This blog is my personal journey to understand how to share the gospel with the growing number of people who don’t seem to be reached through common evangelism techniques, especially those who are far from faith, who have no interest in the Bible, in our spiritual perspectives, or even visiting a church.
Inspired by those in Acts who sought out unbelievers far from Jerusalem, I’m seeking new ways to share Jesus with those far from the faith. Those believers, even though not leaders, recognized the urgency of the mission when persecution started and they accelerated growth toward the ends of the Earth. They eventually reached the first purely Gentile audience in Antioch:
And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. … Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. … Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. Acts 8:1b, 4, 11:19-20
Today, it seems that we are living in a time of unprecedented and growing spiritual darkness that needs to be addressed with similar urgency. Unfortunately, existing evangelism in the West seems to be insufficient. Even given occasional local success, overall it isn’t working.
As a result, we need additional efforts to go into this darkness, the Antioch of today. Although I’m nobody special, like those believers in Acts, I believe that there are untapped opportunities to work far from standard Christian contexts. Thus the approach of “Exploring Antioch” – prayerfully combing the Scriptures and seeking the Spirit’s guidance for fresh insights specifically about reaching into the spiritual darkness that is far from church, yet all around us.
A first step is to think about the Acts 1:8 sequence spiritually, by placing God at the center. Thus, it’s not about how far away people are from us or our church, or how different they are from us culturally, racially, economically, and so on. Rather, the important thing is how far they are from God. Many people don’t believe, yet still respect the Bible or are open to church activities, and have some openness to hearing of God. They may be thought of as spiritually residing in Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria. However, those at the spiritual ends of the Earth want nothing to do with Christianity. Rather than inviting them in, we need to go to them and speak in their language.
We’re obviously not talking about their spoken language, but the languages of their hearts – the nature of the message to which they will respond. At the spiritual ends of the Earth, this is unlikely to be based in Scripture or familiar Christian terms.
How do we do that? I don’t think we can rely only on secular tools like surveys, even though God may work through them. Instead, I think we need to rely on what Jesus said when He sent disciples out, that the Spirit of the Father would give the needed words. He empowered the believers at Pentecost to speak in the needed languages, guided Peter and Paul and other evangelists to speak differently to different audiences, and gave boldness to the early believers when things seemed dark.
And just as those believers prayed for boldness and Paul later asked for prayer to speak effectively, we can start with prayer. So, in addition to working through these spiritual principles in more detail, a key project on this site is to create a related prayer devotional.
The results of this exploration are documented in this blog; comments welcome.
Exploring Antioch 