Tonight I had the opportunity to preach at The Crossing. They are the church that is joining Revolution on April 23rd. They are going through the book of Acts, which is a great segway as they get ready to join us and they think through being a church on mission.
Tonight I preached on Acts 10 and the idea of being fluent in the gospel and how we share the gospel with people who don’t know Jesus. We will post the sermon on our podcast this week, so you can hear it if you like.
The problem for many Christians is that when we share the gospel, we shoot ourselves in the foot because we don’t listen enough. One of the things that is interesting in the book of Acts is how each time Peter and Paul share the gospel, they do it differently. They start in different places, answering specific questions depending on who they are talking to and where they are.
Every story has 4 parts and the gospel has these 4 parts as well (I’m indebted to Jeff Vanderstelt for this): Creation, fall, redemption and restoration. Each person has these same 4 parts in their stories as well.
Creation gets at our identity, who we are, where we see our lives coming from.
Fall gets at where things are broken, where our lives went off the tracks. This also gets into who we blame, who we think is at fault. Is it us, our parents, spouse?
Redemption gets at how we hope to fix this, our solution to what is broken.
Restoration gets at what our future hope is. What we hope and dream life will be like and become.
Most Christians in sharing the gospel start at the fall. You are a sinner, separated from God, broken. What Peter and Paul does in Acts is they start where there is common ground. They ask questions, learn who they are talking to, see what gospel they believe in, what they hope in, who they see themselves as and then start there.
If someone talks about the brokenness of the world, start there, talk about brokenness and how the gospel can fix that. If they talk about how one day life will _______, start there. Tell them how life is not how it is meant to be and there is a future hope in the cross and the restoration Jesus will bring when he returns.
If someone talks about their family, identity, where they find fulfillment, who they are. Start at creation and describe who God created them to be and then move into why that is broken and how that can be redeemed.
In Acts, they always share these 4 parts, they just start at a different spot. I wonder if we would have the effectiveness they did if we did the same.
Just a thought.