Paul and the Courtroom

At the suggestion of my principal and thanks to the incredible response from colleagues and parents to an email I sent, I am sharing here the story of a friend of mine and how it affected some of my students.

The Crime

A few years ago, my friend Paul was driving with his son.  After they passed a car on the road, the driver of that car pursued them in a fit of road rage and brandished a gun.  No one was hurt, and my friend and his son got away safely, but they were shaken nonetheless.

The Trial

Yesterday, my friend texted several of us to say that the court date had finally arrived.  He asked for prayer, but not for the reason you might expect.

Paul's text:  Part of the agreement that I made was that I get to make a "victim's statement."  I intend to talk about God's forgiveness and my relationship with Jesus Christ.  Please pray that I do so with boldness, authority, and with grace.  Please pray that it would be well received and that it would penetrate hearts in the courtroom.

I am sure there are many of us who claim to follow Jesus who would not have taken that approach.  We would have been glad that an ugly chapter of life was behind us and we may have prayed for the perpetrator, but I doubt that any great number of us would have seen the court date as an opportunity to evangelize, but that is who Paul is.  No, he is not an evangelist by trade, but he certainly is one by calling, and not long after his first text, we received another.

Second text:  Well, it's over.  I got to say my thing.  I told the defendant, in the presence of the judge, all the attorneys, and all the people in the court, that because of my relationship with God, I am commanded to forgive when I am wronged, and that I forgive him for what he did.  I then challenged him by telling him that there is brokenness in him.  After all, who pulls a gun on someone simply because they pass them on the road?  I told him that I understood his predicament because I, too, was once a broken man.  But through a relationship with Jesus Christ, I was able to address the brokenness in my life and find peace.  And I wished him that he would find that same peace.  You could hear a pin drop in the courtroom.  When we walked out, the prosecuting attorney told me that I had spoken well, but she was surprised at the "religious context" of my speech.  She said it's not something we usually do.  She then volunteered the information that she is a Muslim.  I told her that as a Muslim, surely she would understand the impact of forgiveness and peace.  She said she did.  And then, amazingly, she asked me to keep her in my prayers!

The Classroom

Deacon Rick Wagner is the president of the school where I teach, and he is big on stories.  He is always talking with students and faculty about the importance of sharing stories as a way to share the gospel, which of course is exactly what Jesus did.  My class of Latin III students was in session when I received the texts from my friend.  Ordinarily I would have ignored my phone's vibrations, but they were preparing independently for finals, so I read them, and once I had, I had to interrupt my students in their work.  I simply had to share what friend Paul had done in that courtroom.  When I had finished reading the texts, one of my students said, "Plaudite omnes," which is Latin for "everyone, applaud."  It is something I often say when a student has done or said something extraordinary, and this young man thought it the appropriate thing to say in that moment.  The rest of his classmates must have agreed, for they all began to clap.

Window Damage

 

I love stained glass windows and am certainly no iconoclast, but when it comes to the subject of Fr. Dimitri Sala's book The Stained Glass Curtain, I am all for some ecclesiastical glass shattering.  Jesus tells us that no one knows when the end of the age will come, and whether the hour is late, as it seems to many, or is yet far off, the Great Commission still stands to go and make disciples of all nations, and our message of the gospel of Jesus Christ would sound much better coming from a unified voice than from the cacophony of infighting brethren.

When The Church Became Larger

I grew up in an independent Christian church in the midwest, and while I read St. Augustine's Confessions as part of an undergraduate philosophy class at Indiana University, I did not come to grasp that a few things had happened between Acts 2 and the present until I was in graduate school.  A pastor friend at the time introduced me to the Church Fathers, a Lutheran friend introduced me to high-church liturgy, and suddenly the church became more gloriously grand than I had known.  I discovered the 378 volumes of the Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca of Jacques-Paul Migne, and believe me when I say that upon realizing I could access the works of the Church Fathers in their original languages, I thought I might never leave the library.

Volumes from Patrologia Graeca

This kind of reading and discussion led to my becoming acquainted with the writings of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Stanley Hauerwas, Lesslie Newbigin, and others.  It also took me to Rose Hill in Aiken, South Carolina, for an ecumenical conference with enough luminaries that electric lights would not have been necessary.  Peter Kreeft spoke, along with Fr. Neuhaus.  There were Harold O. J. Brown, Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, Bishop (later Metropolitan) Kallistos Ware, J. I. Packer, and Carl Braaten as plenary speakers and numerous other well-known leaders of breakout sessions.  There were Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelicals, and mainline Protestants at this conference, including me, a graduate student in Classics who was savoring just how large the body of Christ truly is.  If you were not able to attend that event in 1995, you can read all of the amazing talks in Reclaiming the Great Tradition.

A Radio Station That Made Sense

I used to listen to radio on my drive to school, and in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, I found one that gave me the information I wanted.  At that time I had been listening a lot to the local K-Love affiliate, a Christian music station with Christian-based talk shows woven in.  That station, however, was not talking about any of the issues surrounding the election, although many of the secular stations were, and as I searched for something else, I ran across the local EWTN affiliate that was tackling the issues head on and in a fair, balanced, faithful way.  I was soon listening to episodes with Fr. Mitch Pacwa and Mother Angelica.  My reading expanded into the writings of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who by then had been elected Pope Benedict XVI, Scott Hahn, Stephen Ray, David Currie, and more.  I was delving deeper into St. Aquinas, St. Anselm, and some of the exquisitely beautiful prayers of the faith, such as this one from St. Bonaventure, along with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and one thing became abundantly clear.  Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants have much in common.

Evangelicals and Catholics Together

Among the books I read in those years was Evangelicals and Catholics Together by Fr. Neuhaus and Charles Colson and Becoming a Contagious Christian by Mark Mittelberg, who has since become one of my dearest friends.  The former is based on and is an expansion of a document by the same name, which appeared in the May 1994 issue of First Things.  It focuses on the evangelistic mission of those who follow Christ and the many points of shared belief between Evangelicals and Catholics.  The latter is a landmark book in personal evangelism, which is to say, it is about understanding the gifts God has given each of us so that we, in our unique ways, can best fulfill the evangelistic mission that has been given to us all, and it is through the author of that book that all these threads start coming together.

The Boring Part of Homer's Iliad?

If you have stayed with me so far, congratulations and thank you.  It may have felt a bit like reading the famous Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 of Homer's Iliad, the part a lot of people skip, but there was a reason I mentioned all those books and names.  Much of my reading, thinking, and discussion for the past thirty years has prepared me for and led me to Fr. Dimitri Sala's The Stained Glass Curtain.

In the fall of 2022, Mark Mittelberg emailed me to say that he and Fr. Dimitri had been talking about this book and that he had given Fr. Dimitri my email.  I quickly visited https://www.thestainedglasscurtain.com/ and couldn't wait to purchase the book.  Just a few pages in, and I was emailing Fr. Dimitri myself, beating him to the punch, and soon we were emailing and talking on the phone about the importance of this book, both from a Catholic perspective (his) and from an Evangelical perspective (mine).  As I devoured the book, I highlighted passage after passage.  In fact, the highlighter pictured below was brand new when I began using it on this book.  I drained it dry and began another before I had finished reading.

Consider just a few of the many examples.

"[O]n the level of evangelizing with the message of salvation and the working of the Holy Spirit, official Catholic teaching and the preaching of Evangelicals do not differ."  (p. 8, italics original)

"[W]hether coming from a Protestant or Catholic source, the gospel is still part of the common heritage of Christianity we share with all who preach it."  (p. 12)

"[O]ur disunity radically lessens what God is able to do through us to transform the world by our witness of the gospel."  (p. 14, italics original)

"Since its central figure is identified as a personal being -- and one who love us, no less -- Christianity cannot be viewed as an impersonal set of practices, guidelines, or laws.  God's purpose in creating us was not simnply to get us to go through a set of motions we call 'worship' or to follow a set of rules we call 'commandments.'  No -- He created us foremost to exist in relationship with Him."  (p. 37, italics original)

Why The Enthusiasm?

Why am I so enthusiastic about this book that I emptied a highlighter in it and have written this lengthy blog post?  It's simple.  Nothing is more important than evangelism.  Nothing.  And because this is the case, I want to see nothing hinder its progress and everything done to advance its cause.  Misinformation and misunderstanding that lead to divisions within the body of Christ are not only abhorrent to God (see Romans 16:17, 1 Corinthians 1:10, Galatians 5:19-21, Titus 3:10-11, and Jude 19), but also, as Fr. Dimitri wrote, do harm to our witness to the work of Jesus.

There are, of course, differences across the body of Christ, many of which are quite important.  These must be approached with prayer, with humility and grace toward those who would take up their meaningful discussion, and with openness as we "rightly handle the word of truth" to which the Holy Spirit leads us.  The temptation we must not only avoid but renounce is the one that would have us start with these differences.  If Catholics, Orthodox, and Evangelicals believe any of the same things, as Fr. Dimitri suggests they do regarding the salvific nature of Christ's work and the nature of God as one God eternally existing in three persons, we would do well to remember these two teachings of Jesus.

John said to him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us."  But Jesus said, "Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.  For the one who is not against us is for us."  (Mark 9:38-40, ESV)

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."  (Matthew 9:36-38, ESV)

Contagious Faith

 

I am always looking for ways to connect people with other people, with ideas, with opportunities, with experiences, and most importantly with Jesus, and for this reason I had been excited for many months about my friend Mark Mittelberg's new book Contagious Faith.  Mark is a best-selling author and speaker who has spent his life doing two things, helping people come to salvation through Jesus and equipping people to help their friends and family do the same.  He is also the executive director for the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University, so it is safe to say that when he writes a book whose subtitle is Discover Your Natural Style for Sharing Jesus with Others, he knows what he is talking about.

I have been devouring this book about as fast as I can, which at times is not all that quickly since I am highlighting, making margin notes, and tweeting key lines.  In this post I will offer both a standard book review so you know what you are getting and a look at why this book needs to be in every church's bookstore, on every pastor's bookshelf, and in every Christian's arsenal for doing what God has called them to do.  To wrap it up, you will find a very personal reason why I am excited about all this.

The Review

The book is very well structured. After a foreward by Lee Strobel and two chapters that set out the why of evangelism, it moves into five "contagious faith styles," or approaches to personal evangelism.  Each style gets its own chapter that describes the style for sharing your faith, gives a biblical example to show how this style has been used, and backs that up with some personal stories from modern people.  It then gives practical tips related to that style that are useful for anyone, whether or not that particular style connects with you, and importantly offers some cautions about that style if it is pushed too far.  Too many books only present the positives of the author’s ideas, but Mittelberg is quick to show the pitfalls of each style so that they can be avoided.

Mittelberg identifies five styles for sharing your faith that he calls Friendship-Building, Selfless-Serving, Story-Sharing, Reason-Giving, and Truth-Telling.  I highlighted multiple passages in each style, even though the style that came back from my self assessment on the book's website was the Reason-Giving style.  In particular, I found myself enthusiastically highlighting, underlining, and writing "YES" with multiple exclamation marks in the Truth-Telling chapter.

The book then includes four chapters that go quite deep.  One discusses what the gospel actually is, and if you think you think it can be boiled down to just a quick prayer for salvation, think again.  Another explores what to do when your natural style doesn't seem to fit the situation, one explores the truly adventurous nature of sharing the good news of Jesus, and the final chapter takes a look at the evangelism explosion around the world and how your legacy can be caught up in it.

And if this were not enough, the book contains an exhaustive list of resources at the end, which in itself would be worth the price of the book.

The Why

Obviously, I am a fan of Contagious Faith, and although I would have loved to explore in depth each chapter, it is better that you just buy the book for yourself and jump in...unless, of course, you are not persuaded the idea of personal or lifestyle evangelism is all that important in the first place.  Let's be clear.  Mark Mittelberg has not paid me to write what you are about to read.  This is my own stance.  If you have a beef with it, take it up with me.

Church leaders, what could be more important than equipping our people to share the good news of Jesus Christ?  Addressing issues of sin and brokenness are important, as are the many acts of service that local churches provide, but nothing...nothing...is more important than someone's relationship with God, and if a person does not know Him or has chosen to reject His grace, that person's relationship will be defined by an eternity of separation from the living, loving God of the universe.  There's a name for that, by the way.  It's called hell.  Pastors, elders, youth leaders, Sunday school teachers, deacons, bishops, and choir directors...either you believe this or you don't.  If you don't, then I would suggest finding another line of work or at least stop using the word "Christian" on your business card.  If you do, then you understand what I'm saying and it will either encourage you in your evangelistic training efforts or it will light the fire that helps you start them.

And this leads us to Christians who would not consider themselves part of that list above.  These are the children and teens, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas who fill our churches, worship faithfully, and try to live good lives, but who would never in a million years consider themselves evangelists.  Here's the thing.  Christians have understood since the time of Jesus that it was incumbent upon us to share the gospel.  From the beginning we have understood that Matthew 28:18-20 was speaking to all of us.

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age."  (ESV)

As Mittelberg makes clear, it is not enough just to be a nice person and hope people can guess what is going on and accept Jesus as their Lord.  How do we know?  The last chapter of the book talks about the flourishing of evangelism and the increasing numbers of people around the world who are turning to Jesus.  What is conspicuous by its absence is mention of the United States.  Do you really need me to link data that show a decline in our country of those who follow Jesus?  I could, of course, such as here, here, and here, but just look at your news and social media feeds.  Listen to the conversations you have with co-workers, friends, and family.  Those will make more than a sufficiently compelling case for evangelism.

We must help our children and teens, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, indeed everyone in our churches and Christian communities, know how to share the good news of God through Jesus Christ.  Mark Mittelberg's Contagious Faith is an excellent resource in this most important of works.

Mark, my son Austin, and me

The Personal Part

Part of my own journey with Jesus can be found starting on p. 239 of another of Mark Mittelberg's books, The Unexpected Adventure, which he co-authored with Lee Strobel.  It was Wednesday, August 9, 2000.  The pastor of our church and I had gone to a conference where Mark was speaking, and in his morning session on relational evangelism, he made frequent reference to the clear point at which a person came to saving faith in Jesus.  I had grown up in the church, had been baptized the summer before I turned 13, and had an active prayer and devotional life.  Jesus was always part of my life, so I could not put my finger on a specific, transitional moment in my life, a Damascene conversion, if you will.  The church we attended at the time did not speak of such things, either, but I was interested in helping our congregation develop evangelistically, so this seemed like something I should understand better.

At the mid-morning break, I stood in line to ask Mark about it, but when my turn came, I found the words coming out haltingly, and as he spoke, tears unexpectedly filled my eyes.  Mark knew something was up, and since the break was nearly over, asked if I wanted to grab lunch at the conclusion of the session.  I nodded and headed off to the men's room to compose myself.  Alone in that church's restroom, I heard the nearly audible voice of Jesus saying that after that day, I would never need to doubt my relationship with Him again.  I could hardly wait for lunch, and it wasn't from hunger!

We hopped into Mark's car as soon as the session was over and drove to a nearby deli.  There, in the parking lot, Mark unpacked the gospel.  It was not that I had never heard it before, but I needed to make it my own.  We prayed, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and we grabbed lunch.  Something transpired in those moments that is best captured in Mark's telling of it in The Unexpected Adventure.

He [Steve] told me later that as I spoke, he kept praying, "Yes, Lord Jesus."  He said that "suddenly the word Lord took on a whole new meaning.  It was as if the four letters of that word radiated with red and blue and gold colors.  I kept saying, 'LORD Jesus -- just those two words, over and over.  I finally understood the word Lord and I laughed and cried."  (p. 242)

Mark did not miss an opportunity.  Yes, he was leading a conference session and needed to keep his mind on his presentation, but he was prepared for a divine appointment that day and met it.  I hope you read this latest book of his, Contagious Faith.  Perhaps there is someone just waiting to experience the Lordship of Jesus Christ because of a conversation with YOU!