LeakeSpeak

I recently read a great book by Daniel Sinclair on cross-cultural church planting, entitled A Vision of the Possible: Pioneer Church Planting in Teams. Here is an interesting excerpt that has challenged our church planting team lately:

A close friend of mine, who is an evangelist, advises all gospel workers to somehow bring up Jesus with every new acquaintance in the first thirty minutes of conversation. Why? Sociologists say that we share virtually all the things that are most important to us with a new relationship within the first half-hour of total talk time. In other words, if you speak to a neighbor six times for five minutes per conversation over the period of a month, you will have most likely told him most of what is most central in your life. (p.130)

Is this good advice that Sinclair shares? Have you ever experienced not saying anything about Jesus with a new friend, and then finding spiritual matters harder and harder to talk about the longer the relationship went on? I sure have. It seems that the earlier I bring Jesus into a relationship, the more freely I am able to share the gospel with someone. I was especially intrigued by Sinclair’s view when taking into account that his church planting work has been primarily in a Muslim context! Surely if he can apply this 30-minute principle in his work, then I can apply it in mine…

I explained in a recent post how our church planting team has been applying the parable of the soils. In that parable, the sower spreads the seed of the Word all over the place. We are now trying to do the same in our town by applying the 30-minute rule – bringing up Jesus in the first 30 minutes of conversation with a new friend.

In the past, we had been fairly timid about sharing the gospel with a new acquaintance, preferring to wait until we had spent a lot of time with them and built quite a bit of trust. There are some good cultural reasons for placing a lot of importance on earning trust, but the problem with waiting so long to talk about Jesus is twofold: 1) It makes the gospel harder to talk about later on, and 2) It takes a lot longer to discern whether someone might be “good soil” that is receptive to the seeds of the Word that are planted.

As of late, we have been a lot bolder about bringing Jesus into conversations sooner. The results so far have been good. Earlier on in relationships we know who to invest the most time in, because we see right away how open (or not) a person is to the gospel. Don’t get me wrong – we are still careful to develop good relationships with people, built on trust, and this takes time. It’s just that we bring the gospel into the relationship a lot sooner, which equals more seeds of the Word being sown, which equals more and better chances to find good soil, which equals us having a better idea of which relationships in which to invest the most time. This equals – we hope – more effective ministry in the long run.

What do you think? Do you agree with this philosophy? Have you ever experienced something similar? Do you have a counterexample? Leave a comment a share your thoughts!

(If you are interested in the book A Vision of the Possible, there is a good, chapter-by-chapter discussion of it going on right now on this blog.)

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