In his latest book, co-authored by Doug Schaupp, Don Everts explores how people come to Jesus in today’s postmodern culture. I Once Was Lost is based on the stories of two thousand postmodern people and how they found their way in to a following of Jesus. Everts, whose books Jesus With Dirty Feet and The Smell of Sin are absolute must reads for any Christ-follower, will be speaking at Journey this weekend as part of our July at Journey series.
One, of many, learnings from the new book was this: Act more like Paul. We (Christians) need to begin “affirming kingdom impulses” that skeptics have, and then point them to Jesus. Everts and Schaupp write:
“We [Christians] struggle to emulate Paul in this. We fear affirming sin in our friends and so we say nothing, or we judge. Maybe we turn a blind eye and naively tell them, ‘It’s all good.’ We might be shocked if God showed us today how many non-Christian friend’s values are worth affirming: the gay activist’s commitment to equality, the Muslim coworker’s sacrificial weekend involvement in caring for the poor. Unfortunately, these often go unnoticed.” (p. 45)
How would our efforts to reach out be altered if we thought this way? How would we respond to our non-believing friends? How would we change by examining our friends inherent goodness (”God-ness” even)?
