*Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Corey Trimble’s An Authentic Experience: Creating an Inviting Culture with Biblical Integrity. Corey is convinced (and has shown as a pastor of an influential church) that it is possible to cultivate an inviting church culture without sacrificing biblical convictions. In the following excerpt, Corey describes how to make the most of everyday opportunities to point people to Jesus.
I am an opportunist at heart. One of my greatest fears is missing opportunities; it is just the way I am wired. Couple that mindset with a deep love for people and hearing stories, and it makes for me being a pretty good people person (if I do say so myself). I know that not everyone is geared to talk to everyone all the time, but as Christians, we have to learn to be aware and seize every opportunity God gives us to build relationships with people, especially nonbelievers.
Of course, Jesus gives us the perfect example in the story of the woman at the well in John Chapter 4. The interaction Jesus had with a Samaritan woman contains so many practical lessons for how we as followers of Jesus should communicate with nonbelievers and introduce the idea of following him. It is also a story that (ironically enough) flies in the face of how most Christians engage, or neglect to engage, the world around them.
“As Christians, we have to learn to be aware and seize every opportunity God gives us to build relationships with people, especially nonbelievers.”
Most people reading this book are probably extremely familiar with the story, but maybe there are some subtle points that many of us have missed. Important points like, Jesus was breaking a huge cultural and religious rule that men didn’t speak to women in public areas like he did. The conversation Jesus had with a woman from Samaria was about the equivalent of a pastor talking to a transgendered man in the middle of a grocery store. How many of us can have a normal conversation in the middle of such an extremely different environment from what we are accustomed to?
Create Opportunities
Speaking of public areas, Jesus positioned himself to be in a place to meet new people. And, as they talked, Jesus didn’t instantly share who he was, but started the conversation about drinking from the well. He then, in the most beautiful way, gently introduced the gospel by using a simple analogy about water and the temporal things of this life. He also concluded with direct clarity, stating exactly who he was. Jesus didn’t argue politics. He didn’t use words she wouldn’t understand. He didn’t isolate himself from the problem. He created a conversation opportunity, and a woman was forever changed as a result. Basically, John 4:1–26 is a condensed formula for how to engage the lost and lead them to Christ.
Build Bridges
When speaking to the very dysfunctional church in Corinth, Paul said that, in order to bring more people to a saving knowledge of Jesus, he had to become “all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:22). This does not mean that Paul compromised the truth and gospel of Jesus because the culture around him didn’t always agree. Rather, it means that Paul adapted his methodology in order to present his theology to a group of people that had different life experiences and views than he did. Theology never changes, because God never changes, but the methodology of how we present the gospel has progressed and changed, and it always should, depending on the needs of the present generation.
“Paul said that, in order to bring more people to a saving knowledge of Jesus, he had to become ‘all things to all people.'”
One of the best examples of this is from Acts Chapter 17 when Paul references philosophy to the Greeks in Athens. We see from this encounter that we are to not be completely ignorant when it comes to the “philosophies” of the world. I am not advocating that we immerse ourselves in things that are contradictory to our beliefs. But we should be able to talk movies, music, and the arts with the people around us in order to build bridges and find commonality. We as Christians are extremely handicapped if we cannot have normal conversations about things that people are interested in.
Control Your Shock
We also need not show our surprise at behaviors we don’t approve of. I am not saying that we accept sinful behavior, but we cannot expect someone who doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus to act like, well, Jesus.
I remember several years ago we had our oldest daughter’s class over at the end of the school year, and a woman from our church happened to be at our house as well. As the lady from our church and a mom from my daughter’s class got to talking with me, it came out that the student’s mom was in a throuple: a relationship with three adults. Having come from the past my wife and I do, and hearing and seeing what I have in ministry, nothing really shocks us anymore. But the churchgoer in this conversation with us couldn’t have had a more shocked look on her face.
Now, I get it; it’s not every day that a conversation like this happens, but if we are going to build bridges, we must be able to control our shock, and even repulsion at times, for the sake of getting to know people that are not Christians.
“If we are going to build bridges, we must be able to control our shock, and even repulsion at times, for the sake of getting to know people that are not Christians.”
A Conversation at Starbucks
About ten years ago, I was asked to speak at a big church in Michigan. The first night that I was scheduled to speak, one of the pastors of the church picked up me and my wife from the airport. He asked what we wanted to do in the few hours we had before the service that night. We decided to go by the Starbucks close to the church and get some coffee and just chill out before I was scheduled to speak. I wanted to get to know the team there at the church a little bit and learn more about the town I was speaking in.
As we were ordering our coffee, I watched the college pastor text on his phone as he ordered his drink, a pretty common thing to do for the usual customer, but I quickly noticed a missed opportunity to connect with the girl taking our drink orders. The pastor rolled to the end of the counter to wait for his drink, still texting away and not paying attention to the environment around him.
I on the other hand quickly said hello to the barista by her name (it was on her name tag) and asked her where she was from and how she ended up in Auburn Hills. I remember I was wearing a Cure shirt (the greatest band ever). She told me she was from Detroit and she had gotten a small scholarship to go to Oakland College, a good-sized state school in that area. I asked what her major was, and she told me English Literature. Oddly enough, this was the same undergraduate degree I got at MTSU in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I asked what she hoped to do with her degree, and she didn’t know.
“I asked what her major was, and she told me English Literature. Oddly enough, this was the same undergraduate degree I got at MTSU.”
Then she asked the question that led to something extremely important. She simply asked, “What do you do for a living?” Then I had a very natural opportunity to tell her about the event I was speaking at and how I became a Christian during my junior year in college. She told me she was raised in a Christian home, but had stopped going years ago, like many people her age. I said, “Why don’t you come out and hear me teach tonight?” and without batting an eye, she emphatically said that sounded really cool. Though I am obviously not Jesus and Starbucks is not exactly a well, one can see the parallel in the two stories. We need to be looking for the moment to create a conversation and introduce the gospel.
That night when I was about to go out and speak, the college pastor did a brief introduction and told the congregation about how the conversation I had at Starbucks earlier that day had gone. He told the crowd that I talk to people and find common ground with them. I was floored when the congregation applauded my simple conversation. I was further in awe as people flooded me with compliments and praise for having a conversation in a coffee shop. Wow. That small interaction was truly groundbreaking and paradigm shifting for what I then realized was an extremely isolated and unhealthy culture at that particular church. I’m not telling this story to bash that church or to lift myself up, but to point out that creating an environment and culture of loving and relating to people can easily be overlooked—not necessarily from a place of lacking in love for others, but simply from being ignorant on how to practically create it in a real-world setting.
“Creating an environment and culture of loving and relating to people can easily be overlooked.”
The opportunity to connect and build relationships is around us virtually all the time; the problem is that we are often distracted and not very opportunistic in how we see others. If the opportunities are truly around us all the time, why aren’t we seeing and seizing them?
To check out Corey Trimble’s An Authentic Experience: Creating an Inviting Culture with Biblical Integrity, click here.
