Acts 26:28 “Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘Do you think in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?’”
1n 1986 I started a church in Dothan, Alabama by knocking on doors and asking, “If you died tonight do you know for sure you’d go to heaven?” I was pretty successful in my efforts because we filed the church with newly baptized people.
But this isn’t 1986 and we’re not in Dothan, AL. Door-to-door style evangelism worked “back then” because of a combination of Southern hospitality and a Christian enculturated society. In the 1980s, the majority of adults, including the majority of YOUNG adults, knew the basic stories of the faith. They knew Jesus was the reason for the season. They knew that Easter was the celebration of a Savior risen from the dead.
Today, the courts have ruled that Christmas is a secular holiday. And – true story – when asked about the meaning of Easter, one response was “Isn’t that the story of a man who came out of a cave, saw his shadow, and so there were six more weeks of spring?”
Once upon a time, when Jay Leno did his Jay-Walking bit of man on the street interviews, he would regularly ask Christian and church kinds of questions. “Can you name any of the 12 apostles?” and when the answers were “Sleepy, Doc, and Happy” we rolled with laughter. But he soon stopped doing these bits because most Americans didn’t find it funny … why would we expect people to know who the 12 apostles were? (How many can you list? No peeking!!)
Paul ran around in a culture not dissimilar to ours today. The Gentiles knew virtually nothing about the Judeo-Christian “meta story” (the sweeping story of faith from creation to the apocalypse) and so Paul had to “school them” in the stories. “Do you think is such a short time you can persuade me to become a Christian?”
In 1986, I typically had people on their knees asking Jesus for forgiveness in 20 to 30 minutes. Back then, I had something to build on. Today, studies show, that it takes a typical non-believing young adult about three years from first conversation to baptism. It’s not a process that can be … or will be … rushed.
This morning at Doughboys I had an opportunity to share a bit of faith with a fellow customer. Like Paul, the first step to faith sharing is proximity. You have to be where unchurched people are if you’re going to share your faith.
Influence = time. If you want to be an influencer you’ll do no better than to start investing your time with those you want to sway.
Leave a Reply