BATH SPA CHRISTIAN UNION

Hello solidiers of Bath Spa!

Next week will be different at CU David Bish will be talking on 'How can a loving God let people suffer?'. This week is for you to bring your friends to CU which God has put on your heart to come to know Christ. We encourage everyone to be bold this week and ask your friends with love to come along. The setting at CU will be different to usual to allow your freinds to feel comfortable, so be encouraged! This is your golden opportunity! Please pray for David Bish, boldness and guidance to ask our friends and that the friends we ask to come to CU on Thursday will come hungry to meet the real Jesus, and that they will rejoice as they come to know him!

Last night Becca did a amazing talk on Evangelism training, we reccomend that if you wernt their you read the following. Remember -Loveing Evangelism, Love comes first. Here is a summary of her talk! Lets get equipt!

Evangelism Training @ Bath Spa!

Evangelists share the Gospel, as Christians we are all called to Share the gospel.

What we are doing at CU next week is sharing the gospel with our friends; by inviting them along they will here the gospel and could become Christians.

Most of the time people are saved by interacting with ‘normal people’ e.g. family, friends or maybe a random person who gives you the bible. These people all have this in common: They are faithful inn sharing their love for Jesus. This should really encourage us – We can all be evangelists! Its not about being articulate or always saying the right things, it is about being faithful in sharing Jesus with the people in our lives and trusting God to do the work in peoples hearts.

What is evangelism?

Simple – introducing people to the person of Jesus.

Pointing people past us and to the person of Jesus. Evangelism isn’t about us. YEY! We can all do it!

‘How can a Good God allow Suffering?’ is the questions we are asking next week. Big questions like this may seem scary. I am going to show you a skill, which really helps, which is to ask a question back, this is what Jesus did. We can follow Jesus’ example.

Why should we ask questions in evangelism?

- It prevents us from going in to Verbal diarrhea and just vomiting out every thing we know about the gospel and going into panic syndrome- this isn’t the most effective way of sharing the gospel, our friends are more likely to get scared, and this isn’t very loving.

What’s the better way to do evangelism?

Read Luke 18 v 18-19

What does Jesus do? He doesn’t launch into a gospel presentation he asks a question back. He doesn’t vomit the gospel on this man. He engages him in conversation.

He asks a question to start a discussion started about what it means to be good, ‘why do you call me good?’ Jesus says. The aim of it is to highlight the guy asking that even though he thinks of himself as a ‘good person’ he’s not perfect, he’s not God and salvation isn’t something he can earn with his good works, its something God gives to us, its not something we earn. Only God is good.

So Jesus, instead of giving him a neat tidy gospel outline asks him a question and engages him in a discussion. Instead of an answer in the form of a presentation- Jesus asks him a question, which leads them to a discussion, a conversation.

Read Mathew 12 v9-12, Mathew 22 v17-20, Luke 20 v1-8

Jesus often answers a question with another question! It is his most useful technique with people. He engages the person in conversation by asking them a question back to their question.

Obviously Jesus answers some questions directly sometimes- so should we. The point it to not to jump to quickly to the answers. We sometimes want to hold off and engage people and try and find out where they are coming from, but we obviously do always want to eventually get talking about the gospel.

What do you think are the benefits of asking questions back to people?

Greater understanding of the person and what they believe. IT helps us to see what makes them tick and find out where they are coming from. Often it helps us just understand why they have asked it in the first place.
Takes pressure off you.
It defuses the tension and engages them.
Buys you some time!
Helps them to see errors of their own worlds view and see what their hearts are like.
Helps us see if it is a smokescreen – e.g. what about people who’ve never heard, most people who ask this aren’t really interested in the answer- they just know that its something we sometimes fins hard.
Helps us see question behind question – e.g. why does God allow suffering – is it abstract or is it cos Mum died last year?
Helps prevent an argument.

By turning the question around you can put the authority in Gods hands rather than your own e.g. if you are asked ‘do you think I a m going to hell?’ the person is putting you in the position f authority rather than God, you need to show that person that it wasn’t about you and your standards but it was about God and his standards. So you could ask the question ‘why do you think God sends people to hell? Do you think he is ever justified in doing that?’ This puts the authority into Gods hands.

There are some common questions that people ask, think of some questions, which you could ask back in response to these, in relation to what we have learnt:

Why does God all suffering?

Is there something in particular that makes you ask that? - Find out where they are coming from.

How can we trust what the Bible says?

What do you think makes something trustworthy? – Introduce them to some evidence.

Why does God want to limit my sexual freedom?

How would you define freedom?

How is it fair that God sends people to hell?

How do you think God decided who goes and who doesn’t? - Shows you what they already understand of the gospel.

Top Tips:

1. Your manner matter! Be gentle and loving with people. People are not projects or minds you have to convince, we need to be warm with people and try to persuade them of the truth lovingly.

2. Don’t just try to win the argument. The temptation can always be to just prove your self to be right. Our goal is to show them Jesus- therefore our conduct in how we talk to people is important!

3. Aim to open the Bible with people- use uncover to introduce people to Jesus, we need to show him to them, there fore invite them to read uncover with you.

4. Its ok not to know the answer- its better to say I don’t know but I would love to find out for you that to fake it.

UCCF has a great website! : http://www.bethinking.org/ crammed full of answers to all the hard questions! Make this your first port of call! Its brilliant for finding answers to all those difficult questions!