40 by 40 set up

I’ve been setting up for the challenge of sharing about Jesus with others my entire life. I was baptized when I was 13, but raised in the church, I’d known much about the Bible growing up. I’d even read through the whole children’s Bible in a night engaging with the stories so what more would I need to get ready to share about Jesus?

The Field of Apologetics

I was first introduced to the idea of Apologetics when I ran into the book “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller. I was very impressed with the content and intellectual case-making for faith in Jesus. At the time, it was the only resource I knew about like that, and while it spurred my enthusiasm and affirmed my beliefs, it didn’t lead to direct sharing.

I was reintroduced to content of its kind when I encountered the book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist” by Frank Turek and Norm Geisler. When I recommended the book in my church class, a friend mentioned the label “Apologetics” and this led me the an entire field of great books for understanding and explaining reasons for the Christian faith. Here are some of my favorites:

Apologetics Free Training

After shopping through all the books in the “Apologetics” section on Christianaudio, I discovered Greg Koukl hosted a podcast I could listen to for applications of the content in his book. Stand to Reason features free training on specific topics about sharing the gospel.

Related sites like the Colson Center and Impact Apologetics have ample educational tools to help understand and explain the faith. You could spend years ingesting this information and never feel fully informed. So, while these are great resources, the only way to make the most of them is to hit the streets and step out in faith that you know enough to respond to the people you encounter or have grace enough to move beyond.

What do I need to get started?

I’ve done plenty of study, and if I determine that I need to chart and plan out all I know before I get going, I could spend another few years trying to organize everything into a nonlinear prezi or type an tag hundreds of google notes, but really what I need is the boldness to show God I trust him and care enough about his truth to talk about the beauty of his grace to people who don’t know him. For practicality sake, I had to set my “get-going list” at these few items:

Some Ideas on what to say to get talking
A Bible to give to someone who determines it time to get to know God better
A card to leave with a new believer or open-minded thinker who’d like direction on what to do next

Start the Conversation

For this, I’ve gathered some suggestions from the Jesus Conversations book I’ve most recently read to help get me going. It recommends many of the tips I’ve heard from Greg Koukl, Frank Turek & J Warner Wallace, chief among them is to ask question. It offers the basic acronym Salt:

S- Start a conversation

A- Ask questions

L- Listen

T- Tell the story

Colossians 4:6 that your conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone

As I go about NOT talking to people, I’m thinking of what I might say if I see someone at the park or cutting weeds, how I might talk about how it’s a beautiful day and how the BIble addresses stewarding the earth or how I might bring the conversation to values or human life and where they come from. I’ve heard numerous ways to steer the conversation. I just haven’t tried it yet so my number one method would be to use my 40 by 40 challenge as an instigator:

“Hey, I’m turning 40 soon and trying to complete this challenge of talking to 40 people about Jesus before I turn 40. May I have a conversation with you about Jesus?” I could also invite conversations or conversation assistants by posting my mission on Facebook. This gives me a clear deadline and goal and a chance to enlist help at accomplishing this from anyone I encounter. And maybe this is what I’ve needed all along.

Bibles to Give

This is easy. We’ve gotten some great mini bibles from an outreach at Ridgeview Church. The Revive Bible doesn’t include the old testament, but has tabes pointing to the key points to bring out in the journey to understanding faith. I plan to pass along a few of those, but also picked up Bibles ranging from 1.50 to 3.50 at Half Price Books. They aren’t study Bibles, but have the old and new testaments in a readable font and are about the size of a teen novel so they’ll be handy to keep in my car and offer as needed. I’ve added highlights of the scriptures from the Revive Bible in there with a tabbed sticky listing where the verses can be found. (Honestly, from my wealth of study, I’d probably choose a more meaningful set with a bigger variety of verses, but I can’t let that idea delay me at this point).

[x] Bibles purchased & annotated

Card to Leave

For the card, I feel it’s important for new believers to understand just a few things: 1) that it’s important to stay connected with God by reading his word and talking to him, 2) that it’s important to grown in your faith by connecting with other believers in a Bible-believing church over what he says. Therefore, I’ve used Canva to make some printable cards which I’ll hand out to any who seem to have a serious interest in our discuss. I’ll write in my contact info to show that I intend to make myself available for further conversation if they have a need.

Bible Starter Cards

With all this set, I’m good to get started!

Oh! One last thing—a first thing—Prayer! I need lots of prayer!

Scripture Saturated

40 by 40 Set Up