Thoughts Along The Journey

I finished up a book today that talked about establishing churches through teams.  The author referred to 2 Timothy 2:15 as the “life verse for all pioneer church planters”.  The verse reads: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.”  In his comments on this verse, I saw another element arise to our ongoing discussion about Gospel conversation, namely that of a deep knowledge, familiarity and experience of the Word, the Gospel.

We can become so concerned with learning so many other good things, that we can neglect deep study of and interaction with the biblical text.  I’ve been spending a lot of time reading many of the Advance papers in preparation for the Cape Town 2010 conference, but then I realized that I was not giving an equal amount of time to the Ephesians study that all participants were asked to prepare.  It’s a question of time.

The author of the above work shares this story about a mission wide conference he attended: “To this day everyone remembers three words from his [the speaker’s] talk, even as he yelled them out to the conference hall audience of 1,000 plus: “Cut!  Cut!  Cut!”  He was speaking of the crucial need to prioritize our time and to drop lots of tertiary activities.  We must do whatever is necessary in our schedule and workload in order to major on the ministry of the Word.  The net result of this should be to lighten our load, not make it heavier.”

There are many good things that vie for our time, but we must not neglect our need to intellectually, emotionally and spiritually grasp what is and what moves the heart of our Father.  Then we will know how to “respond” to another.  And all that is certainly a question of time.

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Last night I was invited to attend a meeting of leaders from our French church.  As I sat listening to their discussions, I couldn’t help but wonder how these leaders navigated the discussions they were having, given the multiple cultural backgrounds from which they came.  Some of the cultures represented were: Chadian, Vietnamese, French, Central African Republic and Congolese.  All these leaders were conversing in French, but obviously working from different cultural frameworks. 

Cross cultural living and working really does necessitate “that we have a deep understanding of what others believe, what is their worldview;” that we understand how others think, how they process so that we can better engage them in Gospel dialogue. 

Colossians 4:6 has been a help to me in thinking through what we mean by Gospel conversation with others.  Here Paul describes the nature or character of Christian discourse: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer each person.”   First of all, Gospel conversation is characterized by its graciousness, its kindness.  It is never harsh in order to make a point.  And second, it is “wisdom filled”, that is, it is conversation that brings depth and insight as well as challenges. It incites others, in a good way, to further dialogue.

What has struck me the most in this text is that the work of “preparing”, of understanding is all directed towards knowing first how to respond to another, not how to initiate conversation in order to get across what I want to say.

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