GYC SE 2011: A New Beginning

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GYC Southeast

GYC SE 2011 Seminar: Do You Have a Game Plan?

Steven Grabiner

Jeremy Grabiner

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 1

Father in heaven, we thank you for the privilege of being able to come together to see how we could be better equipped to be used by you to share our faith with other people.

Bless us as we study together, as we interact.

Above all, we pray for the presence of your spirit and angels.

I'd like to begin this afternoon with a quote by a young man that, when I read his quote, it really struck me, the importance of knowing what it is we believe and how to share what we believe.

I went 3 times a week to church, went to private Christian schools, was active in youth ministry, went to Bible conferences, kind of like SCYC, it doesn't say that, but, and took many Bible courses, read my Bible, and attended Bible study regularly for many years.

That's the, there's 4 gentlemen, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, who promote an atheistic concept.

As sad as it is, he continues to write, I think that the new atheists say a lot more about the state of the church than they do about themselves.

As crazy as it may sound, the evidence they put forward was intellectually much stronger than anything I encountered in the Christian church.

If we meet things outside of our Christian circles that have arguments that you and I don't know how to handle that seem to overwhelm us have a tendency to derail our faith.

So our purpose together is to give you some tools to help you defend your faith.

Now in 2nd Corinthians 520 it says, Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were making his plea through us.

Now we all know that ambassadors need to be prepared.

If you were just to take the US ambassador for China and just throw him in there, he didn't even know that they spoke another language other than English, he wouldn't be a very effective ambassador.

So in the same way, ambassadors, we are ambassadors for Christ in this world.

And we have to have knowledge, we have to have wisdom, so that when we come in contact with, you know, the adversary or that new area, we will have, you know, we'll be wise and we won't be shut down.

Now I just want to put all of you at ease this afternoon.

Not that every time you get on a plane you're going to go into the back and baptize them with the airplane water.

But the model that we're going to be teaching you today is called putting a stone in someone's shoe.

And that's just to get people to think in the right direction.

It's not a big thing that we have to reach.

It's not that 2, 000 people need to be baptized as soon as you get started.

But it's just to get people to be thinking in the right way to challenge their worldview.

I'd like to share a quote with you from the book of evangelism page 339.

It says that God works through the calm, regular operation of his appointed laws.

Satan is constantly seeking to produce effects by rude and violent thrusts.

But Jesus found access to minds by the pathways of their most familiar associations.

I think there's a really important lesson there.

Too often when we encounter people, please come on right in, we encounter individuals, sometimes we'll meet somebody, they'll question our faith or they'll present a different viewpoint and our encounters get a bit aggressive.

Now, some of you are really hesitant to share, so maybe you don't know what I'm talking about.

When I was on an airplane the other day going to New York City sat next to a guy and he was talking about how his church does outreach and 1 of his partners in outreach loves to argue with the people he meets at their doors.

A very winsome way to to engage people but notice who is it that's trying to produce effects by violent and rude thrusts?

But Jesus tries to meet people and disturb as little as possible their accustomed train of thoughts by abrupt actions or prescribed rules." It goes on to say, that he honored man with his confidence and placed him on his honor.

He introduced old truths in a new and precious light.

Thus, when only 12 years old, he astonished the doctors of the law by his questions in the temple." So Jesus, very subtly, carefully, with a game plan, was able to turn people's thoughts, As Jeremy said, to put a stone in someone's shoe.

And that's our goal today is to help you to make a difference in somebody's life.

To give you some tools that can help you be an effective ambassador, not necessarily an evangelist.

Now in Colossians 4 it tells us that our language should be gracious and we should it should be seasoned with salt.

And as Christians when we come in contact with people, we should be very gracious in our manner.

We should not be aggressive and super argative like the person because we're trying to win people to Christ and Christ is not a very aggressive person.

And so the game plan that we have today is to make it so that whenever you're talking to someone, even if they're more knowledgeable than you, that you can stay in control of that conversation, you can be comfortable in that conversation, and everybody wants to be able to do that.

And now, before we get into the details, I just wanna give a little bit of background.

By definition, apologists defend the faith.

They destroy speculations raised up against the church.

Too often we think of apologetics in an aggressive manner.

Circle the wagons, hoist the drawbridge, fix the bayonets.

But we don't have to be like that in our apologetic approach.

Now, Jeremy mentioned earlier that we should be ambassadors.

He read that text from 2 Corinthians 5 and ambassadors need 3 things, knowledge, wisdom, and character.

These are 3 essential attributes for ambassadors.

So we're going to be focusing on the middle of the 3 this afternoon, and that is wisdom.

In particular, we're going to give you a game plan that can help you in the most trying encounter.

So let's start something here, and if you wouldn't mind, I'd like you to turn to your neighbor.

Pair up with somebody, And just answer this question among yourselves.

When you think about discussing Christianity with non-believers or discussing Adventist perspectives with other Christians, I, what?

Now we're a small group here, maybe instead of breaking you up for this point, how would you respond to that?

How many of you are like relishing the encounter?

I'm sort of really excited when it happens, but slightly nervous as well.

So the second 1 there, willing but nervous.

Should I guess what your response would be?

Some people are just like, hey, I can't wait to meet somebody that disagrees with me.

Others are like, OK, I know I should do this, but I'm a bit nervous about it.

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 2

The man with the microphone or the person with the microphone always wins.

The person in the position of authority wins because they have what?

If we're to challenge somebody above us, like our professor, perhaps not a professor at Southern, realize that we should never have a direct frontal assault on a superior force.

If we're in a battle, we're not gonna have a direct assault on a superior force.

The professor always has a strategic advantage because they are the professor.

Never get in a power play when you're outgunned.

For example, you're in class, some class, some place.

I'm sure it's not going to happen in Southern.

You're in a class and a professor makes a statement about all the myths in the Bible and the Bible not having any real value.

Well, the thing a person could do is ask a question.

Well, I mean that the Bible is all full of myths.

You know, there's miracle stories here and there.

Then our follow-up question is, he's just made an assertion, right?

So our next question would be, how did you come to that conclusion?

At that point, the professor might figure out what's going on and then say something like this, Well, you seem to be a Christian.

Why don't you tell us your reasons for believing in the Bible?

The professor has, or the person you're talking to, the person up front.

You could simply respond like this woman could have in this thing.

She could have, if she still had the microphone, simply responded, well you don't know if I'm a Christian at all.

You're making all the assertions, Professor Dawkins, I just want to find out what happens if you're wrong.

And so it's important for us to realize that if somebody else is making a case, they are the ones that are responsible for defending that case.

Don't let them do a little linguistic jujitsu and get you in that position.

Now another thing that we should know how to do is getting out of the hot seat because sometimes we just don't have enough information to give a correct response.

And this is 1 of the best places that you can use your game plan.

So when you know that you don't have enough information, switch from persuasion mode to fact-finding mode.

Use the questions, what do you mean by that?

And then ask them, well, what you're telling me is something new and I'm interested in what you're saying.

Then say the magic words, can I go home and think about it and do some more studies?

And when you do that, you know, you take off the pressure off yourself.

You're saying, well, I don't know this, so let me go learn more.

So you go back and you study, you get more resources.

Now, maybe you don't have enough time to do that, or you see that the person is losing interest in talking to you.

Because you need to let the conversation just die a natural death.

And maybe it didn't, you know, work out as you had expected, but it was still fruitful and because it was a learning experience for you.

And now you see a perspective that you need to go research more.

Getting out of the hot seat is important.

Some people are very aggressive and so here's some statements that people make to try to overwhelm other people.

And as Jeremy just said, when we're in the hot seat, some of our questions, what do you mean by that?

Just simply saying, I really don't have enough information.

What that does is it really takes the pressure off.

We were going to put some of you in the hot seat.

Maybe we could have a, what do you think if we got a hot seat volunteer and a hot seat aggressor?

We're kind of trying to figure this out on the fly here.

So this is going to be really open mic here.

And he is feeling, you know, maybe you're talking about the subject of abortion and he's feeling that you know you're really cramming morality down on him so he's gonna respond to you in a uncharacteristically aggressive way.

I mean you think you're better than all of us but what makes you better?

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 3

What we'd like to do in the last session, what I'd like to do in the last session, is wrestle with or defend, again, in apologetics way, some key issues that are very current.

And the first issue I'd like to raise is the question, where was God on 9-11?

Or really, it's the question of evil, and why is there suffering in this world?

I was reading an author who works on campuses as a Christian counselor.

And they ask questions every year at the dorms.

And there used to be questions like, what's the meaning of life?

Or back in the day, why didn't the Packers win the Super Bowl?

Or why does God let Christians stand outside my dorm asking stupid questions?

But most recently, the author was saying that the biggest question people are asking has to do with the issue of evil, the issue of suffering.

How as a Christian do we relate to that, the problem of suffering?

And if we think of September 11th, I was reading in a Time magazine, there was a story of a sixth grader by the name of Rodney Dickens.

He was from the inner city of Washington and lived in a not good area, but had spent his school years, sixth grader, so he didn't have much of a life, but trying to get good grades.

And he had won a national geographic trip to some islands off the coast of California.

And he was 1 of 3 children from inner city in Washington.

This was the first time he was ever on an airplane.

And he was on the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

And when you read his story of here he was, and he had dreams, and his family was so excited, where was God?

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who has a friend of his who was raped as a young woman.

And she was crying out for help while she was being raped.

Her parents didn't hear her communicating.

And so she wrestles with the question, How could there be a God when terrible things like that happen?

And I'm sure each 1 of you have had your own terrible experiences, or you know people who have had horrific experiences.

For example, if you were to listen to Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens delineate the terrible evils in this world, they talk about, oh, where were the floods a number of years ago?

Sorry, on the Mississippi River, there was an area that were flooded.

And there were people that were trapped in their attics, praying to God, and were drowned.

And during the earthquake in Haiti, many people called out to God.

And a writer in the New York Times asked a question, why call out to a God who is at best indifferent and at worst vengeful.

And so the problem of evil is a very powerful 1.

And when we talk about the problem of evil, we need to realize that we don't want to look at it as a philosopher or as a theologian, or even as a Christian.

And How do I make sense of the evil in this world?

And if I'm talking to somebody, if you meet somebody, and they raise the question to you, well, I don't believe in God because of evil, 1 of the first things we need to do is relate to them and realize that evil is something difficult to understand or explain.

But the second thing we need to realize is that it's not just the theist, it's not just the believer that has to answer the problem of evil.

The problem of evil is a problem for everyone.

In any of the scenarios that I mentioned, Rodney, or my friend's friend who was raped, or the people that were killed in floods, or tornadoes, or the earthquakes, everybody has to answer, what do I do with the problem of evil?

And so 1 of the first things to do, again, what we were just talking about, if somebody makes a statement, we can't just let them off the hook.

We have to ask them for their reasons, reverse the burden of proof.

They need to give us arguments for what they believe.

So a question for somebody that raises the issue of evil, A question back to them is, well, how do you explain evil given your worldview or your perspective?

It's important to realize that the atheist, the materialist, really doesn't have a perspective.

So 1 problem here for the atheist is really, how do we define evil?

Jeremy's got a book for 1 of his classes.

And they're trying to prove that there is good and evil.

Sam Harris wrote the book The Moral Landscape, trying to use science to prove that there really are moral facts.

Well, whether you like Brussels sprouts, you don't like Brussels sprouts, you don't like Brussels sprouts.

Whether you do or you don't, that's a matter of what?

What we do or we don't, is that something objective?

And so the question of evil, is there something objective that we call evil?

Now, in the clip we had on Sam Harris, he goes on and he talks about earthquakes are really not evil.

Now, I would argue that the end result of an earthquake, the result of the earthquake is evil.

When people are put to death like that, that is evil.

Would you differentiate between decisions that people make and I guess what they're asking you as people or is it all under the thumb?

What do you mean by decisions that people make?

It wasn't necessarily a natural disaster.

It was people who systematically planned it.

So would that be, I guess, evil or something to bring on God, or would it be something I chose to do?

Like, I think you're jumping a little bit ahead of me as to, how do we relate to the problem of evil?

And certainly, part of it is people make decisions, and we'll come to that.

But right now, just why is there so much suffering?

Again, the first thing is not to let the aggressor off the hook.

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GYC SE 2011 Seminar: Do You Have a Game Plan?

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 3

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Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 1

42m

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 2

45m

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 3

44m

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