Greg explains the first step in a tactical approach to sharing your Christian convictions with others.
Transcript:
00:11 I talk a lot about having a tactical game plan in
00:15 place that will allow you to go forward and engage somebody in a productive way
00:22 for Christ without taking a lot of risk on yourself. I've talked in the past
00:27 about the importance of not worrying about the harvest but thinking more
00:31 about the gardening because if we garden effectively, then the harvest will take
00:35 care of itself. Plus, the idea of trying to win someone to Christ and get them to
00:39 sign on the dotted line is a little daunting for a lot of people, so they sit
00:43 on the bench instead of getting out into the field. And so I want to suggest a
00:48 means by which you can do that. Okay, what's the first step of the game plan?
00:52 The first step of the game plan is to simply gather information. You cannot
00:58 know how to proceed effectively in a conversation unless you have basic
01:04 information. Now, what does that do? It gives me a little bit of a sense of the
01:08 lay of the land. I might find out whether or not they're a Christian, or if they
01:11 used to be a Christian and aren't now, or whether they've ever thought about
01:15 Christianity, or whether they're hostile to Christianity. You see, these are all
01:19 things that are really valuable to know before you move forward. This is one step
01:24 that you you don't need to hurry. Do not worry about getting to the endgame,
01:29 winning them to Christ, don't even think about that now. Just think about
01:33 gathering information. Now, I have a model question at this point that will help
01:37 you, and the model question is, "What do you mean by that?" What do you mean by
01:43 that? It's a model question that means you can use it different ways
01:47 under different circumstances with different people. Now, this is especially
01:51 helpful when people are raising objections against Christianity or
01:57 offering challenges. There are all kinds of challenges that require
02:01 more information. And so when somebody says, "Well, everything is relative,"
02:06 and you ask, "What do you mean by relative?" or they say, "I believe in evolution," and
02:10 you ask, "What do you mean by evolution?" or they say, "I believe the Bible is filled
02:15 with errors," or "The Bible has been changed," or "...that Jesus never lived," or
02:20 "...that He lived, but He wasn't a miracle worker," etc., etc., etc., it is always in your
02:26 favor to ask more questions. And you don't have to answer that objection, not
02:33 at this point. All you have to do is get more information. And the more
02:38 information you get, the better. The more you understand that person, the more you
02:42 understand that person's ideas, the more clarity you have of the challenge, the
02:47 better you'll be able to decide in the future which direction to go or if you
02:52 don't go in any direction at all. This first question, "What do you mean by that?"
02:58 meant to help you gather information, is going to get you started, and that's all
03:06 we want to worry about at this point in the tactical game plan.
