Why "Evangelism" is so different in Post-Christian Culture?
Tim Keller and Oikos Evangelism
Tim Keller in this teaching articulates what I have experienced with regard to doing evangelism in a post-modern, post-christian society. Growing up in Latin America and inside of the Bible Belt of America, evangelism has been described as a program such as evangelism explosion or the 4 spiritual laws from Campus Crusade. Although these are incredibly great resources and methods, Why don’t they work so well as in these other settings.
The answer is because people live in a setting where the gospel is extremely foreign to them. Most people I come in contact rarely believe in God, let alone understand the gospel. Many of them think they know all their is to know about Christianity and are not interested. Therefore evangelism become a lifestyle where you have to live the gospel through your life and less of a program to share.
Keller quotes John Stott’s commentary on the book of Acts over the 4 different ways the gospel is told in the Bible. Stott (Events, witnesses, promises and conditions).
In a setting where people have never been churched, dechurched or lightly churched. There have to be 4 things which take place. This is why evangelism is more of a process.
The gospel has to be intelligible, to people. (You have got to bring them to the place where they understand what it teaches. People don’t know what God and sin is. God loves you can mean a whole lot of different things. They have to understand these basic ideas of God, truth and sin. So you must make sure they have the intellectual furniture to go on.
…credible to people. (People have defeater beliefs) such as there can not be one true religion. Or can’t trust the bible it was written by the winners.
They might understand the gospel but not believe it to be true. There are defeater beliefs which people think are common sense. For example 1) there can’t be just one true religion or 2) the bible was written by winners so it can’t be true. You can not make the gospel intelligible unless you deal with these different defeater beliefs. You need to be able to answer these defeater beliefs in soundbites because our generation isn’t ready to sit around for looong talks about religion. Show that these beliefs don’t work on their own terms.
…plausible. People have to see how the gospel meets their need. This is how God can meet your needs that no one else nothing can meet.
…intimacy…Do you know how to make this personal.
Evangelism explosion and other traditional methods goes straight to intimacy and assumes people already believe the gospel is intelligible, credible, and plausible.
First two are hard edge of gospel and second two are soft side.
Methodless method…
Friendship…..in friendship, evangelism will happen naturally unless you short circuit it in two ways. 1) You lead an unattractive lifestyle. 2) You hide how attractive Jesus is to you.
You don’t love people in order to evangelize them. You evangelize them as you love them in order to love them. Only cowardice will short circuit evangelism.
Traditional evangelism you are in the driver seat. In oikos evangelism you simply share how Christianity affects your life and they are in the driver seat. This makes it incredibly attractive to unbelievers and scary to us.
Oikos evangelism takes place in networks
Kinships (family)
neighborhood
colleagues
affinity (hobbies and stuff you like to do)
Friends (people you meet in all the other networks)
Identify a few
Pray for them
Get closer to them as friends.
Overcommunication of the gospel needs to be done in light of a need that they have. It has to come when it is more organic. This needs to take place when the need is made aware. Then give them a book, tape, take them to church, offer a course, etc.
Another possible model for sharing the gospel Keller shares is”
Creation…God created perfect world
fall…because of our self-centeredness we destroyed world
redemption…Christ redeemed us so that we could experience
restoration…the way he had made the world.
Tim Keller and Oikos Evangelism
Tim Keller in this teaching articulates what I have experienced with regard to doing evangelism in a post-modern, post-christian society. Growing up in Latin America and inside of the Bible Belt of America, evangelism has been described as a program such as evangelism explosion or the 4 spiritual laws from Campus Crusade. Although these are incredibly great resources and methods, Why don’t they work so well as in these other settings.
The answer is because people live in a setting where the gospel is extremely foreign to them. Most people I come in contact rarely believe in God, let alone understand the gospel. Many of them think they know all their is to know about Christianity and are not interested. Therefore evangelism become a lifestyle where you have to live the gospel through your life and less of a program to share.
Keller quotes John Stott’s commentary on the book of Acts over the 4 different ways the gospel is told in the Bible. Stott (Events, witnesses, promises and conditions).
In a setting where people have never been churched, dechurched or lightly churched. There have to be 4 things which take place. This is why evangelism is more of a process.
The gospel has to be intelligible, to people. (You have got to bring them to the place where they understand what it teaches. People don’t know what God and sin is. God loves you can mean a whole lot of different things. They have to understand these basic ideas of God, truth and sin. So you must make sure they have the intellectual furniture to go on.
…credible to people. (People have defeater beliefs) such as there can not be one true religion. Or can’t trust the bible it was written by the winners.
They might understand the gospel but not believe it to be true. There are defeater beliefs which people think are common sense. For example 1) there can’t be just one true religion or 2) the bible was written by winners so it can’t be true. You can not make the gospel intelligible unless you deal with these different defeater beliefs. You need to be able to answer these defeater beliefs in soundbites because our generation isn’t ready to sit around for looong talks about religion. Show that these beliefs don’t work on their own terms.
…plausible. People have to see how the gospel meets their need. This is how God can meet your needs that no one else nothing can meet.
…intimacy…Do you know how to make this personal.
Evangelism explosion and other traditional methods goes straight to intimacy and assumes people already believe the gospel is intelligible, credible, and plausible.
First two are hard edge of gospel and second two are soft side.
Methodless method…
Friendship…..in friendship, evangelism will happen naturally unless you short circuit it in two ways. 1) You lead an unattractive lifestyle. 2) You hide how attractive Jesus is to you.
You don’t love people in order to evangelize them. You evangelize them as you love them in order to love them. Only cowardice will short circuit evangelism.
Traditional evangelism you are in the driver seat. In oikos evangelism you simply share how Christianity affects your life and they are in the driver seat. This makes it incredibly attractive to unbelievers and scary to us.
Oikos evangelism takes place in networks
Kinships (family)
neighborhood
colleagues
affinity (hobbies and stuff you like to do)
Friends (people you meet in all the other networks)
Identify a few
Pray for them
Get closer to them as friends.
Overcommunication of the gospel needs to be done in light of a need that they have. It has to come when it is more organic. This needs to take place when the need is made aware. Then give them a book, tape, take them to church, offer a course, etc.
Another possible model for sharing the gospel Keller shares is”
Creation…God created perfect world
fall…because of our self-centeredness we destroyed world
redemption…Christ redeemed us so that we could experience
restoration…the way he had made the world.
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