talking about faith: casper visit re-cap

Media_httpstevebrowne_mcoxv
via stevebrownetc.com

As I wrote last week, my friend Matt Casper came by First Pres' on Sunday to speak with my class. It was great having him. In our brief time, we talked about several things regarding outreach. I'll outline those briefly here...

Listening
When we talk with people of other faiths-or no faith-about our own, we have to first acknowledge that it isn't a one way conversation. We don't earn respect and the right to be heard without first listening to them. Which leads me to my next point...

Respect
People are people. Treat people with respect. Just because they have made different conclusions than you doesn't mean they haven't thought it through. Which leads me to my next...

Humility
You don't have to have all the answers. Be willing say, "I don't know." As Matt often says, "It's about dialog not debate.

At the same time, I added another aspect:

Confidence
As I written before, "evangelism" has become for many a creepy or embarrassing term. But we need to rediscover how to speak about these things with confidence (while with humility) in ways that are "normal" to each of us. And I am also assuming a couple of other things:

- That we are in relationship with people that are not of our faith
- That we have conversations with others about our faith

I hope that in my class, people got a chance to see that this doesn't have to be weird and contrived. That this can be quite natural... even with an atheist. We'll talk about this more next Sunday at 9:45am. Author and pastor, Henk Vigeveno will be back to talk about this with me. Henk has been advocating this kind of approach for half a century. I'm glad to have him.

come to my class tomorrow...

via youtube.com

I've invited a dear friend of mine to join me in my class at First Pres' tomorrow morning at 9:45am. Matt Casper is an author, a great musician and an atheist. Check out the video above to hear a little about the background of his book with co-author, Jim Casper and what it feels like to visit churches as an outsider. In my class, we've been talking about what outreach and mission looks like here in our city. Tomorrow morning, we will get the chance to talk with Matt and hear what outreach looks and feels like from an outsider's perspective. Hope you can join us.

From Geoff:

I ran across this article from Allelon which highlighted tension points as the church attempts to engage and relate to Western culture today. The article was prompted by recent work/statistics from the Barna Group as well as observations from a book entitled, “Jim and Casper Go to Church.” (the observations of and conversations with Matt Casper the friendly atheist as they visit churches across the U.S.)

What are the challenges facing the church in our culture? The article lists:

  1. The relative indifference of most churched Christians to unchurched people.
  2. An emphasis on the personal rather than communal faith journey.
  3. A tendency to perform rituals and exercise talents rather than an invitation to and experience of the presence of God.
  4. The absence of a compelling enough call to action.
  5. The failure to listen to dissident voices.