Persuasive Witness

The following is the script for this video:

Tyler: Hi, I’m Tyler. Nearly 20 years ago, I committed myself to follow Jesus. Here’s Josh. He and I are both part of the same congregation. Each of us is concerned that our church’s witness to the world seems so ineffective. So we’ve decided to sit down and talk about what we both see as a problem and to explore what might be done differently.

Josh, looking back over the past, let’s say, two years, how many new Christians have we seen among the 200 in First Church? I haven’t been keeping records on baptisms. But how many can you recall over those two years? .

Josh: Three that I remember. And at least one of those had been a professing Christian for a long time before being baptized.

Tyler: Well, it’s not as if we haven’t tried. Do you remember that time we adopted the Penrose Elementary School?

Josh: Yes. We helped low-income families get their kids ready for school by providing backpacks, with pencils and notepads—even shoes and socks.

Tyler: But how many came to faith in Jesus as a result of that effort?

Josh: None, so far as I ever knew. Not only that, but I can’t think of anyone who even began attending our church as a result of that outreach.

Tyler: Then there was the time when our church took on the task of picking up the trash along Center Street. We organized cleanup crews that worked several weekends.

Josh: I’ll never forget those Saturdays working with trash sticks and grabbers as we filled those plastic bags with garbage. And yet, looking back, even though a few people asked who we were and why we were doing it, I don’t recall anyone coming to faith as a result.

Tyler: I never worked on any of those Center Street cleanup crews. But I did serve as a co-facilitator in one of the parenting classes our church sponsored.

Josh: Did any of those parents find their way to Jesus as a result of those sessions?

Tyler: I think two couples began attending our church for a time, but I have not seen them in any church gathering lately.

Josh: At the time, each of those outreach programs seemed so promising. They were highly publicized within our church family—and yet, none of them resulted in what we had aimed for.

Tyler: All those programs served our community in positive ways—cleaner streets, better equipped students, and more effective parents. But when it came to new believers, those efforts just didn’t produce any.

Josh: I’ve been reading and re-reading John 17 lately—you know, Jesus’s chapter-long prayer to his Father shortly before his crucifixion. And I keep coming back to what he says about what it will take for the world to know and believe he came here as God’s authorized representative.

Tyler: Yes, I recall that he prayed for us, his followers, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. . . . so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” From this, I take it that when people of this world see heaven’s unity lived-out here on earth, that demonstration has persuasive power to bring them to faith.

Josh: And in the same prayer, Jesus expanded on that when he asked that “they may be one as we are one . . . so that they may be brough to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me . . . .” So if we Christians display heaven’s unity here on earth, it enables the world both to believe and to know God sent Jesus. This seems to be the key to unlocking effective evangelism.

Tyler: Yes, living out heaven’s unity here on earth unleashes God’s own power to draw people to himself. The Psalmist wrote: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! . . . . For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore” (Ps. 133:1, 3). Some translations even say he commands his blessing. Centuries ago, Celtic Christians used this Triquetra symbol to represent the self-giving unity of the Trinity.

Josh: God had made human beings in his likeness. Now, through the Church, he projected the likeness of his interactive, one-anothering nature into a company of people on earth. By loving each other as they loved themselves, they were to demonstrate heaven’s unity right here on earth.

Tyler: We see heaven’s unity in Acts 2:44-47. “All the believers were together and had everything in common.” . . . “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” . . . “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.” . . . “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” . . . This complete unity Jesus had prayed for in John 17, released the Lord’s evangelistic power. “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” And the key word—three times? They were together, together, together.

Josh: Quite a contrast to the results we saw in our church’s outreach programs! In that earliest church, they saw people being saved every day.

Tyler: Yes, we’ve tried our own ideas on how to bring people of the world to faith. Those ideas left us emptyhanded. Instead, why not let what Jesus said set our agenda? Why not aim for the complete unity he prayed for? Why not demonstrate heaven’s oneness here on earth so that the world would know and believe God really did send Jesus?

Josh: All of this reminds me of what G. K. Chesterton wrote in What’s Wrong with the World: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Chapter 7: Finding and Serving Fellow Believers

New Command: Why NEW?