Part 2: Greg explains the first step in a tactical approach to sharing your Christian convictions with others.
Other videos in this series:
The Burden-Free Step in Discussing Christian Beliefs
The Unexpected Way to Effectively Make Your Point
Where Do Moral Laws Come From?
How to Get out of the Hot Seat While Remaining Engaged
How to Avoid the Professor's Ploy
The Unexpected Way to Effectively Share Your Beliefs
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.
