How do you evangelize people who have no Biblical knowledge? Furthermore, how do you bring the gospel truths to people who question whether we can really be certain about anything?
Too often I am content to become silent if someone resists the gospel and tells me they are not interested or have some other difficult objection. Some recent reading, listening and discussion has caused me to consider more carefully how I might persist. I don't want their excuses to coddle my own excuses for being tight-lipped.
I've been listening to a series by Gary Hendrix of Grace Reformed Baptist Church which discusses some of the barriers to evangelism with the young adults of my generation. In the next few blog posts, I'll present some of these ideas in a (hopefully) condensed manner.
The first major barrier to evangelism has two parts: Biblical illiteracy and post-modern epistemology.
More and more young people are Biblically illiterate. They know next to nothing of what the Bible says, let alone what it means. With respect to salvation, this is an obvious problem. God designed salvation not merely to be seen or experienced. It involves thinking; it involves knowledge. A person must know who Jesus is so they might put their faith in Him.
More and more people have never attended a Biblical Christian church, and many will not come even if they are invited. They don't know the Bible, and they are not willing to go to church where they might learn the Bible.
The second part of the barrier is a post-modern epistemology. I wasn't familiar with the term, but epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief.
We assume that truth is knowable, and we assume knowledge can be communicated by words. A post-modern mindset challenges these ideas. They question whether truth is really knowable and whether we can be certain about anything. They claim that you cannot be certain what a person means; you have to experience a thing for yourself. In schools, the question is no longer, "What do these words mean?" but "What do these words mean to you?"
In this frame of mind, they often reject all dogmatism and all absolutes. They ask, "What makes you think you have it right, and everyone else has it wrong?"
Even when Bible knowledge is communicated, it is received with a deeply embedded skepticism--skepticism that we can know what the Bible meant and skepticism of the dogmatism of the Bible. Even if they half accept Biblical truths, they cannot understand how we would be willing to stake our own lives on it.