Pflugerville Community Church is ramping up preparation for
the Explore God initiative. “Explore God” is a unique,
coordinated effort to engage the greater Austin area in spiritual conversation.
300+ churches have signed up to host a 7-week sermon series and discussion group
series, aimed at giving Biblical insights into life's most challenging
questions. In our “Explore God” training we talked about spiritual ice-breaker
questions. Some suggested questions included, "What gets you through hard times?" and "How are you doing... I really want to know?" Here are 7 additional questions Andrew Wilson offers in his book,
If God Then What? Wondering Aloud About
Truth, Origins and Redemption. If you’re interested in how he develops
his questions you can pick up a copy of his book at
http://www.amazon.com/God-Then-What-Wondering-Redemption/dp/1844745694/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374789586&sr=1-5&keywords=Andrew+Wilson
So, here’s his questions which I think are quite good:
-
What’s wrong with the
world? I cannot imagine anyone saying, ‘nothing’.
- What’s the solution? This
is a question that effectively asks, ‘what’s
your gospel?’
- How did we get here? Lots
of people haven’t got much further than ‘the Big Bang and then evolution’.
But why was there a Big Bang, do you think?
- Why do you think? Does the
fact that humans love thought, and poetry, and spirituality, suggest
anything about the nature of ultimate reality?
- What is possible? If God
is possible then presumably ‘miracles’ are possible. Dead people rising
again, for instance?
- What happened on 9 April
AD 30? I'm not sure how Wilson came up with that exact date, but I think it’s important to ask people what they make
of the resurrection of Jesus.
- So what? It’s good to ask
what they think it might imply if Jesus was alive. Who knows? They might
even ask you what you think it implies.
Before asking those questions it would be wise to first contemplate them yourself, and even do a bit of reading and research. Let’s keep praying for God to pour out his Spirit upon us as
we look for those divine appointments, opportunities to have a conversation
about God. Miss the two training sessions? You can watch the first video, “How
to Have a Spiritual Conversation,” here:
http://vimeo.com/61399032
and the second video “How to Use ExploreGod.com” here:
http://vimeo.com/63711008.
3 comments:
3 of my favorite resources, the books I shared at the Explore God training are: "Letters From a Skeptic", by Gregory Boyd; "The Reason For God", by Tim Keller, and "Exposing Myths About Christianity", by Jeffrey Burton Russell. All 3 are available on Amazon.com.
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