Why the right gets it wrong and the left doesent get it...

A couple quick thoughts and prayer requests.

First off, I want to mention an event, being hosted by the college that has just started here at CC: “Religion in Public Life: why be afraid. It promises to be a rich discussion of religion, including Christianity, and how that should influence our societies. One of our first speakers was Jim Wallis, author of Gods Politics: why the right is wrong and the left doesn't get it. It was an incredible discussion of how the gospel should affect political thought that was both encouraging and challenging to me and I believe very stereotype breaking for many other students. Please pray that the Christian community would take advantage of the opportunity for discussion created by these lectures.

The second thing is a reminder about Jesus unplugged. Please keep praying that people would be drawn to this place where they will have the opportunity to sit at Jesus' feet. We have scattered seed widely in invitation, and hope to see a significant harvest.

Finally, a story. Last week our scripture application experiment was based on a discussion of Jesus' love for lost things. The natural application experiment was to go looking for some lost things. We used an Evangelistic survey developed by CRU and went into the dorms to talk with people. There were many very good, real, conversations that came from this effort. A particular blessing was a very long conversation I got to have with one freshman guy. He came into another conversation that had been spawned by one of the surveys, abruptly stating, “Christianity is the single wost thing that has happened to people in history.” But he stayed in the conversation even after everybody else had left... after listening to him describe his problems with, thoughts about, and lots of other stuff regarding religion, I asked him, “would you like to hear what I think is really important in Christianity. He said yes, and I was able to outline the 'meta narrative' of the good news for him over about the next hour and a half. Please pray that this friend would dwell on the Gospell and keep asking quesitons about faith. This interaction really gave me a chance to practically learn a lot of what I had been taught regarding “postmodern evangelism” in the training for this internship over the summer. Key aspects that I would like to share with you include:

~Listening to, knowing, and caring about the person you are talking with. This provides the necessary relational connection on which “post moderns” will build trust. People will listen to us if we honestly will listen to them first.

~Asking people if they are interesting in hearing what we think is so important about Christianity, Jesus, or whatever the conversation is talking about. This opens the door for people to actually listen as we speak, rather then engaging in a debate of sorts. Then, of course, it is important for us to understand the gospel and communicate it clearly.

As always, thank you for your prayers!

Shalom,

Andrew