Tuesday morning evangelistic smack-down, x

Fourteen lessons on evangelism from E. Stanley Jones:

1. Anyone who really desires to win others to conversion can do so.
2. Everyone is made for conversion.
3. It’s three against one, really. The Holy Spirit is dealing with every person alive.
4. Then go to the person with a positive expectation of winning the person.
5. Don’t be inhibited by a feeling of your own unworthiness.
6. Don’t be surprised if there seems to be an initial resistance.
7. When they reveal their needs, don’t be misled by a marginal need….The real need is conversion.
8. Aim at the surrender of the self, not the surrender of this thing, that thing, the other thing.
9. In lieu of surrendering the self the person may raise this, that, or the other religious question….The end in view is not discussion, but decision.
10. When you come to the point of decision get the person on his or her knees….The issue is not now between the counselor and the counselee, but between the counselee and God.
11. Have him write his decision on the flyleaf of his Bible.
12. Get the convert to straighten up his life in all his relationships.
13. Get them into the Christian church as a vital, contagious member.
14. Remember that in this whole process from the initial approach to the final consummation in getting the person into the church and out on his own to win others, the Holy Spirit is teaching you what you shall say and do at every point of need. (Conversion, 218-26)
    

Strip Club Ministry A small Christian college in our area has begun to take students out to the three strip clubs we have in Jackson. They have been threatened, hit and kicked, yet – bless their hearts! – they continue to go out. For good reason:

Sexually-oriented businesses, such as strip clubs and massage parlors attract crime to communities. In addition, the general content of pornography supports abuse and the rape myth (that women enjoy forceful sex) and serves as a how-to for sex crimes, primarily the molestation of children. Land Use Studies by the National Law Center for Children & Families show evidence of the correlation of adult businesses and crime.For example, in Phoenix neighborhoods where adult businesses were located, the number of sex offenses was 506 percent greater than in areas without such businesses. The number of property crimes was 43 percent greater, and the number of violent crimes, 4 percent greater. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, director of education, University of Pennsylvania Health System, pointed out, "I have been treating sexual violence victims and perpetrators for 13 years. I have not treated a single case of sexual violence that did not involve pornography." (Source: Gow, Haven Bradford. "Child Sex Abuse: America's Dirty Little Secret." MS Voices for Children. 3/2000)"

Update from one of the strip club ministers: "I just wanted to tell you some good news. Today in chapel one of the security guards from XXXXXXXXXX showed up. He cried during the service and wants to come again. He shared that he had quit his job and desired a new life. He also said that another security guard had quit and that an assistant manager had quit. He said it was all due to the fact that we had started coming down there. Praise the Lord!"

Praise the Lord, indeed.

TJ was wrong “Thomas Jefferson was confident that rational Unitarianism was destined to be the dominant creed of the new Untied States, and generously offered his version of the New Testament shorn of miracles and supernatural intervention….Unitarian-Universalists today comprise around 0.2 percent of the U.S. population. So thoroughly was eighteenth-century liberalism obliterated that many modern writers tend to assume that its ideas were invented anew by Victoran skeptics and rationalists, or perhaps grew out of the controversies over Darwinian evolution. Then as now, the triumph of secular liberalism proved to be anything but inevitable.” (The Next Christendom, Philip Jenkins)

Ring Out There! “In the past, it was necessary only for the Church to ring its bell for the people to come to it. Now, however, it is necessary for the Church to take the bell to the people.” (Pope Paul VI)