The Redeeming Story: Recent Episodes
Josh Kilen
This is a podcast where I (Josh Kilen) can share my unsolicited thoughts about Christianity and faith with no one in particular.
What does it mean to be like God, holy as he is holy? I think one way is in our unity with each other. We the church are to embody the love of the Trinity with each other, to be one with each other, sharing life in a complete and mutually loving way. No hierarchy just love and trust and unity. It's like the marriage relationship but with the entire church. Not orgies.
We are too be up in each other's business but with grace and care, full of love and compassion. True Christianity can't understand the western notion of individualism, even though it spawned the idea.
How do we live that close life together?
One of the most important things you learn in marketing is that audience is everything. I think the same is true and you're speaking about preaching the gospel, or evangelizing. Where your audience is at matters greatly and how you present the beauty and truth at the gospel. A good example of this is in the beginning of Acts, when the holy Spirit rushes in, and the disciples rush out, and begin preaching to the masses, those masses are already primed and steeped in the history and beauty of what God is doing. They don't need any background, they already know it, they just needed a few missing pieces to complete the puzzle in their hearts. Later on you see Paul and Silas trying to do the same thing, provide one or two missing pieces, but what ends up happening is the Greeks don't have the background and start calling Silas Zeus and Paul Hermes. That was their understanding of how the world works, they didn't know the one true God unlike the Jews from Acts 1. So, Paul had to change the way he delivered the message based on the audience. He took his time. He stayed longer, had more conversations, built relationships over time. The same is true today as it was then, some people are primed for a few missing pieces, but for the most part people don't have an understanding or relationship with the one true God so we need to share the full gospel. Unfortunately, that takes time. You can't just summarize the gospel as Jesus died for your sins or your sinner and repent. People in this culture don't have any reference for those things they don't understand. You have to help them understand what those terms mean but all of that means you have to walk them through what sin is, what grace is, who God is even.