I am a Christian. I happen to worship and fellowship with a Southern Baptist church (of which I am the pastor). I have used this blog occasionally to comment on what I believe are some cultic teachings of some Word of Faith leaders. However, I have been and remain committed to the maxim:

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.

I can cooperate with anyone who believes in essential Christian doctrine, so long as they do not force their beliefs about secondary and tertiary elements of doctrine on me or others. Likewise, I may try to persuade and convince you that a particular interpretation is better, but I will not coerce or threaten you. And, overall, our greatest charge as Christians is Jesus’ commission to us all to Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Once people come to faith we can vigorously debate non-essentials without being dogmatic about them.

I recently came to the conclusion that I and my church family are weak evangelistically. It’s no real surprise, as only 3% of Christians regularly share their faith. After all, if 12 Spirit-filled men could turn the known world upside down in the early church, what impact could all the folks who claim Christ make if we let the Spirit testify to Christ through us? I came to the further conclusion that we don’t share our faith because we are 1) scared, and 2) not equipped.

Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to meet Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron, who run a little ministry called Way of the Master. Actually, I read Way of the Master by Ray Comfort before I ever met either of them, but our paths did eventually cross. I am convinced that The Way of the Master is the way to share the good news of Jesus Christ with a lost world.

We had to overcome some technical difficulties at church (which we did) before I could begin the Way of the Master Basic Training course. And it’s spectacular. Comfort and Cameron teach participants to share their faith the way Jesus did. The nutshell version is that we must use the Law to first prepare the heart before a person can realize their need for a Savior. This takes minutes, rather than years, as the modern style of relationship evangelism would have us believe.

It’s scary when you start, but with God’s help and your preparation, you are able to strike up conversations with strangers, develop a rapport, and then talk to them about spiritual things in a non-offensive, non-religious nutjob way. I have been putting the training into effect, and I am very impressed with how it works, though I still have to get better at it.

And I wrote all that to write this. I go to a local part to walk. I am working on my health while also looking for the opportunity to engage people in conversation. Today, I spoke with a couple of guys where walking their very large dog. One told me from the get-go that he went to a Pentecostal church. Good deal, I thought, he might be able to help me with his buddy. And the buddy and I were having a great conversation. He was seeing that he stood guilty before God and that he needed a Savior. But then his friend kept wanting to debate tongues with me. As we continued to talk, it became obvious that he is a Oneness Pentecostal (which are heretics in that they deny an element of essential Christian doctrine, namely the belief in the Trinity). He kept on engaging me about the Spirit falling at Pentecost and the disciples speaking in other tongues. By this point, his buddy and I could not pursue the conversation we had been, and I really didn’t want to get in a further debate. This person who proclaimed to be a Christian was so hung up on a the secondary issue of tongues that he couldn’t or wouldn’t even help me talk to his friend about Jesus Christ as his Savior. I am prayerful that the conversation we were able to have can be used by the Spirit to deal with him in the coming days.

I’ve taken some criticism in the comments because I have stated that I have encountered some Word of Faithers and other Pentecostals that demand that one must exhibit tongues before he or she can believe they have been saved. I simply disagree. I am content to let you believe that for yourself, and I will believe what I see in Scripture. If left there, it would be fine. But, when a secondary element becomes primary for a person, to the extend it impedes sharing the Gospel of Christ, it has crossed a line. What I am saying is this is a practical example of the danger posed by dogmatic beliefs about non-essentials. There are consequences.

Lastly, let me leave you with a couple thoughts. First, folks who over-emphasize the “manifestation” of the Spirit seem to miss that part in Scripture where is says that the Spirit will testify of Jesus Christ. When the focus is on the Spirit rather than the Son, it’s an indication of a problem. Second, you will never convince me to baptize in just the name of Jesus, when Jesus Himself instructed us to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We all must decide it we are going to sacrifice our pet doctrines (I’m talking non-essentials here) for the benefit of seeing people come to faith in Christ.