Larger but just as lively

Yesterday evening's Lost for Words session was larger than the week before, but just as lively! 

We talked about our own journeys to faith.  Four of those present had particular moments in time which had been significant. Five had a more gradual journey. 

The evening focussed on the importance of listening to have meaningful dialogue. Using the story in Acts of Philip and the Ethiopian we thouhjht about being alongside people on their own journey ad of ttreating people sensitively and with respect. Philip asked the Ethiopian "Do you understand what you're reading?" He didn't challenge him, "You don't understand what you're reading!"

We thought about the factors that can make it difficult for people to come to faith, personal tragedies, bad experiences of church,  misunderstanding of what Christians actually believe, lack of knowledge, disinclination to acknowledge someone/something greater than themselves.....

We did decide that even though one person had come to faith as a result of his then girlfriend going off with a rich man twice his age that encouraging women to go off with rich older men wasn't a basis for an evangelistic strategy!

Lost for Words

Yesterday evening was the first of the CPAS  Lost For Words course we're running during Lent.

A small but lively and select group of people worked through the course material. How do we respond to the word "evangelism"? As you can see from the flip chart, it's a word with lots of negative connotations. It's about being pushy, insensitive simplistic. Not something that appealed at all! Hardly surprising really.

So having identified the negative feelings that come with the word we thought about what it could or should mean.  We thought about what it's like for us when someone tells us a piece of good news. One participant spoke about a phone call from her grand-daughter giving her the latest news & how nice it was to have it. 

The course's working description of evangelism is;

"Serving others so they too discover, and respond to, the good news of Jesus"

Nothing there about being pushy.

We thought about the things that make sharing faith difficult.  The principle difficult was fear of embarrassment either of oneself or others. Politics and religion are taboo subjects. What is sometimes known as the "knickers phenomenon" - something that we feel much more comfortable having but that we don't discuss in public.  In fact it's probably more publicly acceptable to discuss underwear than faith! The key principle the course suggests is "Be yourself, with God, for others." and the acronym HELP was suggested for conversations - Honesty (though we liked "Humility") Explore issues, Learn & Pray

    

We talked also about prayer and evangelism.  Based on Colossians  2 4-6 we saw prayer as the vital and our need to be watchful for prayer being answered. Was the conversation I'd had earlier about coming to cafe church an answer to prayer? Who knows?> It was certainly good news!

So the evening which had started with a certain amount of trepidation ended. It was full of laughter and enjoyment.

Roll on next week!