was no sin, no death, no decay, no disaster - none of the stuff that today produces dirt full of dead animals.

Guard the Doctrine of Original Sin.