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August 15 - August 25, 2024
Whether the questions are old or new—or angry varieties of either—we should be more engaging and less confrontational in our sharing of the good news. We must find new hinges upon which to swing open new doors. RANDY NEWMAN, Questioning Evangelism
I would dare say that celebrating the person who thinks and believes like us is far older than the seventeenth century. The ironic part of it all is that every one of us thinks we are right.
He was persuasive, not argumentative. Curious, not critical. Careful, not crushing. Asked, but didn’t assume. Connected before he corrected. Jesus was not the loudest proclaimer of what he believed to be true, but he was the busiest doer of what he knew to be love.
“Okay . . . if I went to church, I would go somewhere where I could ask questions and I wasn’t judged for thinking differently.”
Doubters’ Clubs are gatherings led by a Christian and a non-Christian who model friendship and pursue truth together.
The purpose of the next nine chapters is to show that the Doubters’ Club isn’t a new thing to do. It’s a new way to do everything. It is a lifestyle that builds bridges where there used to be barriers and sets us free from “closing the deal” every time we converse with people who do not think like us. In fact, making disciples isn’t getting people to think like us at all. Thinking like us may be the barrier, not the bridge.
Loss is like a wind, it either carries you to a new destination or it traps you in an ocean of stagnation. You must quickly learn how to navigate the sail, for stagnation is death. VAL UCHENDU
So, you’re telling me there’s a chance? LLOYD CHRISTMAS, Dumb and Dumber
As they continue to research the decline of religion, they stated that “the most momentous change in American religion over the last 25 years has been the growth of the religious nones from 5 percent in 1994 to 34 percent in 2019.”[1]
“The natural, fear-based reaction to these changes,” Dickerson writes, “is to raise our guard and fight for our rights.”[2] Based on the statistics, it’s safe to say fear-based reactions are not winning others over. It’s time we respond, not react.
Let me tell you what drew me back into the Christian faith. It was a person, not a program. A detour, not a destination. A commitment, not a conversion. A patience, not a prayer.
Perhaps most revolutionary of them all, it was someone who led with their weakness, not their strength.
If the Kingdom of God is within you, you should leave a little bit of heaven everywhere you go. And I think that is our new strategy. Go to heavenless places and leave a trail of evidence for the doubter. Not through argumentation (sometimes that feels more like hell), but rather by demonstrating that life in Christ is not necessarily thinking like us; it is thinking with us. We are all doubters on a journey to the front door. Doubts, not answers, might be our common ground with the unbeliever.
Model friendship with people who think differently and pursue truth together.
Below is the agenda for how we hold a Doubters’ Club meeting: Step 1. We go over our five ground rules so we can have a respectful discussion: We value respect above being right. We listen without interrupting. We are a safe place. We listen with an open mind. We understand and accept differences of opinion. Step 2. A Christian and an unbeliever talk back and forth about the issue at hand for about ten to fifteen minutes. Since its inception in 2015, we have launched multiple Doubters’ Clubs. Some have Christians and universalists. Others have Christians and agnostics. Others have Christians
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Rather than seeing people as in or out, what if we started seeing people by their degree of distance from Jesus?
Perhaps our dogmatic approaches to who’s in and who’s out are obstructing people’s view of Jesus.
It is important that we are willing to be the companion who journeys with our doubting friends, recognizing Christ among us and acknowledging his love within us.
Would you be willing to start breaking bread with the people Jesus broke bread with?
To be like Jesus to the doubter, it is helpful to remember the daily invitation he offers to each one of us: Even if you betray me tomorrow, will you partake of me today?
Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. HELEN KELLER
There is nothing compromising about listening to the experiences people have had with other Christians.
We have to be willing to confess that there is some intrinsic chaos and confusion within the church.
Why do my non-Christian friends seem more authentic than my Christian friends? How come there seems to be more grace from unbelievers than believers? Why are there so many hypocrites in the church?
If we don’t overcome the discomfort of befriending people who think, act, and look differently than we do, we will certainly be overcome by a world of people who correctly think they are better off without us.
Instead of defending the reputation of the flock, what if we returned to the actions of the Shepherd? The Shepherd whose friendship with sinners was so fierce, he was stereotyped as one of them:
Jesus’ selection of friends is based more on those he can help than those who can help him.
If we befriend the skeptic, one of our massive responsibilities is to defend them and their story in the face of other people’s disapproval.
Instead, let’s look at how the overarching narrative of friendship in the Bible can be summed up in three categories: association, loyalty, and affection.
these three categories build on themselves to show deeper relationships between the characters we are reading about.
Salt is only useful when in association with things that would, by themselves, lack flavor. It is useless in isolation. And salt is not visibly noticed on food. Salt must be associated with something that would be flavorless without it. Salt never takes the credit.
Salt doesn’t seek attention. It seeks to make whatever it is being sprinkled on so desirable that people come back for more.
Are you willing to be associated with the ones whom your in-group may consider flavorless and undesirable?
You do not need to spend needless energy justifying your association with people who are not like you. Instead, expend your energy on those people by being with and for them.
Be it racism, religion, or radical ideologies, we are always faced with one of three options when interacting with people not like us: politicize them, generalize them, or personalize the relationship at hand.
We must not politicize it. The quickest way to suck God’s justice out of a room is by politicizing it.
What a question! “Lord, are you for us, or for our adversaries?” “No.” The question is not what side is God on. The question is whether we are on God’s side.
We must not generalize it. No one likes to be lumped with oversimplifications about the issues at hand in order to fit a preferred narrative.
It’s often the case that when you get people talking about issues that matter, many times their thoughts don’t align with their cause. To the strict materialist, love and justice are of the utmost importance, even though those are immaterial concepts. Human dignity is more important than animal rights to an atheist, even though humans should have no more intrinsic worth than animals, according to this worldview. It’s important not to make assumptions about what a person who doesn’t think like you values.
We must personalize the relationship at hand.
There is something profoundly symbolic about two hands joining as the first interaction we have with someone we don’t know. We acknowledge unity before we engage with our differences. Personalizing the relationship really means we are willing to listen to their story, carry their burdens, and help them find freedom from the pressure they feel in life.
GOD OF THE DETOURYou Cannot Clean Up What Was Meant to Be Messy
My church-going friends were looking for the most efficient route to tour the city, but it was the detour into the local coffee shop that mattered most. I was there to find a neighborhood. Instead, I found a neighbor. A neighbor who became a friend. Detours make the journey deeply personal. Detours disorient and reorient, at the same time. They can be caused by suffering a loss of some sort, discovering a new joy, or walking into the local coffee shop. We are formed more by the detours in life than by the predetermined paths others try to set for us.
Have we made an idol out of efficiency? And, Is anyone on the predetermined path?
Life is hard, and it should not be done without friendships. Whether someone converts to your way of thinking shouldn’t determine whether you remain friends. We all deserve better than a religious rent-a-friend who treats people as means to an end. Detour Guides
fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz when he wrote, “The Great religions are the Ships, / Poets the life Boats. / Every sane person I know has jumped / Overboard.”[1]
The Jesus of the Gospels is compelling for this very reason. He was a detour guide in a tour-guide profession.
We go from soapbox to soapbox, pontificating the rightness of our historical faith, treating the world like visitors in a museum. We ooh and aah through the organizational structure of a building, leadership pipelines, and other highly efficient models that build cultural cooperation. I don’t know about you, but museum tours aren’t nearly as exciting as self-guided tours. And what fun are self-guided tours without an ally who shares in the excitement!
Discipleship starts preconversion. Evangelism (or the moment of conversion) happens within discipleship, but it’s a long trek from negative ten to zero.
Both cognitive models help us understand that (1) discipleship is about getting people closer to the center (Jesus), and (2) progress to the center happens through relationship. I have combined the two models into a “Doubt to Discipleship” diagram:
