Andrew Tilsley - 30 January 2008 09:20 AM

Good question, Dave L.

The manner is important. I’m not pushing a cranky aloofness by any means.

I come across cranky when discussing the subject because we (the western church) seem so enamoured with dialogue that our truths are being compromised. It’s important to separate our vigour (righteous ‘crankiness’) with our delivery.

The other point is to consider what the bible teaches about joining with others who do not hold our views.

So we have two issues here -

1. How we engage with the lost - in a loving, but uncomprising manner.

2. How we engage with Christians (other denominations etc) that clearly do not hold our beliefs.

Agreed, and it’s important to keep these 2 distinctions very clear in our thinking.

As you know, for the latter point, I lean away from ‘warm and fuzzy’ dialogue.

Test question:

Would we hold an evangelistic crusade today and hand new converts over to the RC church for discipleship/membership?

Absolutely not. At that individual personal level I’d be far more conservative.

I was just trying to assess how our organisation’s media releases come across. I’d like to know more about what a statement of “common beliefs” would achieve in PR terms and pre-evangelism relationships. I of course would not support any document that watered down the faith once delivered to the saints. Yet in terms of carefully targeted PR strategies, it might be polite to start with the “of courses"… “Of course we both acknowledge that there is one God / Jesus was important / yadda yadda yadda. BUT we also believe ..... and so Jesus is the ONLY way to be saved, and that of course is where we disagree. We respect their right to their faith, but we also assert our right to state that their faith and our faith has a little commonality, but also some vast differences. And anything short or recognizing those vast differences really is a form of intellectual suicide.”

You know, something nice and soft like that. ;-)

Maybe in trying to annunciate my press release I’ve finally come around to a more controversial “separate out” theme after all. Our media sound-bytes are getting shorter and shorter… better to make a stand for something than waffle about nothing.