Today I'm meeting with two different men with two very different sets of questions about Christianity. The first is a recent church attender who is considering baptism. The main obstacles are that he doesn't believe in any miracles, that Jesus was sinless, and that the Bible is full of exaggeration. Other than those three things his views are very orthodox.
The second meeting is with an NAU student who is interviewing me for a class assignment. He sent me a list of questions that include things like, "why did you chose to become a non-denominational Christian as opposed to Baptist, Methodist, etc?" Another one was, "What purpose do songs provide during the service?"
This thought has consumed my thinking this past week- We have millions of people coming to an Easter Service sometime this weekend all over the world, and we are going to give them answers to questions they aren't asking. What are you and I doing to make sure we hear the right questions and are providing honest answers? If you preach or teach at a local church somewhere stop and ask yourself, "what questions does this audience have?" If you don't know then spend some time with folks who are honest (honest people are usually hard to find at church- most church people are too polite to be honest about church and God stuff- just saying) and once you've found your honest person ask them questions. Hard questions. Have a non-Christian friend listen to one of your sermons or lessons and tell you all the things you said they didn't understand.
What are some other ways we can listen and learn the real questions of people?
