Taken from a WayForward training in 2022.
If you are a missionary—whether in the United States or across the world—hostility and resistance will find you. Persecution, hardship, discouragement, and lies will inevitably confront you. While many of us are emotionally aware and convicted enough to keep sowing the gospel in the midst of these challenges, the greater danger is our tendency to seek quick fixes: offering pithy sayings about Jesus, truncating the gospel, or leaning on theological “silver bullets.” In doing so, we risk diluting the message and misrepresenting God Himself.
To be a strategic witness of Jesus is to recognize our strategies and methodologies should come downstream of our theology. What I have realized over time is that theological potency tends to fade amid hyper-focused methodology. That does mean the strategies and methodologies are evil per se, we just need to know when to use them and when not to.
Eckhard Schnabel wrote about reclaiming the definition of “Preaching the Gospel” by saying: “Preachers [or missionaries] of the gospel [must be] authentically flexible because they are motivated not by the pressure of demonstrating the ‘effectiveness’ of their methods or the ‘success’ of their ministry but by their commitment to God and by their commitment to the people they seek to reach with the news of Jesus”.
We need a God-size commitment! There is no better place to find a strategic witness committed to God than Paul.
How did Paul communicate?
In Acts 17:16–31, we read Paul’s sermon in Athens. What quickly becomes clear is that his message was buoyed by a theology of God deeply tethered to the Scriptures—not anchored in the art of persuasion, polished marketing strategies, or the most recent communication methods. Paul is deliberately preaching the gospel in public every day. He’s not seeking to blend in…how do I know this…because people in every town he goes to oppose him. He does not assimilate to culture, integrate or celebrate the culture. Culture was nauseating to him. His disgust compelled him to reason daily in their synagogues.
He studies the culture, exegetes it, and then confronts it with biblical truth they would mostly likely reject. But that does not stop him. He analyzes the cultural beliefs and pokes holes in their worldview.
Who were Paul’s hearers?
Stoics – these were classical secularists who believed you could numb pain or pleasure through ascetic living and reach the apex of human enlightenment. Random fate determined everything rendering existence meaningless. Epicureans – they believed in ultimate pleasure and trying to escape pain was life’s purpose. They did not believe in an afterlife and feared no judgment and only sought indulgence. Which means they did not fear God. Cynics – they were of the philosophical tradition that sought true happiness by being one with nature and through liberating themselves from affluence, notoriety, and authority. Sounds a lot like New Agers. Knowing his audience, Paul is not open-minded nor Politically Correct (PC).
What did Paul communicate?
- Acts 17: 22 – God is Creator and Lord. He is self-defining, self-originating, self-disclosing, self-sufficient, self-sovereign.
- Acts 17:25 – God is not served. Regular sacrifices and religiosity does not please God. We cannot bargain with God nor give him anything he does not already possess. God does not need you! His redemptive plan does not hang on your shoulders. You cannot thwart his plan. This obliterates self-autonomy, independence, and man-made religion.
- Acts 17:27-29 – God’s universal presence. This flies in the face of their idol worship because God is not locked in wood or metal. Paul penetrates their lifeless worldview by confronting, not contextually accommodating.
- Acts 17: 30 – God’s righteousness and resurrection. The gospel is a command and call, a summons from our King to repent.
When the lordship, creative power, universal presence, and righteousness / resurrection are rightly preached, people either balk at it or believe in it!
To conclude, we must ask ourselves: How do I communicate as a witness of Jesus? Who are your hearers? And What do I communicate?
D o m i n i c R o s a t o 