Why you NEED First Date Evangelism

Wise Disciple

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Let me offer you an explanation as to why nobody is changing their mind on social media. It's because we skip steps number one and two and we go right into step number three.

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No, that's foolish. Here's why you're wrong in nine bullet points. Nobody is changing their mind in this kind of a dynamic.

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It's because we have, number one, largely forgotten how to be in relationship with each other. I would argue we used to know this stuff, but we've largely forgotten it.

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And we're not following the proper order of persuasion. Jesus knew this, okay?

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He, Jesus, followed the proper order of persuasion. When Jesus initiated his ministry, think about it, he did not immediately go and teach.

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He didn't make a series of announcements that he was going to be on this particular hill in Galilee on a particular day so that he could give the beatitudes.

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That's not what he did first. Instead, what he did was he built his credibility in others, and he did it in a particular way.

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If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and reference this, although I won't spend a whole bunch of time on this.

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It's Mark 1 10 -11. I'm going to tell the Nate Sala paraphrased story version of Mark 1 10 -11.

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This is the moment where Jesus approaches John the Baptist and his entire crowd of followers.

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At this point, when Jesus appears, John the Baptist has already been getting his followers amped, ready to see

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Jesus. And when Jesus appears, John says, Look, there he is, the

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Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. This is the one I've been talking about. Here he comes.

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Jesus comes down through the crowd, goes right down into the water, comes back up.

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The Holy Spirit comes down upon him like a dove, and the voice out of heaven, the voice of the Father, You are my beloved

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Son, in whom I am well pleased. This whole thing was designed, in one sense, it was designed to build credibility in the followers of John the

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Baptist. Because what happens next? Jesus gets up and leaves, and some of John's followers begin to follow him.

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This is where Jesus initiates his ministry. He goes and gets John's followers to follow him.

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That's how this worked. You could say it another way. Jesus initially started his ministry by getting two celebrity endorsements.

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One from John the Baptist, arguably the most popular person in the first century at the time, and number two from God the

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Father. And we know, from another place in the Gospels, that Jesus was not the only one who heard the voice of the

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Father. At least John did as well. So, Jesus built his credibility first in others, and that's how he started his ministry.

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Built trust. He also built an emotional connection with his disciples. You'll see time and again, we're in between, interspersed between all these moments where he's teaching, he's healing the sick, he takes these moments where he goes away.

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And he invites his disciples to come and spend time with him. He spends time with them, builds an emotional connection, and then finally he gives them knowledge, knowledge in keeping with his ultimate goals.

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Now, I spent a lot more time on this. This was actually the talk that John and I gave in August.

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So, if you want more details, more in -depth, I encourage you to go. I think this talk is on YouTube. You can find those.

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But anyway, Jesus knew this and he followed the proper order. And we should as well. Here are a few more things to consider about why we do it this way.

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Publilius Cyrus was an ancient, ancient Roman thinker, and he says this, We are interested in others when they are interested in us.

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This reminds me of a, it's a cliche saying, I think it's been attributed to Roosevelt, but there is a saying that I heard all the time when

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I was in school for teaching, and it says, Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

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You guys know this, okay? I'm really averse to cliches. I just don't like all that stuff.

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But it's a cliche for a reason, because it's true. William James, poet, said this,

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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. You want somebody to listen to what you have to say, be interested in them first, care about them where they feel it.

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They know that you are interested and you care about them, and that you appreciate them. These are the rules of first -date evangelism.

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So I have a podcast, I mentioned this before, and sometimes we have guests on, experts in their field, theologians, apologists.

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Usually they come on to promote a book that we think is vitally important to read. Well, one of my all -time favorite guests who came on, he's a professor at Biola, his name is

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Greg Gansel, and he wrote a book called Our Deepest Desires. And we were talking about this subject right here, and he said something

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I'll never forget, but he said that the overriding factor that persuades someone is not apologetics, it's not the most logical argument, it's not having a gotcha moment where you back somebody up in the corner of the wall, it's actually getting them to say,

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I want to be like him. Man, I want to be like her. That's the overriding factor that persuades people.

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Finally, Galileo said something very, very interesting. You cannot teach a person anything.

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You actually cannot teach a person anything. You can only help them to find it within themselves.

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We have this desire to feel like we are master and commander of our own ship.

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And as soon as somebody gets in our face and says, you want to know what your problem is? You're actually been wrong the whole time.

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Let me explain to you why you're wrong. This is akin to mutiny. We don't want to deal with that.

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And as soon as we hear something like that, the walls of defense come up. You need to be able to be engaging, intentional, and challenging in a manner that allows somebody else to feel like they're the ones coming up with the idea, and that's why we follow first -date evangelism.

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By the way, if you can see on the slide here, I've rewritten the build the trust, build the emotional connection, and build the knowledge.

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I've rewritten it in the form of the way that the Greeks used to talk about this. So this is actually really old. I'm not telling you something that I've invented or come up with.

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I'm actually just pointing out something that we used to know a long time ago. The Greeks used to call this ethos, pathos, and logos.