Monday, August 13, 2007

follow up

Yesterday in sunday school the gentalman who leads the youth groupon sundays gave a leson from Acts 8 and 9. wail talking about the Etheopian andPhillup He mentioned that he belived that because God had Phillup taken away after the ethiopian was baptised there is no need for follow up, ever. so long as they have a bible then your job is done when they are converted.

I wiped my head around so I could see him and thought What? I opened my mouth to say something but then closed it because i did not think that it was the right time to discuse wheither or not that was true all the time. mostly because the last time i happened to say that i disogreed with him we ended up haveing a 15 minuet debate about why one of us was right and one was wrong, and i did not think that was opropreate at the moment.

I don't know how i paied attention to anything else after that because my mind thought about a diagram i had seen either in my youth group or in Mike McNeal's class. It shows that you could just do the evangelism thing and not worry aobut anything after that, you may win people but they may never get very deep or lead any one else to christ. the other option is to pour into three people about christ and in desipleship so they go out and do the same for three more people each, and then the ones they have desipled go out and do the same thing.

Peter said that some of the things paul said were hard to understand. and one proffessor said that reading the historical books "may lead to Culture shock."

to have someone who came to christ in an emotional situation and then leave them with a bible, is not very kind. I am not saying that the bible can only be understood by theologens in thier ivory towers. rather that it is irresponcible to not atleast help a brand new convert find a church where they can be nurtured by people who are more mature in thier faith.

1 comment:

matthew said...

it was a pretty strange point for him to make. Paul, apparently, felt very differently since he followed up most of his evangelism with additional visits, letters, or by sending additional ministers.

I think the fact that Philip vanished was a confirming miracle, not a principle for evangelism.