Prodigals
One thing that IV at UNC CH has been doing this year is looking at ministry to “prodigals”, which they define as “anyone who has spent a year or more after age twelve in Christian community but is not currently pursuing a relationship with the Lord.” They estimate that, since we are in the Bible belt, over half their campus fits that description. I like that definition, and would like to think about how we might equip our students to reach prodigals.
Thinking about Jesus’ parable of prodigals, though, I am reminded that the parable was mostly about the “prodigal Father” who was wasteful/prodigal in His love for the wayward son and the religious son. Primarily what it means to reach prodigals is to more fully access the prodigal heart of the Father.
After that, what draws the prodigal son home? His need. We are certainly good in our culture of covering up our need, and so perhaps we need to 1) teach students to pray for need to be uncovered, and 2) teach students how to ask questions that reveal deeper needs that are usually covered up.
Thoughts?
Thinking about Jesus’ parable of prodigals, though, I am reminded that the parable was mostly about the “prodigal Father” who was wasteful/prodigal in His love for the wayward son and the religious son. Primarily what it means to reach prodigals is to more fully access the prodigal heart of the Father.
After that, what draws the prodigal son home? His need. We are certainly good in our culture of covering up our need, and so perhaps we need to 1) teach students to pray for need to be uncovered, and 2) teach students how to ask questions that reveal deeper needs that are usually covered up.
Thoughts?
posted by Marshall at 5:55 AM
6 Comments:
Hey ya'll! Marsh invited me to crash the blog and chime in on the prodigals stuff from our semester at UNC. I think it also dovetails with your earlier conversation about why conversions aren't coming.
i think the thing about equipping students to grow in evangelism is that it's like lead--unless it's purposefully brought to the top of the priority list, it sinks. One way that we can help students think missionally in an ongoing basis is by helping them to focus in on what their mission field looks like.
I think when we talk about 'evangelism' in general terms, students often get this image of a general mass of mean non-Christians in their heads. When you start asking them about their non-Christian relationships, that's a different group of people altogether.
The 'prodigals' concept this semester has been an attempt to help our students understand our mission field and to understand that our mission field and their relationships are one in the same. Just saying, "Go be missional/evangelistic" to a chapter full of people means that you're going to get 25 to 500 people all going 50,000 different directions; some won't move at all because they don't know what the heck they're supposed to do and end up just feeling guilt/resistance to the call. To bring focus and commitment to our evangelism helps us to think more thoroughly and act more deliberately. It makes concrete activity a more clear thing.
So we focused on prodigals, and that helped us to ask better questions. What are the issues a prodigal faces that are unique to prodigals? Here are some of our answers: previous experience in church (often resulting in church baggage), C'ity = rules, fear of being judged b/c of decisions been making, lots of questions and issues with the faith, returning home can be along process, often have right words but wrong definitions, think they've already tried faith and it didn't 'work' before.
How can we meet those needs? Primarily by helping our students think through and see these issues. Marsh's point about asking good questions is clearly right on here.
But I really think that the biggest challenge to a comprehensive up-turn in our conversions is going to have to be a re-thinking of structures top to bottom to be more missional in their mindset. Stealing a page from Kevin Hass/Katie, at our leadership meetings every two weeks we spend at least 15 minutes celebrating conversations with non-Christians or Prodigals and praying for conversions. At first I didn't know if anyone would be having conversations, now people come excited to talk about their relationships with non-Christians. So every two weeks my leaders have leaders are reminded that sharing their faith is central to what we're about. Regular evangelistic large groups do this as well--we've been tinkering around some with what it looks like to do an evangelistic large group specifically designed for prodigals. Here again, our focus on prodigals helps us to be much more intentional and get better traction for our evangelistic events.
I think the problem with GIG's is that they are often occurring on an island outside the community, so they have no real impact on the culture of the chapter. The 'normal' chapter kids are not being pushed to think evangelistically because three GIG's are happening in the student government. There have got to be ways that we anchor evangelism as a core value in our community. Given our structure set-up as it is now, leadership and large groups are the most effective ways to do this. To have a more specific focus for outreach helps in planning, equipping, and challenging students in more specific ways.
Okay, I'm done unloading all of my un-requested thoughts on evangelism.
They were no unrequested. This stuff is great. One question that I will throw out - are GIG's the way to go? Is GIG training one of the good things that we need to do more of or should we do less? I'm not takin' a position. I'm just askin'.
Thanks, Joe, for weighing in. It seems to me that C-team, SG Vision may best serve chapter by dealing with the interested/uniterested barrier by creating events and opportunities for spiritual seeking and exploration/sou awakening. I think that the current set up of the Good News track allows us to deal with the info barrier (GIGs) and also the commitment barrier (because we do some training on how to "pop the question" i.e. share the bridge diagram and invite people into the Father's family. Would you all agree on this? I don't think that the Good News track is going to be as effective in the interested/uninterested barrier on a very large scale, although we might can talk some about creating interest on a small scale.
Willis and Jen, thanks for your comments and Jen, nice icon for your blogger ID!
Might we address those different barriers of faith in some way from up front? I think this is another good way to encourage perseverance and help them re-define “success”. I know for myself, I have to remember that Jesus as Savior and Lord often comes in 2 separate steps (especially in college students/post-college), not all at once. Giving them a (ANY) paradigm of understanding how people come to faith might encourage them in the long-haul. I don’t want to make it too “follow these 10 steps” sounding, but giving them some way to see that the Lord is transforming someone can be a really helpful encouragement. It might also help us include the community ideas that Jen is talking about. As in, this isn't the ONLY way to make things happen, there isn't a plug and play formula to bringing someone to Jesus. Look to your community (not a GIG) to create interest, etc, etc.
I agree with Katie, and I think that Kevin's thoughts on the different obstacles (evangelism to pagan's v. churched kids) is helpful here. Knowing the potential conversational barriers ahead of time can be good.
Hey found your blog refreshing to read, thanks!
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