James Choung has written a few books on explaining the Christian Faith. On of the issues that he tackles is updating or improving the Bridge Illustration. The whole article is here at The Big Story | Tell It Slant .
“Choung’s ‘napkin theology’ and its ‘four-worlds’ diagram promise to be for evangelism in the twenty-first century what the ‘Four Spiritual Laws’ were for the twentieth century.”
— Leonard Sweet, author of The Church of the Perfect Storm, podcaster of the weekly “Napkin Scribbles” podcast
Check out these videos to see the telling of the story. There are two here.
Here is what I like about the illustration:
- It’s much less individual in it’s focus.
- It adds in that we follow Christ to join in God’s redemptive story.
- It talks about worldviews
- It’s simple and can be reproduced on a napkin.
- It incorporates some of the social aspects of the gospel.
After sharing this video on his blog, Choung received lots of feedback and suggestions and created version 2, which continues from the prior video
Let me ask you this?
What do you think of Choung’s improvement? What do you make of how he explains sin, righteousness, eternity, kingdom? Join the conversation below and comment.
How to Use the Bridge Illustration
I work for Campus Outreach and am putting together an Evangelism training packet for our summer training project with college students. I have been doing some research on evangelism and ran across your webpage. I wanted to leave some comments and ideas to spark conversation
I thought Choung’s presentation was good, but could be better. I love the the worldview concept. Almost every evangelism tool is missing that. I also love that it does promote an individualistic gospel, but a corporate gospel, which is what jesus preached in the kingdom. Also liked the change of mind (repentance) and the trust Jesus (believe).
Critiques. I think this will work well with a certain audience, those who are engaged in the world and are eager to make a positive impact on society, culture, and the world. Might miss those outside of that circle, who are consumed in themselves. Second, it is missing personal sin/responsibility. He hit on it with change mind concept, but nothing before that to convince someone that they are utterly sinful…so someone could hear this and say that is awesome, pray a prayer and start getting involved in following Christ, then later realize wait a minute…” I am suppose to stop lusting? You never told me that, didn’t know that was a sin to repent of.” Might feel a little duped there. If there was more to the presentation to really help convict someone of their need for Christ as their savior it would be much better. I feel that his presentation was meant to offset how other evangelism tools focus only on individual relationship with the Lord, The way of the master, for example. But I wonder if the pendulum swung too far back the other way and is missing the personal conviction all together.
Other issues. Our culture is moving deeper into Postmodernity and lots of people i share with. Do not even believe in the bible as God’s word because of the deconstruction of language. I think this tool misses it on this mark.
Just some thoughts. I would love to have some more dialogue as I am studying through, critiquing, and trying to develop the best method of evangelism training in our culture today.
ohh one other thought. I am a big fan of Randy Pope’s evangelism training. His whole premise is that most tools are presentations and they are 1 dimensional. Sometimes you might have a two dimensional tool, dialogue in one conversation. But the ideal is 3-D evangelism. Meeting with one person over a period of time studying the bible and discussing topics that make Christ hard to follow for people in our culture. You can google him to check out his resources…Life Issues and The Answer
peace brother
I think Kevin has a significant point. IN fact, a crucial point, and this point would mean I would never reccomend this to anyone (even though i work for IinterVarsity’s sister organisation) Choung’s presentation says nothing about our culpability as sinners, or how the cross dealt with this. It makes the Gospel sound like ‘God is going to make this world a better place, with your help.’