Questions Make Christians

When I started my church, our vision was to be the presence of Christ in our neighborhoods and work places. We called our small groups "Living Rooms" and we hoped that those groups would "move into their neighborhoods."

That meant building relationships with our neighbors, tangibly loving people through service, and welcoming people into our homes. Our people took this seriously. They hosted barbeques at their homes, inviting their "lost" neighbors over. They built relationships with them. One Sunday each month, we left our seats and went out and served our neighbors so that we could demonstrate to them that God loved them.

After a couple years of building relationships and loving people, our Living Room leaders came back and said, "OK. We've built these relationships. We're ready to take the next step. We want to know how to engage our neighbors in a conversation about God. We want to begin to tell them about what we believe. I guess we want to proclaim the gospel to them, do evangelism."

Then came the crucial question: "What do we do next?"

A circle at Crilly's

Of course, they expected me to have the answers. But I had no idea what to do either. When I suggested inviting them into a Bible-focused "living room," they told me their neighbors would run. "Our neighbors won't sit in a circle with a Bible on their laps. They have no interest in that. It will freak them out."

Their concerns were valid. Here we were, living "missionally," doing really well at loving and serving and building relationships, but unsure how to take the next step in proclaiming the gospel to our neighbors.

Around that time, I met John Crilly. "Crilly" had just left his marketplace career to begin working with a ministry called Q Place (the Q stand s for "questions.)" Their focus was to help everyday Christians have meaningful conversations about God with people who believe differently. How did they do it? Questions.

While Crilly talked about their process, I was thinking, This might turn out to be our church's "next step". Crilly told me that he and a friend wanted to start a Q Place together, and they were praying for one other person to join them. The idea was to get a small group together to have an ongoing spiritual conversation in a safe place to explore and ask questions. A place where Christians host an opportunity to embrace the questions and the process of discovery, and the Holy Spirit can direct discussion as people explore their beliefs.

It didn't take long for me to decide that I was in.

We pulled together a list of people we had built relationships with and could naturally invite to our gathering. While learning how to facilitate a Q Place and praying together, we narrowed our list to those we suspected didn't really know Jesus. Then we began making invitations to a "one-time" discussion about God.

On the night of our meeting, eleven of us sat in a circle in Crilly's living room. Three of us were followers of Jesus, and the other eight guys just agreed to show up. After an ice breaker or two, we asked a question:

"If you could ask God one question, and you knew he would answer, what would you ask him?"

For the next hour, the questions came: "Why couldn't you have made things more clear?" "Why forgive people who do terrible evil?" "What's the end game?" "What's life all about?" "Why punish people for all of eternity for the decisions made in this short life?" As we listened to their questions, we also asked why each question was significant to them.

One of my favorite questions came from one of the guys I had invited. Dan has a PhD and is superintendent of a local school district. He'd sat quietly for most of the night.

"Hey Dan, I've never seen you this quiet. What's going on?"

"I guess I do have a question, but I have to tell you a story first."

He told us about when he was a young teacher. Back then, there was teacher's basketball after school on Fridays. One Friday when he wasn't there, one of his friends, a teacher named Bob, had a heart attack and died on the gym floor.

A few weeks later, Dan developed a pain in his side, so he started taking antacids and eventually pain relievers. This went on for two weeks with no real improvement.

One night, he woke up at 3 am to a vivid dream. His friend Bob told him to get up and go to the hospital. He listened, driving over in great pain. When he got there and they scanned his abdomen, they found a massive blood clot. The doctors were surprised that he was still alive.

Dan finished with a bang, "That night, I believe that God saved my life by sending me a sign. My question is, how many other signs have I missed? How can I learn to see God's signs more clearly?"

By the end of the night, one of the guys had such a good time that he suggested that we do this again. We did, a week later.

Going on a God hunt

At that second meeting, we talked about Dan's question. We wondered together how God gets our attention. The guys told stories of when they thought God had sent them a sign, but most admitted that they really didn't think about God that often and certainly didn't look for him in their everyday lives. By the end of the night, someone suggested that we all look for God over the next month, and then get together again to talk about it. We would go on a God hunt.

One of the guys in our group coaches baseball with me. At the next game, he poked me on the arm and pointed out one of our boys who was encouraging another one about an error that he had made. Then he said, "That's a God sighting." This is a guy that wouldn't have talked that way only a week before—all because we started this spiritual conversation.

Our group has continued our conversations about God for over a year now. And God has been at work.

The guys don't want a Bible study

The guys in the group have made it clear that they "don't want a Bible study." So, we started sending them quotes instead. We sent them quotes from Gandhi, C.S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, and John the Apostle. They loved it.

One night, we were discussing John 14:6. They were all complaining about how exclusive Jesus was. Aren't there a lot of ways to get to God? Why did he have to make it only one, so narrow? By the end of the night, we turned the question around on them. We asked them if they thought it could be possible that Jesus was being inclusive; inclusive enough to offer anyone who takes him up on his offer, a way to connect with their Creator and Father again. We finished that group by asking them to think about the question "What is the offer that Jesus is making?"

Two weeks later, when we got together again, Peter walked in carrying a piece of paper. He plopped it down in front of Crilly and said, "I Googled your question, and this is what I found." Crilly looked down and there on a single sheet of paper was Charles Swindoll's gospel presentation. Then Peter said, "I've never heard it put this way before. And what's this "substitutionary atonement" all about?" Crilly suggested that the two of them go out for breakfast and talk it over. Over breakfast, Peter continued to ask questions, and he and Crilly had a discussion about the purpose of Jesus' death on the cross. Later, Crilly sent Peter Bill Hybels' sermon on substitutionary atonement. This all happened because we were willing to get these guys together and talk about their questions.

Another week, we suggested that we all look ahead to the second half of our lives. We asked what God was saying to us about what they needed to do as they looked ahead. Tim answered first, "I need to prepare for eternity." "Really!" I said, "How are you going to do that?" Tim made a list of five or six things that he would do in order to get ready for eternity.

Then he turned the question to me, "You're a religious guy, what will you do to get ready for eternity?"

My response: "Absolutely nothing."

Tim was flabbergasted, "What!? You can't be serious. Nothing?"

"Jesus did it all for me already."

This put Tim over the edge, "You mean to tell me, you're in the Speed Pass line at Disney World!" Peter then chimed in, "And I'm in the line behind three bus loads full of kids?!"

"I guess so, but you can get in line over here, everyone can." A few weeks later, Tim prayed to receive Jesus as his Savior. He crossed over into my line.

People are starved for listeners

Being part of this group for the past year and a half has been a "Top Ten" ministry moment for me. It is better than preaching (and I LOVE preaching), better than a church potluck, and way better than a church leadership board meeting. And I've learned a lot too.

I learned that my friendships won't be ruined by inviting people into a conversation about God. We each invited six guys to the group. The ones that declined are no less my friends today than before and the ones in the group are better friends because we talk about much deeper stuff than we did before.

As Christians, one of our biggest fears is that we will turn our friends off or offend people if we try to "evangelize" them or share our faith. We really want to share what we believe, but we're intimidated. I've learned that you don't need to preach. When you invite your friends into a conversation, you can watch God enter through his Spirit and create a safe space for Jesus and faith to be explored together.

I also learned that both God and I have a role in sharing the gospel. That's liberating. Somewhere along the line, sharing our faith became a pressure packed proposition. We had to "make something happen"—convert someone or convict them of their sin or convince them of the truth with our amazing apologetic arguments.

The Bible says that God draws people to Jesus (John 6:44), that the Holy Spirit convicts people of their sin and guilt (John 16:8-10), and that people will only be convinced of the truth when it is revealed to them (John 15:26). If this is true, then my role is different. My role is to engage people around me in conversations and to be Jesus' witness (John 15:27) as the Spirit of God moves in those encounters with people. When I see my role in perspective, the pressure is off.

I also learned that sharing my faith doesn't mean going into a conversation with an agenda-driven gospel presentation. I can approach people in a different way. A meaningful conversation about God might not necessarily involve going through "The Four Spiritual Laws," or "The Roman Road," or even my own memorized faith story. I can enter into a casual conversation with people I care for and follow God's leading as the conversation unfolds.

And didn't Jesus model this? He often approached people with questions. He was genuinely curious about them. He didn't treat interactions with people like something that he had to get done to then get on to the important stuff. He loved people and entered into conversations with them so that they could make discoveries and come to conclusions about him.

People in our culture are starved for someone to move into their life as a listener and learner. When we demonstrate that we are really trying to understand and care for people, and not manipulate their point of view, we create a safe place for them to explore at a deeper level, and to experience Jesus through us.

Jeff Klein is now the Midwest Regional Director for Q Place. You can find out more about Q Place at www.QPlace.com.