Course Introduction

I want to encourage you to participate in discussions. In class, I'm much prefer to teach with your act of involvement. You'll learn a great deal more if you ask your questions and get involved in that way and it will be very helpful to me if you do. And that's true as well if you have objections to anything I say. I spent my first 20 years in the ministry working in Lebris. The ministry that France is neither shaper founded and the context of Lebris is that there are no questions off limits. If Christianity is indeed the truth, which of course it is, then we should welcome any kind of question or objection or doubt or anxiety happily. God never rebukes people for asking questions or for challenging him in his word. He's much more likely to rebuke you if you have simplistic answers like Job's Comfortance or the Pharisees to the problem of evil and suffering. And it is they who are rebuke to insist everything works out nicely in this life. We've dads that as he looks at what's happening to him. So Scripture does not rebuke us for asking questions and raising objections and it won't intimidate me at all for you to disagree with me. I spent 20 years in a ministry where people were constantly disagreeing with me and asking their questions and raising their dads so please don't hesitate. If you have a problem with something I say, I'm not interested in being right but in being faithful to God's word and in helping you, works with the questions you have. So please feel free, particularly in this class in apologetics, where we're considering all sorts of questions in relationship to the truth of Christianity, it's very important that you feel free to ask your questions. So please do that, whether it's for clarification or to explore something more deeply or as I said, even if you are disagreeing with something I say or doubt whether it's thoroughly biblical, especially at that point I want to know if you have any problems with what I say. Because I'm much more interested in having to give in a can to God one day of what I have to say. The Scripture tells us that those who teach will be judged with greatest strictness. I hope you've all reflected on that as you start your career here at seminary. But being a teacher of God's word is a serious business not to be undertaken lightly because God is going to call us to a can. And we will be judged with greatest strictness when we presume to teach God's word because people listen to what we say and go and add and live on the basis of it. So we need to make sure that we're being faithful to God's word. And so I really encourage you to ask your questions for that reason, for my sake, as well as your own. Please do your reading on time and your book reports and we'll go through that in a moment. And if you have particular questions about things in the books or articles that bring them along to class, but also I want to encourage you, the other note there under point three, if you come across articles that you think are valuable to our class discussions, please don't hesitate to bring them to me. And if I think they're worthwhile for everyone, I'll photocopy them and hand them around to everyone because obviously you all read many things that I couldn't possibly read. And if you come across things that are germane to our discussions, please don't hesitate to bring them to me. I would really appreciate that if you would do that. Now you see the books for required reading there. And I've got them down in the order in which I would like you to read them. We're going to begin the class for the section on postmodernism. So I want you to begin by reading Douglas Groothouse's book Truth Decay. Just came out a few months ago and excellent books. So begin with that one and then move on to Michael Green's book of Angism in the Early Church. And I encourage you because we're going to be looking at what the New Testament has to say about evangelism and apologetics in detail to try to get into those two books as quickly as you can. You'll see there are five books there listed and also a syllabus. Now I have a copy of the syllabus here. There are also three copies on reserve in the library. We haven't put it in the bookstore this time. And the reason for that is there are a lot of articles in here which if we put it in the bookstore we have to get copyright permission which is becoming increasingly expensive. And that would have made the cost of this syllabus prohibitive for you. But it is quite legal for you to make a copy for your own use. If nobody's making any money off it which of course they won't be if it's not sold in the bookstore. So there are three copies of this on reserve in the library. And what I need you to do is for some of you in the class to volunteer to take those copies to Kencos of somewhere and copy them for your classmates. I think that's the least expensive way for you to do it. It's less expensive than doing it here at the seminary. So some of you will need to volunteer to do that. We've done this in classes before and it worked out just fine. And then you will all have to have the integrity to give whoever is paid for this, the cost that they are going to incur for copying it for you. So are there three of you who would volunteer to do this? Take one of those copies each and do it for say 25 people. Thank you. And maybe one more. Thanks. Okay. If you can pick those copies up from the library and take them at and do that and then your classmates can you can resolve that with them and maybe later yes. Some of it is available in electronic format. What I'm going to be doing is giving you my class class outlines up here. And I guess I could forward those to some of you who would want them and some of the quotations in here. In the first section of the syllabus there also I could email those to you as well. And so perhaps at some point we could pass out if you would like to make up a sheet of paper and put that on it who would like both the outline and the quotations being used in electronic format and pass that around I'll be happy to do that for whoever wants that. So if you could just get a sheet and do that either today or some other time just pass it around the class that would be helpful. How many of you are likely to want that in electronic format? Okay, probably 30 of you or so. Okay. Down to grading you'll see there that your grading is divided basically the two primary issues in relationship you're grading are going to be the exam at the end of the semester. Now the exam will be helpful for you to take good notes. But in the exam what I have done in the past couple of years is to ask you on the exam to apply what you've learned. So for example a couple of years ago right after the crisis in Columbine High School for the exam I had you imagine a situation where you were writing to a teacher at Columbine High School having to deal with the questions of some of their students. Now I can't tell you obviously it wouldn't be appropriate what I will design for the exam this semester but it will require you to apply what you're learning so it will help you to take good notes because I will expect you to have mastered the principles of communicating the gospel that are at the heart of this course and use them in the exam as well as some of the material where we're reflecting on where people are at in the culture today. It will need to be a mixture of both but it will be a kind of creative exam in that sense. My desire is that any papers and exams you do will actually be useful to you rather than just simply telling me what you've learned I want you to put what you're learning into practice. Now the same will be true of the term paper and I want to tell you about that in a little more detail in a moment but first you'll see some due dates there. The first book report is due Tuesday, February the 6th. That means you need to get reading right away that's in a couple of weeks and the book reports I just want one page on each book one type written page and I do not want a summary of the content of the book I really know the contents of the book I don't need to keep reading that 72 times so I have many of you are in this class and that wouldn't really help you anyway. What I want you to do is to interact with the book telling me how the book has challenged your own thinking and began to change it so I don't really want to critique of it in a sense I don't like this book for the following reasons I want you to be prepared to learn whether you entirely agree with the contents of each of the books or not and some of the things you will have questions about I have no doubt but I want you to learn to read and to listen and to watch so that you are being challenged yourself when always ought to listen that way Calvin John Calvin was passionately committed to education and he started a school system in Geneva this is back in the early part of the 1500s and he wrote the rules for the school teachers himself and one of the rules was this and it's a fascinating one and I'll come back to it later in the semester but one of the rules was this the teachers were to have their students read the Greek and Roman pagan writers and Calvin put this in his directions for the teachers the teachers are not to criticize these writers but are rather to help their students see what they can learn from them even though they are not believers and Calvin himself said elsewhere that it is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit to deny that pagan writers like Plato had many helpful things to say which can teach us as believers and Calvin says that so strongly because he so passionately believed in what we might call the common grace of God that God is gracious to the whole human race not just to Christians but just to believers just as he sends his son and reign to shine into fall on the just and the unjust unbeliever and unbeliever so God gives his gifts to all people whether it's gifts of the seasons or of food or as Paul says to the pagans in Acts chapter 14 the joy they experience in their hearts every day of their lives or whether it's wisdom

in the book of Proverbs we're told in chapter 8 that God's wisdom speaks to the whole human race and by me wisdom says all kings reign all nobles rule on earth and make laws that are just that's why wherever you go on the face of this world you will find societies with just laws not all of their laws of course but many of them not only where Christians have impacted the society but everywhere because of the common grace of God his compassionate care for all that he has made and scripture teaches us that very strongly that God has compassion on all he has made so be prepared to learn from whatever you read whatever you watch some of you may have been a little disappointed in your grades from from cultural and biblical hermnutics last semester and one of the reasons why where did some of you Dan was you said nothing positive at all about the film or the music or the book with which you interacted you only criticized and I had challenged you last semester to recognize that whenever we try to look at any aspect of human culture we need to be affirmative we need to say where first does this reflect the image of God where do we see things here that teach us as believers we must learn not to have simply a kind of knee jerk negative response to the culture in which we live human beings always manifest the image of God and consequently there will always be images of there will always be aspects of wisdom from which we can learn in any cultural artifact simply because it's produced by a human being made in the image of God who is constantly receiving God's good gifts every day of their life so learn to read to find out what you can learn where you can be challenged not simply to critique of course you've got to exercise discernment that's another issue which of course scripture challenges us to to test all things and to hold faster that which is good so your book reports I want a page telling me how you have been challenged by this book how it's impacting your own thinking now with regard to the paper let's turn to that because this is obviously the major assignment for the class and I want to spend a few minutes on that right now because it's important that you get going on this right away the paper should be about 15 pages long it should arise from a relationship that you have with an unbeliever either somebody you know already or somebody you're going to get to know during the course of the semester so this is not an assignment you can leave till the last week before this paper is due you need to start praying immediately about who you're going to write this letter to because the paper is not going to be in a normal academic paper it's to be written in the form of a letter to the individual you'll write it in the first person I am writing to you to this person by name in about a month's time let's say a month from today four weeks from today I would like from you a paragraph from every one of you telling me who you have in mind so you need to get to work on this right away I need to know that you have somebody you're writing the letter for but you're beginning to think about now many of you will actually give this letter to the person that's of course not required that's a matter for your discernment before the Holy Spirit as to whether this is appropriate or not sometimes it will be sometimes it will not some of you will write this paper for members of your family others of you will write the paper for a friend you've known for years maybe some friend back from high school even or college others of you will write it for somebody you get to know during the course of the semester let's say in your work if you're working off campus now some of you may have been taught all through your lives if you have grown up in a Christian family and in a Christian church some of you may have been taught that it's inappropriate for you to develop close relationships with unbelievers I'm sure there are members of this class who've been taught that that's one of the problems we're going to look at in depth during the course of the semester because it's not biblical let me just say that here I'll support that claim later but I'll just point out how Jesus is a friend of sinners we're told in the gospels and he is our model in everything to do with righteous sinners Jesus is a friend of sinners and we're told in the gospels that sinners welcome Jesus gladly they liked being with him we sometimes make the mistake of thinking that if a person's righteous or genuinely holy that unbelievers would never want to be around them that's not true with Jesus it was the holy people who criticized Jesus and didn't like being around him because he made them uncomfortable sinners prostitutes tax collectors people in all sorts of disarrayed lifestyles and moral disobedience were delighted to be with Jesus because of the warm and gracious and loving way in which he related to them so let me just say here if you've been taught that it's inappropriate to have friendships and close relationships with unbelievers that was wrong that was wrong and you need to repent of it and you need to start praying right now that God will help you develop some close relationships I use an extreme example three or four years ago when the students in this class came to me and said I cannot possibly do this assignment and I said why actually I've had quite a few people saying that to me but you're required to do it so get used to the idea but for many of you I'm sure you already have somebody in mind as soon as I start talking about this but for some of you this will be a big challenge if you've been taught to keep yourself separate from unbelievers completely but this one person came to me I said I can't possibly do this and I said well just tell me a little bit about your life where did you go to college and the person said well they'd gone to a regular secular university I said well surely during four years you must have at least talked to somebody and got to know somebody there who wasn't a believer and the person that replied no I was taught by my church that that was wrong so I went to class every day and I never spoke to anyone for four years I just would go to class and listen to the professor and then go home and I made no relationships at all with anyone so that's just tragic that's tragic and it's profoundly unbiblical if God treated us that way there would be no Christians in this room today at all but he hasn't treated us that way that is the very nature of the gospel look the son of God became incarnate in this world because he loved us and desired to save us and to serve us even at the cost of his own life so this is something which is at the very heart of the gospel it's not something on the periphery of Christianity this is it's very heart that we are called to love and to serve those who are sinners because that is the gospel so I want to challenge you if you have been taught or if it has been your practice your conviction that you shouldn't get to know no Christians I want to challenge you to stop praying right now and make some practical suggestions for you if some of you need help I'm happy to make some suggestions there are some wonderful ministries down in the city where some of our graduates are involved like sunshine mission working with men who are coming off crack and dealing with other very serious problems they'd be delighted to have some volunteer help down there several of us students have done things like that in the past and developed some close relationships with some of those guys there's all sorts of prison ministries you could get involved then where people would be happy to have you going and spending time with some of the people in prisons or you might go along to the local boarders bookstore or Barnes and Noble and just look on the notice board there and go and join a new age group or something quite serious several of our students have done that in the past a couple of years ago several of the guys in this class went and joined a new age group there where the people were studying the writings of James Redfield the celestial prophecy and those other books and they found themselves doing some things they'd never imagined going out to the woods and beating drums with a book group of guys but they also had a lot of fun and got to meet some very interesting people and develop some very close friendships so that I can make all kinds of practical suggestions to you but the most important thing in this class one of the things I passionately desire to teach you is that from now on for the rest of your life whatever kind of ministry God calls you to that you will be committed to spending time with unbelievers as a regular part of your life as a priority and when I came to teach here at covenant 12 years ago I've been involved all my life in the ministry which is reaching out to people who are unbelievers as well as serving Christians and one of the things I said to the Lord was I am not going to come to the seminary and teach apologetics and evangelism if I become buried myself in a context of only fellow believers which it's very easy to do working at the seminary and of course there's nothing wrong with being surrounded by fellow believers it's a wonderful privilege to be in this situation that's not a criticism of this context at all but I'm not prepared to teach apologetics and evangelism unless I am myself involved in close relationships with unbelievers it would be completely lacking an integrity for me to say what I've said in the last 15 minutes and then to only have friends who are believers myself and I have many friends here in St Louis who are not Christians who I happily spend time with on a regular basis and so this is something I am passionately committed to and my prayer for all of you is that if you are not comfortable with non-Christians now that by the end of this semester you will be and that you will be committed for the rest of your life and for all of your ministry to setting an example to your fellow believers whether you're a pastor in a church or whatever it is you're doing setting an example of delighting to be with unbelievers and unbelievers delighting to be with you because it's very difficult to teach about evangelism if you don't like being with non-Christians but all of you are going to be teaching about it at some point so get used to the idea it used to be the idea but it really is my prayer at a very deep level that all of you will see this as a priority for your lives from this semester onwards if it isn't already something that you're going to be passionately committed to and the person of course can be in any position whatsoever many of the people you may write for you may find a nominal Christians who think of themselves as believers lots of people like that around us but who are actually not committed to the gospel or understanding it at all it's rather like the context Jesus and Paul were in when they went into a synagogue many of the people there thought they knew God but many of them certainly didn't many of them certainly didn't so it can be it could be a nominal Christian that's not the question it could be a churchgoer but it needs to be somebody who you know is not a Christian believer not because you're passing judgment on them but because it's very clear that they do not understand and have not committed themselves to the gospel and again many of you I know some of you because I've talked to some of you already have members of your family like that to think of themselves as believers but most clearly aren't and have no real understanding of the gospel of Christ so your paper your letter should arise from a relationship with somebody somebody you're getting to know that the paper will fall into several parts at the beginning I want just half a page to a page from you in which you recount to me a brief history of your relationship with the individual so that as I read the paper I've got a context in which to set it so that can be just brief at the beginning and not really part of the paper itself but a sort of a prologue to it which will be written to me rather than to the individual and now in the letter itself the first part of the letter should be your recounting back to the person what it is that they believe or what it is that shapes their life now for some people let's say one of you for example writes a letter to somebody who is a Jehovah's Witness or a moment or a Muslim you should be in this first part of the letter recounting back to the person what it is that they believe now I want you to do this because it helps you not to present a caricature of what someone else thinks this Christians often do that we can caricature and ridicule something which is a straw man rather than an accurate picture of what someone else thinks or believes in their life we hate it if unbelievers do that to us if they misrepresent what Christians believe so don't do it to other people Jesus tells us to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves that's the golden rule which God's word teaches us so learn to do this don't misrepresent what people think it won't help you communicate the gospel to them of course it went because people receive it as the worst kind of rudeness and discuracy and that immediately closes their heart to anything you're going to say about Christ or about the truth so in the first part of the letter I want you to recount back to this person what you have come to understand they believe but in a picture which they would happily recognize themselves and say yes that's right this is indeed what I think now of course some of the people you're going to write for will not have a clearly developed belief in anything many of the people around us are you know don't have a formal set of convictions about something but in that case what you're going to have to recount back to them is what it is that shapes their life what they live for the great French thinker René Pascal Christian believer wrote news songs on ga jé that is we are all committed everyone is already committed everyone actually believes in something and lives for something we're going to look at idolatry carefully later in the semester to study the issue of idolatry and so I'll help you think that through because all of us are attracted to idols that's why the apostle John writes at the end of his first epistle children little children keep yourself from idols and why Calvin says in every one of us in every one of our hearts there is an idol factory and that's true you have all sorts of idols that you're tempted to serve the idol of personal freedom of personal autonomy in this culture it's one of the most common idols the idol of money the mammoth of material comfort that's another very common idol but what I want you to recount back to the person is is something about what they believe in what shapes their life whether they have a formal set of convictions or not but again it's got to be done in a courteous way so the person would recognize themself the paper must be written respectfully you see seven principles down there which we're going to be talking a lot about as we go along and establishing these principles from scripture but if your paper is written without respect you will fail this class I'm serious the new testament requires us the apostle Peter writes this in first Peter 315 always be ready to give an account a defense for the hope that is in you but do it with gentleness and respect that's the apostle Peter you might want to inscribe that on your heart or pray that the Holy Spirit will inscribe that on your heart I hope to teach that to you this semester that you become passionately committed to that for the rest of your life to treat people with gentleness and respect and the apostle Paul writes in Colossians chapter 4 verse 6 that your conversation always be gracious seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone so graciousness gentleness respect your papers to be written that way and that's why writing it to the person will help you to do that it's much more difficult to be rude to somebody if you're actually writing to them to a real person who you know and who you have grown to care for hopefully you wouldn't dream of writing a rude and caricaturing letter to your own father or mother if they're not believers so you shouldn't do it to anyone else either but you wouldn't be prepared to do to somebody you love because you're close to them it's an indication of how you should treat everyone else you ever need so it must be written respectfully and graciously yes sir yeah absolutely it's safe to assume that the what's your name by the way break okay that's okay if we can all get into this pattern it'll take us a while to get there but break yeah it is safe to assume that it might well be appropriate in this first section to be recounting to the person something about the history of the relationship that yes indeed because that's how it will be easiest for you to represent back to them what it is that they believe in that shapes their life as you've got to know them and it would be appropriate to say if I'm wrong here correct me because you're really desiring to represent what the person thinks what's shaping their life faithfully second the second part of the paper I want you to establish a bridge and we'll talk about building bridges later but by establishing a bridge what I mean is this yes that you need to find something in what the person believes and in what shapes their life which you can commend happily which you can say this is good this is precious this is beautiful this is true let me use an illustration so you understand what I'm speaking about and we'll have use many illustrations later on so you get this idea more clearly I come from a completely non-Christian family I was converted at university when I was 21 years old and when I went back home my father had been a communist a Marxist his whole life since he was a young man he was then in his seventies he was much older than usual when he had his children and you know I was just in my early twenties he was 73 74 75 as I was a new believer and you know I longed for him to become a believer and so on the first things I started praying for as soon as I was converted and as we got talking to each other I was taught well thankfully by the Canadian through whom I was converted at university he was a man who had spent a lot of time studying at Librean Switzerland and the context in which I became a Christian was used to play tapes by Francis shape from Saturday nights and have discussions that's how I became a Christian but when I went home and started chatting with my dad and starting to talk with him day by day especially in the year before he died I was going to visit him every day because he he died of colon cancer when he was 75 and I had just been a Christian a couple of years at that point oh as a Marxist just as a human being he had some things in his life which were really beautiful my father was a wonderful husband and father my parents were not believers at that time but they have when the best marriages I have ever seen better than most Christian marriages I've ever seen their marriage continues to be an inspiration to me today as I think about how God calls me to treat my wife and how God calls me to treat my children he was a wonderful father that was one point where I could build a bridge just his passionate concern for the family and commitment secondly he had a passionate concern for social justice

for justice in the workplace and that was good of course God's word has a lot to say about that when I shared with him what James has to say in James chapter 5 about remember that past in James where James says listen you rich weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you you've kept back the wages of those who've worked in your fields you've treated them with injustice now their cries have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts

and you've fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter those are heavy words my dad really liked that past of scripture I can tell you as a communist but he had a passionate concern for social justice and he was right to do so he was right to do so so it was something I could commend and a third bridge if you like was my dad was as a very moral man personally a man of personal integrity he was tremendously distressed by the moral breakdown in British society this was back in the late 60s and early 70s when I was first converted and he was right to be disturbed by it and a fourth area fourth bridge that I was able to build was my parents were we were I grew up in a very poor family I mean the real really serious poverty we had one cold tap no hot water and outside toilet in the shed my parents often went without food so that we could eat and be closed to go to school but my parents were extraordinarily kind people at Christmas and Easter and harvest they would send us round our village with baskets of food for people had even less than they had there were all sorts of bridges that I could start building towards my father you know and in the wonderful grace of God he became a Christian just six weeks before he died of cancer at the age of 75 so in the second part of the paper I want you to to build some bridges what can you affirm what can you commend what can you delight in in this person's life and in what they believe where can you gladly say this is good like Calvin saying about Plato would be a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit to deny that there are elements of truth and things that are commendable and admirable in this person's life that's the second part of your paper building some bridges and the third part of the paper you're going to deal with some aspect of biblical truth which you're going to clarify and challenge this person with and we'll talk more about those two things later clarity and challenge but I don't want you to preach the whole gospel the whole cancel of God in that last four or five pages of the paper that's one of the mistakes that people sometimes make when you see Jesus having a conversation with an unbeliever he deals with one or two aspects of the truth that are appropriate for this person at that moment in their life and you need to do that after you've built your bridge what aspects of God's truth are you going to clarify with my dad for example are you going to challenge him with my dad for example one of the areas where I challenged him was Marxism you know when when Russia became communist in 1917 one of the things the state immediately did was to abolish marriage and then by the middle 1920s that had caused such chaos they had to release try to strengthen the legal defense of marriage and make divorce a little more difficult because it had caused such damage but my father's view of marriage had no place whatsoever in classical communist theory and his concern for moral personal morality had no place either Lenin said that morality is a bourgeois obsession of my dad's passionate moral convictions about sexuality and many other things had no place whatsoever in Marxism so I was able to challenge him in those areas so what aspect of God's truth are you going to clarify after you've built your bridge and are you going to challenge the person in this doesn't mean preaching the whole gospel but to pick out a couple of aspects of the truth which are appropriate now those are the three parts of the paper you should also notice among these principles here of respect building bridges understanding are obvious language language the paper your letter is to be written without any special Christian language it should be unbelievers don't understand the language we use if you talk to somebody who's got no church background they haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about if you talk let's say about justification or sanctification that's not language which is used in our culture now there's nothing wrong with the words that's not my point and you could say the same things using different words there are dozens of words for sin in the Old Testament most people in our society certainly don't use the word sin not in any biblical sense anyway it will be helpful for you to learn to communicate in language that any non-Christian can understand for those of you already teaching and preaching I would challenge you to think about this right now when the last things you should do after you prepared any sermon is to go back and change the words say what if somebody comes in off the street would they have any idea what I'm talking about or would I rather be like what Paul says in first Corinthians 14 when he's talking about speaking tongues so sit the unbeliever comes in and there's you speaking tongues he's going to say there's nothing here for me and go straight out again because you want to understand what you're talking about well very often what takes place in our churches and in our communication with people is like speaking tongues in the sense that nobody understands it and Paul requires us there in first Corinthians 14 that when we speak when we teach when we communicate we must be sure that the ignorant and the unlearned understand Jesus is a master of communicating I mean he can speak the theological language when he's talking to the Pharisees and teachers of the law but when he's talking to the rural people and the ordinary people in the society of Palestine Jesus uses everyday language which anybody can understand you don't have to have a degree in the theology to to listen to the power of the sower or the power of the good Samaritan anybody can understand this is a thoroughly biblical principle and I will persuade you of this as the semester goes on but this must be written without any specific Christian language you must learn to communicate in a way that unbelievers can understand you otherwise you see you're you're speaking like a computer nerd are you all have people who use language about computers that completely bypasses most of you very few of you who delight in it I'm sure and it's a convenient shorthand for those of you who know the language but for most people it's completely incomprehensible and you simply don't understand it now for our language as Christians is like that for many of our contemporaries so it must be written without using any specific Christian language you can say all the same things it just helps you to be a little more creative and it should be carefully reasoned this should be persuasive now those are the principles by which your paper is to be written as I said by four weeks in today I require a little paragraph from you telling me that you have actually fans somebody you're going to be writing the letter for any questions I'm sure some of you have got questions here yes sir yes just a just a couple of paragraphs at the beginning it's like a prologue to it telling me about the person now some of you by the time you write the paper will have changed the person but you've come up with an amount that's fine but but let me know if you're doing that but I do need you to have started thinking about this long before the end of the semester otherwise you won't be able to do this assignment because it really does require you to know somebody well to be able to write 15 pages to an individual you know if this is somebody you've spoke spoke to for 20 minutes you know with the bus stop you're not going to be able to write a letter like this that's intentional on my part requires you to get to know somebody or one thing I would say too here's this as I look back over the last seven or eight years I've been giving this an assignment as an assignment it's something I never imagined but every year there are several people who become believers as a consequence of this that's something you should be praying about for one another that God is going to use this to delight in drawing people to himself that's what he's been doing each year there have been some relationships restored in families and there've been some people converted and that's been a wonderful thing and of course that's not required that's God's business it's not ours he's the one who saves people that was a that was a fruit of this class that I didn't think of when I designed the the assignment here but God is always much more gracious than any of us deserve and that's that's the gospel yes Tim that's a good question can this be somebody you're corresponding with or does this somebody have to be somebody you're meeting with face to face well let's take the illustration some of you are going to write this some members of your family who you may not see during the course of this semester but who you know really well

that would be completely appropriate some of you may write may write it for somebody let's say you knew from college who you correspond with regularly that's fine but you are not to do this for somebody you don't know and have never met so you're not to do this for somebody your meetings through an email chat room this needs to be a person you know you actually know personally whether you're going to be meeting with face to face during the course of this semester is another thing because for some of you it may be somebody back home in Atlanta or Adam Los Angeles they're up in New York and that's fine as long as you have a personal relationship with them that's the issue but but meeting somebody through an internet chat room is not a personal relationship and so it's not that God doesn't use that to touch people I'm quite aware that he does but that's not what I want for this yes sir

that's a good question what was your name again David David Paul that's a great question David's question was I need to repeat the questions here for the videoing is what if the person we're writing to has just a great amalgam of beliefs or thoughts while some of them will do particularly for people who are involved in new age thinking one of the aspects of new age belief is that there isn't a particular concern either for truth or rationality or consistency and so a person may very well be journeying through a whole pile of things which are actually somewhat inconsistent with each other and which are hard to pin down new age belief is precisely like that it's a fascinating mixture of pantheism as you say often taken from forms of Hinduism it's a mixture of paganism some of it let's say for example Native American paganism some of it may be very contemporary paganism some that may be somewhat occult it may be a extraordinary hodgepodge of ideas then maybe a little bit of Christianity mixed in with that too they're often will be there's an accent book by Douglas Groot has on that called revealing the new age Jesus because many people in the new age movement will have a very great respect for the person of Jesus Christ that's a bridge you can use of course by the way even they will have a thoroughly inadequate view of Christ you can certainly use that as a bridging point but what you're going to do there with it in a situation like that where somebody has a kind of maybe a used a chameleon mixture of beliefs is to try to identify the things that are really basic at the heart of what they think and you actually may be able to help them understand themselves better than they already did that'll be the one of the things that many of you will be doing in the process of this helping people to think more clearly about their own convictions so they may be seen for what they are that's one of the things that Paul does in Acts 17 actually when he's talking to Athenians as he speaks to them about their present beliefs he's actually clarifying them for them as well as clarifying the truth about God he's helping them to see more clearly it's a very interesting thing here when William Kerry how many of you have heard the name William Kerry great almost everybody William Kerry as you know is the founder of the modern missionary movement starting in the 1790s it's kind of tragic that it was so late but from the time the Reformation up until the 1790s there was very little mission work outside the borders of what was called chrysendum there's some some wonderful exceptions to this generalization but there wasn't a lot by Protestant churches modern missions as we know them really get going with the work of William Kerry in the 1790s when he went from England to India to preach the gospel there and Kerry did many wonderful things and among other things he translated the Bible into Bengali the language of the people he was seeking to reach but what you probably didn't know about him and I'd be surprised if any of you had heard this before and as you've heard me say it somewhere is that William Kerry also translated into Bengali into the language of the people the sacred books of Hinduism because they were in Sanskrit and the people couldn't read them themselves he wasn't afraid of them so Christians don't need to be book burners you don't help people come to know God by banning them from reading other things now do we think for example that if a Christian goes to proclaim the gospel in Saudi Arabia that they have to prevent everybody going to the mosque or from reading the Quran any longer for them to be saved of course not now God's truth shines brightly you don't have to stop people reading other things to come to know the truth about Christ so Kerry wasn't afraid of the teachings of Hinduism he was prepared to have people read them themselves for the first time so they could see clearly what God's word teaches in contrast to them so again you may be helping the person yes to understand more clearly what they think but I would say pick out the things that are really basic at the heart of their convictions the same will be true if you're dealing with somebody who doesn't have a specific set of beliefs but to everyone's living for something and what is it that's really shaping their life but be kind be kind here yes well to yeah thank you for asking the question can I speak to the question as to whether it's somewhat disingenuous to reach out to unbelievers as an assignment it's an excellent question and I thank you for asking it yeah if you are reaching out to unbelievers simply as an assignment now this is something you have to do to get through this class I would be deeply distressed I'm quite aware that that's a problem in this my prayer for you and my longing is that this will be your prayer for yourselves is that you become committed to doing this because you think it's right to get to know people and to love people and to seek to understand them who are no Christians now this is the nature of the gospel itself that Christ became incarnate at a particular moment in history among a particular group of people whose ideas and customs he lived among and adopted where they were pleasing to God and he didn't do it at some kind of technique if he did it because he loved us you can't turn respect for unbelievers into a technique you know I'm going to respect unbelievers so that I might win them just like I'm going to give them a bowl of soup so that I might win them you give people soup because they're hungry and because as a Christian you care for them and their needs whether they ever become Christians or ever listen to what you say or not but because you care for them so yes please I do not want you doing this assignment as simply an assignment as I said my prayer for all of you is that what my longing for is that in doing this assignment that you will develop a way of thinking about and relating to unbelievers which will stay with you for your whole life because you have become persuaded from God's word that God calls us to do good to all people that he calls us to be in the world that's what's Jesus' prayer on the night before he died in John 17 he says Father I pray that just as you sent me into the world they will be in the world not of the world not like it in the sense of copying its sinful patterns and false beliefs but in it and that's Jesus' prayer for all of us he wants you he prays the day for you to be in the world and that's my prayer for you that you will understand that that's really what this is about is the matter of deep obedience to the gospel itself that if you feel cold by God and you're all here because you feel that in some way to the ministry of his word that at the very heart of that must be a commitment to love the world to love unbelievers now all of you who have members of your family who you already love will have no problem at all in understanding this you long for them to become Christians that's not inappropriate of course that's right but why do you long for them to become Christians because you love them because you care for them so deeply that the thought of them facing the judgment of God distresses you severely and it should do now that of course that's one reason why some of us keep ourselves apart from close relationships with non-Christians because it's too painful to start caring for people so deeply and then being afraid they face the judgment of God

so we prefer to keep ourselves distance so we don't have to deal with that pain we'll get used to it if God has called you to the ministry he wants you to care enough for people so that you really hurt you'd be prepared to die for them that's what Paul says about his fellow Jews

in Romans chapter 9 the really wonderful words he says now I speak the truth in Christ I'm not lying my conscience bears witness to this in the Holy Spirit that I care so deeply for my fellow Israelites according to the flesh that I could wish myself a cursed for their sake that's what Paul says about his fellow Jews because he loves them so deeply he longs to see them come to know Christ because he's distressed by the prospect of their judgment so yes the motivation must be one of love here not simply to please me or to get a passing grade for this class but there's no I mean all through this seminary you're going to being being taught things which are to change your life and we're not here just to read some books and pass the academic assignments so you can go out and fill a job somewhere you're here at seminary so that your lives can be changed and you can be changed so that you become people who long to reach out to people with gospel because you are being transformed by the love of Christ yourself so yes this isn't a technical assignment in that sense you won't get any from in any classes that you take or from other faculty either we're all concerned that your hearts and minds be changed by what you learn so your assignments are indeed going to be very often practical things like this but I really appreciate your question my response isn't an attack on you at all I really appreciate your question because that's the last thing I want is for 72 people in this class to be writing papers for somebody that really despises just so that they can get a good grade from me you know I would feel I would give up teaching I'm serious if that's what happened at the end of this semester I would be so so disappointed so my longing for you yes is that you will really love this person you're writing for and long to see them come to know the truth because of that and that you become persuaded during the course of this semester that these principles that I've said down here really are taught as by scripture and if you have dads I hope to persuade you as we go along so hang with me there we take may take a several weeks to get all of you there