Some adapted quotes from the Church Planting Movements workshop I attended in June:  

When making disciples, the starting point is not the Bible.  It’s you.  Some of your non-believing friends haven’t read the Bible.  They may not want to read it yet.  But they see you. 

The starting point is not Jesus or God.  They may not know of him yet, or believe he exists.  But they see you. 

The starting point is not your church or religion.  Nobody wants your religion.  Religion is about the things we do.  When we go in with our religion, they don’t want it.  They don’t want your religion because their view of religions is tainted by their own religion.  Everybody has their own religion and they don’t want anybody else’s.  Not because they’re happy with their religion.  They just think theirs is better than anybody else’s.  They’re not interested in how and when and where you worship.  They’re interested in knowing whether or not your relationships are different and better.  People want a connection with God at a heart level.  Religion as God wants it will come (James 1:26-27; 1 Timothy 5:4), but we start at the heart level.  At the “what difference does it make in your and my life” level.  

As you function as a “starting point” for the gospel, your goal is not to be obnoxiously religious but conspicuously spiritual.  If you are conspicuously spiritual, you will draw out the spiritual people (that is, people who want to be spiritual), lead them to Christ, and lead them to lead their friends to Christ. 

This resonates with me.  Perhaps that’s why we value following Jesus as a “way of life” so highly.  How we follow Jesus everyday will determine how good we are at joining God in his mission.  Today I’m asking myself, what needs to change in my life so that I’m a (not perfect but) effective starting point for other people’s paths to following Jesus? 

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Check out Mike Cope’s blog on this today!

Categories: how we live
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