Crossing Cultures: EECWTC2C

Today a friend said that he had just been through a presentation of Creation to Christ with a local. When the local friend did not say they wanted to believe, our friend wondered. In our conversation, he was asking himself whether or not it was appropriate for him to simply stop meeting with this person, in fear that time spent with him might be less time spent with more receptive local friends.

Questions: What if faith is actually very near this person? What if he needs some more time? Our friend is learning the local language, what if he misunderstood some important questions that this local person had about Christ or His story?

We know that there are examples in Scripture of where Jesus did tell His disciples to move on; when there was rejection of the Gospel in some of the towns He had sent them to, for example.

How do we know for sure if God’s telling us to move on and find new local friends to share faith with, and should we stop being friends with lost people, ever?

I’ve been trained in EE and CWT and have even been part of writing other such presentations of the Gospel, tools to be used in calling people to faith and repentance, and in training others to do the same.

But I think we are wrong when we see C2C or any other tool simply as a filter to find receptive people. It should rather, I think, be used as a good resource, among many, to help us know how to dialogue about our faith better with local friends.

In discipleship, we have to have a level of language and cultural learning so that we can understand what questions our friends have about the Story, from creation to Christ, from questions about other religions, about the practical aspects of faith, about ancestors who have died apart from knowledge of Christ, about idols, and hundreds of other real life issues. And discipleship really begins, not at the point of conversion, but with lost people who are encountering the Biblical worldview for the first time.

If it’s hindering you from getting to really know people and making them followers of Christ, then throw away your canned Gospel presentations and start fresh with your Bible and God’s Spirit.