If you are
you may be trying to figure out how to ask effective questions to have deeper conversations.
[Read more…] about Resource: 52 Questions for Bible Teachers
Tactful spiritual conversation starter questions can open the doors to significant evangelistic conversations.
Tactful means that you sensitive to the timing, the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and the level of your friend’s spiritual thirst.
Tactful means paying attention to your own motives as you ask the questions: are you forcing a conversation or manipulating the situation?
With these evangelistic questions, use them appropriately.
It’ll take prayer and discernment to recognize those moments when these are great questions to use in personal evangelism [Read more…] about 44 Spiritual Conversation Starter Questions
I found that Intervarsity.org has a some good evangelistic questions during a reasonable conversation, broken out into groups. Check these out:
- Some sample questions.Here are some good questions that will help you move into a conversation about spiritual things. Be sure and listen carefully to their answers. And be prepared to share your own answers to these same questions as well.
- Questions about CHRIST:
- Who is/was Jesus Christ (i.e., his identity)? What do you think was significant about his life? What was he trying to accomplish (i.e., his purpose)?
- What do you think was significant about his death?
- A lot of people claim that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive today. What do you think?
- How do you see Christ fitting into Christianity? (Try to separate religion from relationship.)
- Jesus said a lot of interesting things like, I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but by me. What do you think he meant by these statements?
- Questions about HUMANKIND:
- What is humankind’s reason for being? What is your purpose in life?
- What do you think humankind’s basic problem is? Do you believe we are good or evil or both? What kind of solutions to this do you see?
- What kind of needs do you see in the people around you? What is your deepest need?
- Questions about CHRISTIANITY:
- How would you describe a real Christian? What exactly is it that makes one a Christian?
- What’s been your experience with Christianity? What’s your church background?
- What do you think it means to believe in Jesus?
- Questions about BELIEF IN GOD:
- Why do you (or don’t you) believe in God?
- When did God first become real to you?
- How has your view of God changed since coming to college?
- What do you think God is like and where are those ideas from? Is he concerned about us? What do you think God expects of us?
- Questions about their VIEW OF THE WORLD:
- Many people say that if there is no afterlife, then life is meaningless. What do you think of life after death? How about the idea of heaven and hell? How would we get into heaven?
- What is your basis for ethics? What absolute truths are there?
- Why is there evil in the world?
- What do you think sin is? (Or, how would you define sin?)
- Would you be interested in getting together to discuss what the Bible says about the issues we’ve been talking about?
Source: Communication Skills for Evangelism – Evangelism – InterVarsity.org. Original article has moved.
The point of questions is not a have a litmus test, but to create and continue conversation. These questions can help that process.
Print out this list of questions to use for your devotional time to reflect on your own faith.
You are free to share, bookmark, repost, or email this list as you see fit.
As mentioned in Saturday’s post I just finished reading Nick Pollard’s Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult: How to Interest People who Aren’t Already Interested (order your copy direct from Amazon).
The goal of his book is to
help you get uninterested people interested in Jesus, to reach people “who are simply not interested in hearing about Jesus because they are quite happy with their own views” (p. 31).
The subtitle makes it clear: How to Interest People who aren’t Already Interested.
In other words, this book is offering to help you reach a specific category of people:
those who doing fine in life without Jesus, and therefore don’t see the need.
To reach them, “we must help them become uncomfortable with their current worldview and then perhaps they will be” (p. 42).
This is done in a conversational dialogue about worldview (which all of Ch 2 is about).
Side Note: The best book on world view that I have read is Discipling the Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures, by Darrow Miller. Follow the link to get your copy from Amazon.
Pollard’s approach to conversational evangelism with people who are not spiritually thirsty is what he calls “Positive deconstruction.”
In all of chapter 3, he explains that through the use of critical questions, you can help a person analyze their world view, take it apart, and examine it.
The goal of such conversations is to expose the internal contradictions in the worldview.
This form of debate may seems negative, but the goal is to search for truth.
The destination of the conversation is meant to wind up at the place where a person says
“I’m not so sure that what I believe is right after all. I want to find out more about Jesus” (p.44)
“We’ve got a major job to do if we are to help people want to find out about Jesus.”
The starting point is to find out what a person believes.
Conversationally, this can be done through the use of questions and sincere inquiries that are genuine.
Then, after finding out what a person believes, make efforts at understanding their worldview (such as read books about it).
With these two things, you are then prepared to know what kinds of questions to raise — to help the other person examine their worldview.
Chapter 4 looks at principles involved in researching worldviews, preparing your self for worldview conversations, and then creating questions to examine a world view. See a chapter excerpt at “Where do I start?”
Pollard gives a worksheet to help you analyze a world view (p.57)
| Affirm the Truth | Discover the Error | |
| 1. Cohere? | ||
| 2. Correspond? | ||
| 3. Does it work? |
You can see an except of Chapter 5, where he walks through a case study of the principles. “It’s Not for Me” from bethinking.org
The rest of Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult goes on to examine worldviews, and help you think about potential conversations.
There is no formal gospel presentation offered, but a general analysis of conversational points. To engage in this style of evangelism conversation, you
I took entire courses in seminary on worldviews, read several books on worldviews. (A good example of an evangelist who understands world view is Ravi Zacharias of www.rzim.org.).
Does worldview research and philosophical analysis come easy to you? Or, does it overwhelm and confuse you? This is where one needs to find a evangelism style to fit your personality.
What approach would you use to engage this particular subset of people: those who are not interested?
I’m currently reading
Vanguard church writes an article called Appreciative Inquiry Evangelism.
The question introduces a series of yet to be written posts about evangelism that is cast a little differently than sin/salvation. [Read more…] about Friday Finds
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