In addition to my recent article on Amy
resp. her YouTube videos on “emo” I wondered how an authentic life
with Jesus could be made known to people like the emos, in a way that
would make them take Jesus seriously. Invitations to any Christian
events are useless if there is not already a personal connection. So
what? Here’s a radically different approach to try out. It is an idea
that’s enabled by the rise of the Internet, esp. web 2.0 social
platforms like YouTube.
The basic idea is: come into individual people’s life without any
invitation. Help them where they need help, and call them to Christ.
The practical approach would be kind of the following, and I am
currently inclinded to try that out once my
expedition mobile is ready:
- Get a community of ~4 authentic Christians who are able to deal
with conflicts quite well, have good social skills and have sympathy
for every other kind of freaky people. - Get a community truck, e.g. the expedtion mobile I mentioned.
This will be the permanent living place of the community. - Search and select interesting, freaky people on web 2.0 platforms
like YouTube. They should be selected if the community judged that they
might accept Jesus if they just get to know him really and experience
that he’s truly God and saviour. - Contact these people and await their invitation to meet in
person. For example, send links to video clips to them with a stylish
self introduction of this freaky, nomadic community. This steps might
also be left out … . - Meet in person. Therefore, visit them with the community truck.
Stay some days with them, placing the truck near the place where they
live. - Invite them to travel with the community for some time. This will
give good opportunity to introduce Jesus to them in a way that they are
able to take seriously. - If they finally want to know Jesus personally as their saviour
and stay with the community, that’s fine. Perhaps they stay for 3
years, which is a fine time for character education and transformation
(also called sanctification). Then they start perhaps their own
invitational transformational community, and the network grows 😉
Does anybody note the similarity to the way Jesus called his
disciples? They were called and had the chance to come at that very
point of time in their life – that’s different from the “permanent but
shy invitation to Jesus” nowadays, that does nothing but get on
people’s nerves. Also note that Jesus started his worldwide kingdom
with 12 (well, 11) well-educated disciples, not with a multitude of
non-transformed churchgoers who had nothing but heard about Jesus.
Start date: 2008-05-25
Post date: 2008-05-25
Version date: 2008-05-25 (for last meaningful change)
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