This weekend Donald Miller is guest speaker at Lake Forest Church. Here are some notes from a talk he gave on evangelism. Great convicting thoughts!
Donald Miller became best known through his New York times bestseller, Blue Like Jazz, the story of his experience at Reed College, voted at that time as “the most godless campus in the country.” Since then Don has written other best sellers: Searching for God knows What andA Million Miles in a Thousand Years (the story of his writing of the screenplay for Blue Like Jazz-the movie).
In the fall of 2011, Don created The Storyline Conference, a two-day event to help individuals, churches and business staff write a better story for their life and work. We are excited to be a part of what Don does best—help you find your story, see how God is redeeming it and allow this to help you see the story of others that God longs to redeem. Learn more about Don at www.donmilleris.com.
- 2% of the population of Portland regularly attends church.
- Don recently relocated his office above a bistro in Portland.
- He developed a great relationship with the owners of the restaurant, and they discovered that he was Christian.
- Their reaction was, “how in the world could you possibly believe that?”
- It’s hard for the world at large to believe that Jesus is alive today.
- Wouldn’t it help you, as a Christian leader, if Jesus would come back every 5 years and did a press conference? Just to let people know He’s alive, that we aren’t crazy, etc?
- Our narrative is quite mysterious.
- Our Savior comes in a manger.
- He spends 32 years on earth.
- He only does about 3 years of ministry.
- Then He ascends and disappears.
- He’s gone.
- He leaves the rest of it to us.
- What happens when Jesus is gone?
- Time magazine asked: “Is God dead?”
- Portland is statistically 25 years ahead of the country.
- If that’s true, only about 2% of the people you know will attend church in 25 years.
- That doesn’t mean that people won’t know Christ, it’s just that their engagement with their faith will look different.
- We live in a culture that assumes God is dead.
- One of Don’s friend went to Rwanda and saw a tribute to the genocide that happened there.
- Most people would see that and say it’s evidence that God is dead.
- Rather, his friend had the opposite experience.
- She felt God saying, “See what happens when I leave? See what happens when nobody brings the light?”
- Is Jesus gone? Where is He?
- Colossians 1:27 – Christ is in you, the hope of glory.
- Every day your feet hit the ground, it’s Christmas morning.
- Jesus chooses to take up residency in you.
- Jesus doesn’t take up residency church buildings.
- He lives within you.
- We bring hope into the world because Christ is in us.
- Colossians 1:28; Colossians 3:11; Galatians 2:20
- Christ is all and in all.
- It is wrong for us to look for hope in the world externally.
- We have the tendency to take someone to church instead of taking people to Jesus that’s inside of us.
- Bring yourself, all of you, to the people in your life.
- Confession is really helping people understand the difference between Jesus and me.
- My real ministry is not writing or speaking, I love to practice hospitality.
- Last year he had over 100 overnight house guests.
- Writing and speaking is fundraising for me to do the ministry I feel like Jesus is calling me to do.
- What is Jesus doing inside of us?
- Don shared this iconographic image of Christ:
- Jesus’ left eye is convicting you of your sin.
- Christ divides.
- He comes with a sword.
- And He’s the Prince of Peace.
- His right eye is designed to represent His forgiveness and grace.
- He convicts us and shows us grace.
- Why does our culture have so much trouble seeing God?
- It’s because Jesus does not look like what evangelical culture in America wants Him to look like.
- If we were to create a Jesus that would build our churches and represent our community, He would not look like the actual Jesus.
- Who do we like to have represent us as Christians?
- What do our politicians look like?
- Jesus had no form or comeliness that we should look upon him; no beauty. (Isaiah 53)
- Often in our strategy we want to say, “you can have everything the rich young ruler had… you can live your best life now.”
- I don’t think that’s true.
- When I look at pre-fallen man, there’s only one defining characteristic: he walked around naked and was not ashamed.
- He was hardly self aware.
- When we are naked, we know.
- You will not live your best life now.
- You will live it when you are reunited with Trinity.
- We invite people into hope.
- Christ is so difficult to recognize because He isn’t offering people what they want, He’s offering people what they really need.
- He’s not offering people a coping mechanism; He’s offering people hope to endure.
- When we translate our theology through the filter of the lies of marketing we make people believe falsely about their faith.
- It’s not your best life now.
- It creates false expectations.
- Jesus is operating in the world in beautiful ways.
- Evangelism no longer looks to me like the sharing of information.
- It’s not about sharing truths.
- It’s about bringing people to Jesus.
- “I set people up on a blind date with Jesus and hope they hit it off.”
- We all have mysterious relational encounters with Christ.
- But then we rationalize our experience and boil it down to a formula.
- We are not saved through right theology; we are saved through Christ.
- We don’t need to depend on a church program to bring Jesus to the world.
- Jesus will go places I don’t want to go.
- Jesus will forgive people I don’t want to forgive.
- Are we bringing Christ into our house?
- Are we bringing Christ into our neighbors house?
- Do we believe that Christ is within us, or are we looking for Him externally?
- He’s inside of you bringing hope to the world.
