Week 1

"Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold." And he said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that

   "they may indeed see but not perceive,
   and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven."

And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold."

-Mark 4:3-20






I'd love to say the time I had with Rex today was marked with people getting saved, limbs getting physically healed, and bacon falling supernaturally from the sky (can I get an "amen"?), but I have no idea what the result of today was. But this I can tell you confidently: seeds were scattered. And from that standpoint, this might have been the most successful one-hour Gospel-preaching adventure I've ever been through. People actually engaged us in conversation! Some were challenged, some were encouraged, some just felt awkward and mildly offended. Here's hoping those seeds found good soil. So here's what I learned:

For one, "Hey, could I take a few minutes and just blatantly try to convert you to Christianity?" wouldn't have worked today (though it's started good conversations in the past- watching the confused and shocked expressions before "Well... yeah. Sure. Go for it." was admittedly half the fun). Here was Rex's conversation starter:

"Hey, do you have time to answer one question?"
"Sure."
"Well, we're both Christians, and we've been surveying different people, and we wanted to know: in your opinion, who is Jesus Christ?"

It's direct, but not terribly invasive. It's a good conversation starter. And only one person really blew us off, simply saying, "I'm agnostic!" before bolting. Everybody else (about 8 or 9 people) seemed to enjoy talking to us.

I did notice a few things about the way people operate. Among the 8 or 9 people, there were really only 4 or 5 kinds of people that each had very similar ways of thinking about the world. Knowing the way people think is important because just as different kinds of seeds grow in different soils and climates, not every person responds as easily to the same methods of evangelism. I am a dude and therefore thickheaded. I haven't spent much time in my life thinking about the way people think. So if there's anything I could get out of this experiment personally (besides the joy of seeing people come closer to Jesus), it would be an understanding of the way people think.

I hope this doesn't sound manipulative- because it could be manipulative very easily if my goal in this knowledge was something other than what the Bible prescribes. There's a verse in Philippians (check out 1:9-11) that says, "I pray that your love will abound in knowledge and discernment." In this verse, love is somehow improved through knowledge and discernment. Imagine this scenario: I have a friend that I care about, so I bake him a pecan pie. Then when I give it to him, he says, "I can't eat this. I'm extremely diabetic and I'm allergic to pecans."
Oh snap!
I love people, but that love is kinda pointless if I don't know how to express it. People need Jesus! If there's anything I can do to be a more obvious sign post pointing to Christ, I want to do it! I don't want this knowledge to be better at arguing, I want this knowledge so people can see the love of Christ!

So I guess that's all for now. Thanks for your prayers, everyone.
Zane