TRAINING
Workshop: Communicating Christ Clearly
When faced with the opportunity to engage with someone of a different faith, imagine confidently articulating your beliefs with clarity and respect. This might seem daunting, but it’s something that all Christians should aspire to. Sadly, most believers have never learned to share their faith, or they have learned methods that no longer communicate well with our radically unchurched culture. That leaves most Christians and churches ineffective at reaching the lost.
In 1971 approximately 33% of Australians attended a local church regularly,1 and around 86% of Australians considered themselves to be “Christians”.2 Today, less than 20% of Australians self-report as attending Church,3 and 43% identify themselves as “Christian”. efn_note]Religious affiliation in Australia | Australian Bureau of Statistics (abs.gov.au)[/efn_note]
Apologist Ken Ham describes the difference we see in our generations as being like the difference between the God-fearing Jews who knew of Yahweh in Acts 2, and the unknowing Greeks in Acts 17.4 He argues that we now live in an Acts 17 world and need to speak a lot more like Paul in Acts 17 than Peter in Acts 2.
In the past the Australian culture included an general understanding of Christian concepts, values, and terminology which supported the communication of the Gospel. Today, not only are explicitly “Christian” language and concepts perceived negatively, but many of the foundational understandings of morality and reasoning are absent, make the mission to communicate the Gospel significantly different to how it once was.
This means that our evangelism has to start in a different place than we would have started a couple of generations earlier. We can’t assume that anyone is familiar with Christian ideas or words. We have to learn to speak the gospel in regular English rather than in fluent Christianese. The goal of evangelism remains unchanged, but the method, means, and perspective needs to be more strategically considered than previous decades.
OAC would love to come to your church and provide training in how your congregation can share the message of Jesus effectively.
It is our conviction that every Christian should be able to share the gospel with the unchurched people in their sphere of influence. Our specialists have years of first hand experience in reaching the lost, and have trained hundreds in the skills they need to speak about our glorious saviour.
“Communicating Christ Clearly” has been meticulously developed as an evangelism course to empower every believer to share their faith. This comprehensive program equips individuals with an understanding of the core of the Christian worldview, and then gives them simple tools to communicate the gospel in a conversational format without relying heavily on Christian jargon.
The course covers:
- The Great Commission and our call to go and make disciples
- What is the gospel?
- How to get into a gospel conversation
- How to communicate the gospel message
- Use of analogies and avoiding jargon
- How to help someone respond to the good news
The sessions are interactive and involve role-playing and opportunities to practice what they are learning. There are videos of real evangelism encounters, a high quality workbook to complete, and small homework assignments between sessions.
About the trainer:
Andrew has been doing evangelism since he got saved more than 20 years ago. He’s been privileged to share the gospel with tens of thousands of people over that time. He’s received evangelism training from a wide range of different programs and also holds a MDiv from Melbourne School of Theology.
He’s been able to train hundreds of Christians in basic evangelism techniques over the past decade and also occasionally teaches the evangelism unit at Brisbane School of Theology.
