How Can Christians Bear Faithful Witness?
As the United States America grows increasingly secular and the Bible is often perceived as offensive in culture, how do Christians think about thoughtfully, strategically, and winsomely sharing the gospel?
In this sermon from Gallery Church in New York City, where Christian Union Ministry Director of CU Lumine at Columbia Stan Thomas serves as the senior pastor, former CU ministry fellow Nick Nowalk teaches on how the modern church can look to the book of Acts as a witness to how we can bear faithful witness to the gospel and Jesus in our current circumstances.
Nowalk, citing theologian Lesslie Newbigin, argues that western Christians need to gain distance from our culture so that we might critically examine it against the gospel. So often, Christians grow accustomed to cultural norms and fail to recognize the ways that the gospel speaks against what is popular and common in culture. Newbigin feared that Christians’ main problem was that we no longer know how to differentiate between gospel and our western culture. Therefore, to be a faithful witness to Christ and His power and Spirit at work in our world, we must be able to see how our culture strays from what is true and be willing to speak into and against it.
Furthermore, to share the gospel effectively in any culture, we must learn to be both contextualized and confrontational. Contextualized in that we are able to speak the gospel in words and language that make sense to the hearer, and confrontational in that we are willing to reject the untruths of the culture to share the gospel. True evangelism meets the unbeliever on their turf, engages with their language and thinking, but demonstrates how the gospel stands against what is normal in the culture.
Christian Union has been engaging culture with the gospel since its inception 20 years ago. Through it’s universities ministries, Christian Union is equipping the next generation of Christians to faithfully witness to Christ in our culture. Listen to the full sermon here.
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