{"id":938,"date":"2019-04-04T09:06:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T09:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/?p=938"},"modified":"2019-07-19T07:59:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T07:59:48","slug":"get-to-know-the-boring-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/2019\/04\/04\/get-to-know-the-boring-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"Get To Know the Boring Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

This week’s blog is written by Matt Mikalatos. <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I have a friend, a young woman we\u2019ll call Chelsea. She\u2019s an atheist, and one day she said to me, \u201cYou Christians seem to think Jesus is boring.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I was shocked. After all, she and I had discussed him at length. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI mean, you find all these weird ways to bring him up. Like you\u2019re looking for an angle. A way to make him interesting.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cCan you give me an example?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cYeah. Like when you do an outreach about porn.\u201d (She was a college student. A local Christian club had recently done a \u201cporn survey\u201d among the students and had a big night where all the students were invited to come and talk publicly about pornography. An expert speaker was brought in to share about his own journey into the sex industry\u2019s dark corners, and afterward he shared his testimony.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cI thought you liked that meeting.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cOh, yeah. It was interesting. I have a lot of thoughts about the sex industry and pornography. That\u2019s how you hooked me. Then, when I was interested, you shoehorned Jesus in there.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Chelsea thought about it for a moment. \u201cI\u2019m saying you think sex is more interesting than Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

She wasn\u2019t wrong.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We think there is one correct way to share the good news, and because we need to start in the same place every time (Jesus, who died on the cross for your sins and rose again on the third day), we\u2019re always trying to find a way to get to that story. The problem is, not everyone is interested in that story at first. Not everyone understands how or why it\u2019s good news.<\/strong> So we find something else they are interested in and tack our good news onto it once we have a captive audience instead of finding their good news about Jesus, the thing that will draw them along through the story.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This takes many different forms. We have conferences to fix your marriage (answer revealed at the end: Jesus). We invite kids to come play Earth Ball at youth group (followed by a talk about Jesus). We\u2019ll do \u201cprophecy seminars\u201d to help people understand what is coming next in this crazy world (Jesus, that\u2019s who is coming next!).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Those things aren\u2019t wrong, and, like I said earlier, these things work. Many have come to Christ in these ways, and we shouldn\u2019t look down on them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Nevertheless, Chelsea is right. In journalism, they would call this \u201cburying the lede.\u201d That\u2019s when a reporter writes an article and starts out by talking about things of secondary importance. The news should lead with the most important fact and give you the supplemental information afterward.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Sometimes we bury the lede with Jesus. We don\u2019t start with the most important, most interesting news for our audience. It can be a subtle difference, because for some people the good news about Jesus will intersect with other things. But the \u201clede\u201d in the good news will always be Jesus, not something else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The truth is, Jesus is the most fascinating person in the entire universe, and he intersects with everything that interests us in the world. But remember: The cross is not the only good news about Jesus. It\u2019s really, really good news, but it\u2019s not the only good news.<\/strong> The incarnate Jesus walked among us for a few decades, and there are millennia of other actions made by Jesus, who is God(!), that are also good news. Sometimes, insisting that we begin at the cross prevents us from getting to it at all with people. Sometimes, starting with some other piece of good news about Jesus can bring us eventually to the cross, too.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And there is a lot of good news to choose from. Jesus, the radical Savior, actually has a plan not just to save your soul but to repair the broken places in the world. He intends to do away with racism, and sexism, and corrupt prison systems, and flawed governments, and judgmental religious systems, and on and on. If there\u2019s a system or a corporation or a person who has harmed you, Jesus has a plan to right that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We can\u2019t limit the good news of Jesus just to the Gospels alone, because the whole of Scripture\u2014and how God intersects with all of life\u2014is the good news of Jesus, because Jesus, after all, is God. Jesus is the God who created the world, who formed quasars and quarks and leptons just by speaking, who designed our brains and our emotions and our longing for relationship, and who gave us not just breath and life but one another. The good news weaves throughout Scripture and the tapestry of our lives and relationships and this world God has made.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Every person on earth, whether they recognize it or not, whether they know it or not, wants to know more about God. They are desperately waiting for someone to start a conversation with them about good news. They\u2019re receptive to good news . . . because who isn\u2019t?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Every person on earth would be fascinated by Jesus if we could just find the way to start the conversation. <\/strong>We have this internalized message\u2014the good news about Jesus\u2014that we\u2019re ready to communicate, and they\u2019re longing to hear that sort of message!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Which brings us back to Chelsea. It took me a few times hanging out with Chelsea to find what was good news about Jesus for her. It surprised me a little bit, because it was something more traditional and more common than I would have expected. But I finally got a clue how to transmit the good news message to her in a way I thought she might be able to receive and understand.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cChelsea,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry we\u2019ve acted like Jesus is less interesting than so many other things in life. Let me make it up to you . . . let me teach you one theology lesson. Just one, and then I\u2019ll drop it.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cGo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cChelsea. Jesus loves you.\u201d Such a simple, childlike theology . . . so basic . . . but it\u2019s not boring, not at all.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cHow could he love me? I\u2019m an atheist. I\u2019m\u2014\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cGod knows who you are, what you\u2019ve done, and what you believe. And I\u2019m telling you . . . you don\u2019t have to believe in Jesus for him to love you.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Chelsea said, \u201cWhat Jesus is this? I\u2019ve never heard of a Jesus like this.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWhat do you think about that?\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And Chelsea said what all our friends and loved ones will say, what every person on earth will say if we just give them a chance to enter the conversation. She leaned toward me, eyes wide, and she said, \u201cTell me more.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\"\"<\/figure>\r\n
\r\n

This excerpt is from Good News for a Change: How to Talk to Anyone About Jesus<\/a><\/em>
by Matt Mikalatos.<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Imagine an atheist sending you regular prayer requests. Or your coworker grabbing you by the arm and asking you to stay late at work to talk about God just a bit longer. When Jesus talked about the Good News, people ran to him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We should expect the same response. Good News for a Change<\/em> is about working together with Jesus to share the gospel in ways unique to each person\u2019s situation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

You will enjoy evangelism because it is a fun, deeply personal, community and person-oriented way to connect with people. You\u2019ll be energized and focused on helping people discover why Jesus is good news for them.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s blog is written by Matt Mikalatos. I have a friend, a young woman we\u2019ll call Chelsea. She\u2019s an atheist, and one day she said to me, \u201cYou Christians seem to think Jesus is boring.\u201d I was shocked. After all, she and I had discussed him at length. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d \u201cI mean, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[156],"tags":[239,95],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1206,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions\/1206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/unfoldingfaithblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}