I'm in Israel and so I'm having a guest blogger - Kevin Colon. He's one of my favorite people but, more importantly, started a church in what may be the most difficult place in the United States - Boulder, Colorado. Kevin is the real deal and we can learn a lot from him. Here's Kevin:
So what else is there to learn? How about this one: Learn to Apologize.
The majority of my conversations with people that are not interested in God go like this:
“Hey, how’s it going, I’m Kevin.”
- “Hello.”
Bla, Bla, bla, bla, bla (I’m not trying to be crass here….just speeding along the conversation.)
- “Oh so I hear you’re a pastor here”
“Yep…can you believe it?”
- “Oh yeah I can believe it.”
“So you guys have any kind of faith background”
- “Yeah…but that was a long time ago.”
“Not a good experience, huh?”
- “That’s an understatement.”
“That bad?”
And then they go into the usual hypocrisy, judgmental, anti-everything, rules and regulations talk about the church and Christians that we all know about.
And then I have a choice to make about my response.
1. I can justify and try to explain the absurd actions of my brothers and sisters (OH…I hate having to love them…pray for me) OR
2. I can say… "I’m sorry."
Now, this is where you’re going to have to be brushed up on your church history. I usually say, “I’m sorry” and I follow that up with the atrocities of the church for the past several hundred years and I’ll throw in a couple of contemporary examples as well. You wouldn’t believe the response I get.
“Wait…you agree. You’re sorry? You’re not going to fight back and defend this stuff?”
“No way…you’re right…you’re absolutely right. We suck as Christians. But that’s the funny thing….Jesus knew we would screw it all up and that’s why he ends up being such an important part of history.”
“What do you mean?”
And then, of course, I take out my four spiritual laws, my napkin with the bridge illustration and my Jesus Film on my IPOD and get busy. NOT!
Then I finally get to tell them my story….how my life was full of religion and then I found what Jesus actually wanted.” Short, sweet….just another something-something for them to nibble on.
More questions….more sharing…..more listening….more nodding ….more trust building….more connections….the magic starts happening…hearts are being opened….God is getting to do the inside stuff….and you are just there for the ride….
And you know what that gets you? A second conversation! And that’s a HUGE WIN! When you can get to the second conversation with a person that is outside the family of God and they’re cool with you and receptive to what you’ve got to say then pat yourself on the back, take yourself out to Outback and get the 11 oz instead of the 8 oz. Outback special and start dancing on the ceiling with Lionel Richie.
Learn to apologize and win the second conversation! (Just don’t screw that one up.)
- featured on newchurches.com
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Lessons from a Puerto Rican Hillbilly (Part 3)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Sounds like you hang with Donald Miller at Reed university building confessionals! Good stuff HB. Yo do mention looking for a second conversation though and that's a tedious thing because it's a fine line between just wanting to have a relationship and winning another one for the Gipper.
Great post Kevin. I need to focus more on the relationship rather than just winning the conversation.
My goal is not to 'set up' the second-conversation, it is to 'earn' the second-conversation. There's a difference to me. If, again, we're talking about motives and manipulation....that's not what we're trying to get at. If it is about genuinely going to the next level in relationship...then cool. When you meet someone you like, that you click with...you want to get together again, right?
The first conversation usually doesn't get too far. Weather, family, career. It's usually short, too. The second conversation (whether you set it up or whether you run into them again) can dive into the second-conversation questions: "So, tell me your story." "Tell me more about your faith background." You get to go deeper.
Don't read "second-conversation" as an evangelism tool. Read it to mean that you are genuinely interested in getting to know more about this person, who they are, what makes them tick....etc.
If you're NOT genuinely interested, then that's where I would start questioning the "winning one for the Gipper" motive.
Thanks for bringing that out...
good explanation, thanks
I am actually researching things that have damaged the relationship between the church and the common culture that surrounds it. You hit on this issue in this post and I was wondering if you could lead me in the direction of some good books about that.
Post a Comment