At our church we’re doing a series on How to talk to a… I really like it when we do series like this at our church especially when we trade off preaching. Last week Jenn preached a brilliant sermon on How to Talk to a Muslim ( I hope she’ll write a post about it soon). I spoke on how to talk to a New Ager this last weekend. I used Acts 17 as my text. I chose to utilize the voice of Samuel L Jackson and others in Inspired by… (a great source for re-reading or introducing yourself to the Bible for the first time) and then I put together a video with pictures depicting the Mars Hill event.
When I started my research on New Agers last month I realized that they are all different but in some ways are the same. They are typically Theistic, esoteric, like the use of crystals, and have a love of finding different spiritual elements that make up their religion. I find it to be very fascinating. From my time of living in California, I found New Agers very approachable to talk about religion and why they believe what they believe and the same is true out here. I think the roughest thing is when you tell them that you believe in Jesus Christ and the Church. After prayer for incite for what to talk about I felt led to use Dan Kimball’s book They Like Jesus but not the Church as a way to communicate what these people look at the church.
The key points I used were the ones that spoke about the way people of the Emerging Culture view the church. The six factors he uses are:
- The Church is an Organized Religion with a Political Agenda
- The Church is Judgemental and Negative
- The Church is dominated by males and oppresses females
- The Church is Homophobic
- The Church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong
•
- The Church is full of Fundamentalist who take the Bible literally
For my next six post I’ll talk about each of these as Dan Kimball does in his book. I would recommend checking out his blog. In his book, he recommends putting a spin on each of these problems that people have with The Church to help nonbelievers to see what our church is about.
After discussing this list in my sermon I recommended everyone to move towards the different spins as oppose to allowing ”our church” to be compared to what has been seen in the past by “The Church.” I finished my sermon by discussing the way that Paul dealt with the Athenians on Mars Hill, mentioning that he was concerned about the idols but still engaged with the people and even complimented their religiosity and quoted their poets to find common ground and then he spoke of a loving, caring God who is not made of human hands but instead made all of us and even put life into us.
I also told my own story of one of the New Agers I met while working at California Pizza Kitchen. She took one look at me and could tell that I was very Spiritually gifted/powerful. I was able to witness with her by not saying a word but through my own being. She was able to see the Jesus inside of me.
Both of these stories exhibit evangelism that is not judgmental but leads to explaining about love and grace of Jesus Christ. When we engage in debates we do not help to build the Kingdom of God. When we listen and share with love we help to make future disciples. Tracts and the use of hell in evangelism are manipulative techniques that come right out of a sales person’s handbook. Let’s share the Gospel with people. God has sent his only son to earth to give of a new life, one that is full of freedom and has given each of us gifts so that we might have a purpose.
If you would like to read more about New Agers check out wikipedia they do a great summary and also reference a lot of good sources.
Cheers to you and yours,
Lance
