In a Youth Evangelism class at the College where I teach youth ministry, we have been wrestling through a chapter from Pete Ward's book entitled: Youthwork and the Mission of God. He urges us to move away from presenting the Gospel in a linear way and use a more 'honeycomb approach' that will connect the gospel with where youth are at. The emphasis is that Christ did not have one way of presenting the Gospel and that depending on where someone is at, a different entry point is needed. This has radical implications for all the more packaged gospel presentations and programmes in use at present. Some of my students feel that all we need to do is get youth to experience Christ. We are trying to work out whether this is an over-reaction, like a pendulum swing, because we have been so truth-orientated in the past; or whether there is a whole new way that will 'work' with contemporary youth culture in terms of connecting them with Christ through salvation. How should we understand the experience/truth issue in terms of evangelism? Is there a different way to interpret the need to give an answer to the hope we have (1 Peter 5); or ensuring that people hear the message (Romans 10)?
I put this issue out via email to a number of youth ministry specialists around the globe and, after adding in other insights from books on my shelf and articles on the web, I created the following summary of insights:
Experience and Truth
* Experience is important in Christianity - a personal relationship with Christ.
* Experience is not what makes Christianity true - God's truth is true regardless of my experience.
* Experience plus rational evidence is completely different than experience instead of rational evidence.
* Experience must be judged by truth, not vice versa.
* Experience must be subordinated to truth, but truth should not eliminate experience
* For postmoderns their experience is the basis for their beliefs - for Christians...
* The subjective witness of Christian love should supplement and not replace the truth of the Gospel.
* Reason is reliable, but not sufficient - while reason can tell us much, we need revelation.
* When we deny reason, we automatically deny truth.
* Feelings and experience should follow after truth.
* When experience is the goal of my walk with God, I am no longer in line with biblical priorities.
* Experience is not necessarily the best teacher - it can teach us false 'truths' - it is limited: it can be hard to differentiate the voice of the Spirit from the voice of Satan or their own emotions. We need a solid evidential and experiential apologetic.
* What I believe does not change the validity of the truthfulness of something.
* We should not have to choose between experience and truth - it is both/and.
* Avoid the either/or trap of logical Jesus vs. experiential Jesus.
* The truths of the gospel, not just the experience of meeting God, are crucial.
* Jesus never said to experience Him in order to be saved (we must believe in Him - that belief has content and is based on truths, it's not simply an emotion or feeling or experience).
* Remember that the gospel, in its essence, is a truth, a fact. Jesus rose from the dead. We can't divorce the truth from experience.
* By the nature of Truth, the Gospel is propositional in essence - just because propositional statements aren't always effective with post moderns we don't need to throw them out.
* Evangelism has both situational and propositional aspects to it - we interact both with the circumstances a person is in, and seek to convince them of the truthfulness/relevance/power of what we believe.
* Without abandoning the Jesus story, youth need the story verified in the lives of individuals, in community, in experience (their own), and in beauty (art, music, drama about Jesus).
* Let people become convinced of the truth of the gospel through seeing the unity of sincere believers or by experiencing God in a worship service; but move them past this to ground them in the truth of our faith - or we risk losing them to their next experience.
* Start with personal testimony and then talk about why you think your experience was truly of God.
The Two Worlds of Modernism and Postmodernism:
* Modernism - based on scientific rationalism; growth and achievement; rely on reason and intellect; people discover truth through rational thought and observations; comfortable with central authority; discounted the spiritual and supernatural; key assumption is that knowledge is certain, objective, good, and obtainable. Information processing is linear; one's outlook is optimistic; progress is inevitable; and the focus is on the individual.
* Postmodernism - based on existentialism; there is no meaning; rely on emotion and the will; into personal autonomy; focus on personal experience as the basis for truth; assume that people with different experiences have different truths; sceptical of all truth claims; deny that we can know truth in any universal sense; we create truth; key assumption is that truth is not rational or objective. There are other ways of knowing, including one's emotions and intuition. Truth is defined by each individual and the community of which they are a part.
Features of Postmodernism that are Opportunities for Evangelism:
* People today are more interested in spirituality that ever before
* People understand and appreciate stories
* Celebration of diversity
* Relationships are considered very important
* Postmodernists are concerned about ecology, sexism and racism
Features of Postmodernism that are Challenges for Evangelism:
* All truth is relative: based on personal convictions or social constructions
* It is wrong to impose one's beliefs on another - arrogant and evidence of intolerance
* Personal narratives are accepted but not a meta-narrative - no universal truth-claims
* Absolute truth is either not a possibility, or not worth pursuing
* All morals are relative - personal beliefs mean there is no standard of right or wrong. Sin?
* Personal experience is the key to understanding truth
* They are more heart than head orientated - want to feel more than know
* They are more communal than individual
* They are more present than future-orientated
* People learn through stories and not through theoretical constructs
* Modernistic approach to apologetics don't work any more
* There has been a shift from vertical relationships to horizontal relationships
* There has been a shift from choices based on linear thinking to choices based on image
(Note: when I presented this section in my youth class, my students saw positive opportunities in each of these challenges!)
Weaknesses in Postmodern Thinking:
* They are guilty of absolute thinking in some areas (There is no absolute truth!)
* They have not necessarily thought through their beliefs - most are not purists
* Beliefs are held very lightly as they can change all the time
* Postmodernism can produce loneliness and nihilistic thinking
Guidelines for Evangelism in a Postmodern World:
* Respect what people believe and the traditions and experiences that have formed their beliefs
* Do not uncritically accept all religious beliefs as true
* Probe a postmodernist's core of objective beliefs - they do have them
* Live a life that will impact them and lead them to God
* We must do a lot more pre-evangelism with people
* Use a narrative storytelling approach to communicate the Gospel
* Create opportunities for people to interact genuinely
* Help people see that there is a common reality affecting everyone
* Help people see that there are moral norms that are universally binding
* Develop genuine friendships with postmoderns before evangelising them
* Use media to communicate the message
* Be authentic - honest and humble
* Expose postmoderns to the subjective evidence of a caring Christian community
* We should not have to turn postmoderns into modernists for them to find Christ
* We must stress peer ministry in ministry
* We must use experience-based learning methods to anchor the message and explore experience-based evangelism methods
* Communicate truth through parables, metaphor, and emotions
* We must not view conversion as a decision - but as a journey (we enter a community; learn a story; learn a language - becoming saved somewhere along the line)
* There are different ways in which people get to the point of conversion: we encounter people who believe; they share their beliefs; they share the impact the Lord has had on their lives; they share their weaknesses; they offer to pray for us and we experience God in our lives; they argue the reasonableness of their faith; they take us to church where we see Christian community; they share their story, as well as 'the world's story' (creation-fall-salvation-redemption)
* There is no clear-cut approach to evangelism
* Difference in his presentation were based on where people were in their journey
* We should initially learn a "canned" gospel presentation but then tailor it to each individual
* We must know when to adapt to our context and when to challenge it
* Avoid the extreme of telling a generation only what appeals to their culture - we can challenge
* Apologetics will be needed to clear up misconceptions about Christianity
* Don't over stereotype people according to generations or worldviews - ie. most people today are only selectively relativistic
* We must not sell out to postmodern perspectives - we need a fresh orthodoxy
* The Church is the apologetic for postmodern youth
* Use a gospel format that communicates in a narrative, story telling style. Make a statement about Jesus, and then (rather than quoting a scripture) tell a story about the life of Jesus that would bring out the truth of that point.
* We must find the common ground that exists between Christianity and postmodernism (we also believe that reason alone is inadequate, we critique modernism, we deny the myth of progress, we are concerned about racism and sexism, and the environment.
* We must discover presuppositions - help people critique and understand their own views, creating uncertainty in people's minds about what they believe.
* We must use a discussion rather than lecture format - Socratic evangelism
* We must communicate truth in love
* Evangelism is a process rather than an event - people make smaller decision before they make a big decision.
* The evangelism of the future will be:
- more organic (part of life itself) and less institutional or programmed,
- more personal and less doctrinal,
- more quality focused and less quantity focused,
- more grace-filled and less sin-dominated,
- more a triumph by the Spirit and less a triumph by man,
- more motivated by joy and less by fear,
- more a community dynamic and less individualistic,
- more motivated by the heart and less by propositions or formulas,
- more validated by experience and less by knowledge,
- more open to multiple points of entry and less restricted to certain times and places,
- more helpful to multiple stages of growth and less a one-time-event,
- more unique and intuitive and less cookie-cutter salvations,
- more art and less rhetoric,
- more listening and less talking,
- more modelling and less teaching,
- more cross-cultural and less cultural,
- more frank about carrying your cross and less commercial in selling a benefits package,
- in short...more honest and less manipulated.
The following summary alist was developed through class room interaction with trainee youth pastors at BTC Southern Africa:
1. Respect people's beliefs, traditions and experiences
2. Don't uncritically accept religious beliefs as true until verified
3. Probe them to discover their objective beliefs
4. Help people examine and understand their worldview
5. Develop a postmodern Christianity
6. Don't turn postmoderns into modernists
7. Help them accept a common reality affecting everyone
8. Help people see there are universally binding moral norms
9. Do a lot more pre-evangelism
10. Use apologetics to clear up misconceptions
11. Be authentic - honest and humble
12. Base outreach on peer ministry
13. Create opportunities for people to interact genuinely
14. View genuine friendships as evangelising
15. Expose people to the subjective evidence of a caring community
16. Use Christian community as your main apologetic
17. View conversion as a journey rather than a decision/destination
18. View evangelism as a process rather than an event
19. Acknowledge conversion happens in many different ways
20. Change your presentation based on where people are in journey
21. Use a narrative storytelling approach to communicate good news
22. Use media to communicate the message
23. Use experience-based methods to anchor the message
24. Communicate through parables, metaphor, and emotions
25. Accept there is no clear-cut approach to evangelism
26. Learn a canned presentation, but then tailor make it to people
27. Use a discussion rather than a lecture format
28. Communicate truth in love
29. Don't sell out to postmodernism, embrace a fresh orthodoxy
30. Know when to adapt and when to challenge the context
31. Don't only say what appeals to people - challenge also
32. Don't overly stereotype people according to worldviews
32. Live a life that will impact and lead them to God
33. Help people make small decisions on the way to making big ones
34. Use relevant concepts, like adoption, hope, community and relationships
For an excellent article on the shift from modernism to postmodernism read an interview with Stanley Grenz.
Read my summaries of what key authors are saying about ministry among postmodern youth.
Return to Model of Youth Ministry