Turn or Burn!!!!Perhaps you’ve read Jim and Casper Go to Church or I Sold My Soul on Ebay, two books that have really stimulated conversation relating to sharing Christian faith with atheists or other “secular” or “liberal” folks (I blogged a book review of I Sold My Soul on Ebay here that was actually mentioned by the “friendly atheist”). Anyway, the big questions are simple: How do we share our faith in a post-modern culture? How do we engage this culture in a way that does not compromise truth but is willing to actually listen to what is being said? How do we “do” evangelism?

Off The Map is currently hosting a conference called the Conversational Evangelism Conference here in Minneapolis, MN at Hosanna!. The featured speakers are Dan Kimball, Mark Mittelberg, Becky Pippert, Garry Poole, Rick Richardson and is being hosted by Todd Hunter. Did I mention that Jim Henderson and Matt Casper of Jim and Casper Go to Church are here also? Excellent voices for this subject.

I’m going to blog the key topics that are discussed over the course of the next day or two, depending largely upon how much time I get inbetween all the discussions, open-forum question & answer times, reading, and thinking. I’m hoping to give you a taste of this information because thus far it has been excellent to hear, to conceive, and to spend more time discussing.

This is one big “emerging church” extravaganza. The discussions have been excellent across the board. A lot of interaction and it is quite apparent that (1) everyone agrees that the typical “model” is not working, (2) the message is still extremely important, and (3) we’ve got to engage culture as a first step. Those are simply the three items that have stood out to me the most.

Essential readings for this conference: UnChristian by David Kinnaman, They Like Jesus but Not the Church by Dan Kimball, and Jim and Casper Go to Church. Key words: “conversational evangelism,” “engaging culture,” “building trust,” “seeker small groups,” “holistic evangelism,” and much more.

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