You will find a variety of resources to help you live an outwardly focused life in an inwardly focused world on my website at GodsGPS.com. If you have a question after reading one of the articles or books I’ve written, post it here and I’ll do my best to guide you as the Spirit guides me.
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October 26, 2009 at 11:16 pm
How do you not have an agenda in a conversation
yet seek to incorporate listening and wondering questions in hopes of
creating God Space? Is that not an agenda?
October 28, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The “agenda” word seems to stir up quite a lot of dissonance these days. It seems like many Christians have become uncomfortable with the fact that Jesus has definitely called us to embrace and live out His agenda for our lives (Galatians 2:20). Part of this agenda includes cherishing Him before others by extolling the virtues of His Kingdom. Having said that, I do not believe being wise towards outsiders (Colossians 4:5) means that we have to be driven by this agenda and thus end up committing one or all of the top three evangelistic misdemeanors: 1. running the stop signs, 2. exceeding the speed limit, or 3. hijacking the conversation. Evangelism should be our ultimate motive, not our ulterior motive. So, when I am in a conversation I always carry around the hope of being able to communicate God’s good news to others. Asking questions and listening are just simple ways to demonstrate God’s love to others in practical ways by tangibly living out Philippians 2:3. Thus, I am just being myself in Christ and letting the conversation go where it goes. A good check to make sure I am not being agenda driven in any conversation is to stop and ask for permission before raising questions which are spiritual in nature. At the end of the day, is there such a thing as a conversation that has no agenda? I’m just wondering . . .
December 16, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Everybody has an agenda in relationships. No getting around that. Christians perhaps more so than most, but everyone who talks to someone else has some kind of agenda for the conversation and perhaps even the relationship.
What we must learn is what Jim Henderson calls “non-manipulative intentionality” (in Evangelism Without Additives). We want others to become disciples of Jesus. That’s maybe our main agenda (we likely have others). We intend to nudge them closer to this possibility in whatever gentle and respectful ways we can (see 1 Pet. 3:15), but we refuse to manipulate them to get this done. The only way to do this is to let go of the outcome of the conversation and the relationship to God. We engage with intention, are gentle and respectful and truthful in the engagement, but we must not steer or manipulate our way to our own desired end. We trust God with all that, and keep showing up.
December 17, 2009 at 6:41 pm
What kind of evangelism are you advocating?
December 17, 2009 at 7:11 pm
This is a frequent question I’m often asked by people who are looking to find a box to put what I am advocating in. So if you are looking for a box, allow me to craft one for you because none of the old boxes fit and I hate being misunderstood. I am an advocate for spirit-led evangelism whereby we take the initiative led by the Holy Spirit to engage people in relational ways. This requires us to balance urgency with wisdom, boldness with compassion, harvesting with sowing, and proclamation with listening. “God Space” is created when we offer our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, (See Romans 12:1,2) and show up in our everyday world with our hearts, minds, eyes, ears, lips, hands, and feet at His disposal to direct as He wishes. As we are led by His Spirit, (Romans 8:14) He will direct us on whether it’s time to cultivate the soil, plant a seed, water it, fertilize it, or harvest it in our relational encounters.