Strategy #1 Get Your Friends to Become Their Friends

Why are you a Christian?

Belief Structures

What are Belief Structures?

Belief Structures - accepted beliefs, convictions, and understandings that either green-light a claim as true or red-light a claim as false.

Your belief structure does not determine whether or not something is true

We do not get to decide truth - we observe truth

Where do we get our Belief Structures?

Community

Experience

Evidence/Facts

All three of these effect the way we believe

Why are you a C

We belong to a community of Christian believers, we have had an experience of the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and we have been shown the evidences of Jesus and are satisfied with what we have discovered.

Which of these three do you think effects the way we believe the most?

Which of these three do you think effects the way we believe the most?

Community effects the way you interpret Experiences and Facts

Gun Control

Women’s Right to Vote

Slavery

People will find a story more believable if more people in their community - their trusted friends and family - also believe the story.

You tend to be more on fire for Jesus at conferences where there are ten thousand teenagers just like you praising Jesus than you are at home where there is not as many believers in on place.

1 corinthians 15:

1 Corinthians 15:3–11 ESV

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

What do we Learn from This?

It is easier to believe something when everyone around us believes it.

If I told you I saw a UFO, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But if you went to an Extraterrestrial convention and you were surrounded by thousands of people who said they saw a UFO, suddenly UFO sightings are much more believable.

When I was a little boy I was convinced that Big Foot was real. The reason I believed in Big Foot is because my family - my community - believed in Big Foot.

Merge Christian Friends with Non-Christian Friends

We have to be intentional about befriending non-christians

When you are the only person that believes the way you believe in a group, you are the weird shmuck.

We need to surround non-christians with our Christian friends so that the Gospel is more believable to them.

If you don’t know any atheists, seek out people who don’t take their “faith” seriously.

Invite non-Christians, or uninvolved Christians to Youth

Evangelism Should be a Lifestyle

“The way you store up treasure in heaven is by investing in getting people there.We often view evangelism as a single event thing” - Rick Warren

We often view evangelism as a single event thing

We should lives of evangelism

Every day we should look for opportunities to befriend non-christians and make our friends their friends