We are continuing our series of posts containing excerpts from a conference, put on by the Presbytery of Ohio, where Eric Hausler taught on evangelism–particularly God’s sovereignty in our everyday encounters with people. You can view previous posts from the series here: Series Posts
In a Q&A session, Eric was asked about the difficulty of viewing people the way that he had laid out–that it’s not easy to really take an interest in people this way and to do a good job in engaging and connecting with them. Eric gave this very helpful answer about how we can engage people “normally.”
Questions for Thought or Discussion:
1) What do you think of Eric’s idea here and in particular that his congregation is prepared and used to people coming in “with tattoos, piercings, and looking a little rough?” We often talk about wanting to have a congregation and an individual mindset like that but it’s often easier said than done. How can we cultivate the expectation and practice individually, as a family, and as a church?
2) Eric talks about training our churches how to ask questions and greet people–he mentions not asking “nosy” questions and essentially being normal. On Outward we talk about this topic somewhat frequently. In our last series, Pastor Paul Viggiano talked about “Being Reformed & Normal.” One of our most popular posts on Outward is a discussion of a few questions that we think would be helpful but could likely end up putting our visitors in an uncomfortable spot: “An Unintentional Unwelcoming Welcome”
If you have some time, or when you have some time you may want to check out these two resources and give this topic some more thought.
