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| I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 7 reviews)
Sales Rank: 96350
Category: Book
Authors: Don Everts, Doug Schaupp
Publisher: IVP Books
Studio: IVP Books
Manufacturer: IVP Books
Label: IVP Books
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 134
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 083083608X
Dewey Decimal Number: 248.24
EAN: 9780830836086
ASIN: 083083608X
Publication Date: May 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
How do people come to Jesus in today's postmodern culture? Not by a mechanical, linear process of cookie cutter conversions. Nor by a nebulous spiritual wandering that never culminates in decision and commitment. Over the last decade, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp have listened to the stories of two thousand postmodern people who have come to follow Jesus. While their stories are diverse and varied, certain common themes emerge. Postmodern evangelism is a mysterious and organic process that nevertheless goes through discernible phases, as people cross thresholds from distrust to trust, from complacency to curiosity and from meandering to seeking. Everts and Schaupp describe the factors that influence how people shift in their perspectives and become open to the Gospel. They provide practical tools to help people enter the kingdom, as well as guidelines for how new believers can live out their Christian faith.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
How to be wise spiritual farmers December 17, 2008
Books that claim they've found the "right" way to evangelize to people have never resonated with me. This is not one of those books.
What I appreciate about "I Once Was Lost" is how the process of people coming into the Kingdom of God is put forth as mysterious and organic, yet at the same time the people taken into account with the research for the book showed the trend of crossing the various "thresholds" that the book talks about.
I am not someone who grew up in the church or in a Christian home, I began following Jesus five years ago, and after I finished this book, I realized that I crossed those "thresholds" too. Giving all of myself to Jesus was not a binary thing, it was a process. In my humble opinion, I feel that this book encourages us to serve and witness to our non-Christian friends where they're at, believing that the Lord is passionate about drawing them to Himself.
 Helpful Insights for Those Wanting to Reach a Postmodern Generation October 19, 2008
How can we effectively evangelize non-Christians in a postmodern age?
How are postmodern people coming to Christ?
What lessons can we learn from their spiritual journeys that might help us as we work to fulfill the Great Commission?
In I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taughts us about Their Path to Jesus (IVP, 2008), Don Everts and Doug Schaupp draw on their many years of experience in ministry to postmoderns in order to help answer these questions and more. I Once Was Lost is a book born out of evangelistic efforts in a postmodern setting.
Throughout their ministry among postmoderns, the authors began noticing certain common experiences among their friends' journeys to faith. These experiences led them to some conclusions about evangelism to postmodern people.
Using the Parable of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-27) as a foundational guide, the authors describe the postmodern journey to faith as both mysterious and organic. Conversion is mysterious in that it comes only from God:
"There is something spiritually liberating when we admit and declare what is beyond us and where we are powerless. We cannot create life. It is impossible for us to predict why some of our friends will choose Jesus and why others just won't. We don't know how to change hearts... This lesson has freed us from the modern temptation to view conversion as mostly a psychological phenomenon, an inner event that can be controlled and manipulated and triggered if we preach the gospel just right..." (19)
Liberated by the mystery of saving faith, the authors conclude that "the monkey is off our back, and onto God's back, where it belongs. The Scriptures teach us that God is ultimately in control of salvation." (19) God's sovereignty forms the foundation of conversion, but that does not keep the authors from seeking to evangelize effectively. Instead, it lends a certain humility in their efforts.
I Once Was Lost is less a prescription for evangelism to postmoderns as it is a description of how effective evangelism is taking place in certain circles. The authors see five thresholds in the postmodern journey to faith:
From distrust to trust. (Somewhere along the line, they learned to trust a Christian.)
From complacent to curious. (They become curious regarding the Christian faith of their new friend.)
From being closed to change to being open to change in their life. (The hardest threshold to cross.)
From meandering to seeking. (At this stage, they begin actively, purposefully seeking God.)
The Kingdom itself. (Trusting in Christ for salvation and confessing him as Lord.)
The authors then devote a chapter to unpacking each of these thresholds and showing the theological and biblical underpinnings for each one. The first threshold is rooted in the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus came and became one of us. The authors warn, however, that In our "incarnational" evangelism, we should not succumb to relativism by pretending that all religions are the same.
The second threshold takes place when the non-Christian begins to see the transforming power of Jesus in the life of the believer. Seeing someone follow Jesus naturally leads to the "Why" question and moves the non-Christian from complacency to curiosity. The authors give practical advice in stoking this God-given curiosity (ask good questions and tell parables). One minor quibble here: The authors wrongly interpret Mark 4 regarding the purpose of Jesus' parables [55], but that aside, they put forth many good ideas for evangelism at this stage in the process.
In threshold three, we are encouraged to give non-Christians the gift of space and permission to explore. The authors believe that moving from being closed to change to open to change is the most difficult step to take. That's why they encourage fervent prayer during this stage (73).
In their zeal for helping people "explore" Christianity, however, the authors put forth the idea that Christianity is one option among many to be "tried." I don't like the terminology they use of "giving God a trial run" (71). Such terminology fits fine in our capitalistic, consumerist culture, but not in the biblical worldview of the God who rightfully claims our lives.
Christians should practice "nonjudgmental truthfulness," and "gentle honesty" at this stage (75). How can one engage in this type of dialogue? By taking a conversation deeper. One example the authors give hardly seems like a "deeper" conversation:
"We all need help to get by. We might get our fix at Starbucks, at a party or on the Internet. But we all need a fix. I find my fix in God. What do you think about a spiritual hook-up?" (76)
But despite the trivial, street-talk given in the examples, the authors are right to assert that "sometimes the most loving thing we can do for someone is not to beat around the bush in conversations, but instead to just call them out on how they are afraid to change" (78). They go further in saying, "We underestimate the importance of our role in speaking words of challenge. If you tend to be that way, please don't let your own comfort level guide how much you speak the truth in love, or you may never get around to it" (81). Bold, but helpful advice indeed.
Once the non-Christian reaches threshold four and begins to be more active in their pursuit of God, the authors recommend that Bible study take centerstage. At this stage, "people do not need to know what you think about Jesus near as much as they need to know what the Gospels say about Jesus" (98). I appreciate the centrality of Scripture that forms the heart of this section of the book.
The authors recommend a sense of urgency at the "kingdom" threshold. It is here that Christians should press the claims of Christ upon their friends, encouraging public commitment to Christ upon personal conversion.
I Once Was Lost is a short book that contains a great amount of helpful material for those interested in engaging a postmodern world with the gospel of Christ. I was pleasantly surprised at the emphasis on Scripture, the encouragement to gently confront, and the reliance on the Holy Spirit's power in seeking to effectively evangelize others. Despite a few weak spots, the book contains much to be commended and deserves a wide audience. I Once Was Lost makes me want to roll up my sleeves and get to work as a more passionate evangelist in this postmodern age.
Must reading for those involved in Christian campus ministries September 19, 2008
Everts and Schaupp help the reader become sensitive to the typical stages college students move through when they become Christians.
This book would be particularly helpful for those who work with college students or want to better understand college students--as it describes the pressures, thought processes, and friendship dynamics of this age group.
It would also be helpful for those who ask the question, "Does anyone today convert to Christianity as a thinking adult?" Indeed they do. Everts and Schaupp try to find patterns in the journeys of the people they have observed moving through this process.
They identify Trusting a Christian, Becoming Curious, Opening Up to Change, Seeking After God, Entering the Kingdom and Living in the Kingdom as key "thresholds" that people move through.
The book is nice and concise (134 pages) and reads quickly. Everts and Schaupp are not trying to make an argument that these are the thresholds all Christians need to work through. Rather it is sociological or anthropological work--similar to the famous Kubler-Ross stages of loss (denial, anger, acceptance, etc.) or Christian Smith finding the phenomenon of "moralistic therapeutic deism" in teens.
Everts and Schaupp essentially share their experiences and then ask if this resonates with others. This is not to denigrate their experiences--they have done a significant amount of interviews and they are in as good a position as anyone with their experience in college ministry with InterVarsity to make these kind of observations. Does their model have explanatory power? I think it does.
If they are right that college students (and perhaps teenagers and adults as well--who knows?) that become Christians, move through these thresholds well, what are the implications for how college ministry and church ministry should change if they want to see more people become Christians? The unmissable point is that these students who have moved through these thresholds certainly did not do so because of one event or program. Someone needed to listen to them, give them advice, challenge them and encourage them. Though Everts and Schaupp sketch a process, they explode the idea that some specially designed program would be able to mass-produce followers of Jesus. This book is much more about how to do spiritual direction than how to do evangelistic programming.
The book does not contain much formal theological language. In my quick reading, I do not remember a reference for example to the Holy Spirit or to baptism. Their goal is not to reflect theologically on conversion. Similarly they do not engage developmental psychology or other sociological research and draw parallels between that research and their conclusions. An academic researcher would want to do interviews with a representative sample of people who became Christians in college to test Everts and Schaupp's tentative conclusions.
One final note, the book has in its subtitle the controversial word "postmodern"--What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus. I would simply say that this word plays almost no role in the book. It is not a book that views postmodernity positively nor one that views postmodernity negatively. The book describes students at colleges in California and Colorado in the last twenty years--that is all the authors mean by "postmodern."
In conclusion, I would highly recommend the book as insightful, brief, hopeful and stimulating. College students will be loved better by people who read this book.
Must Read For Ministry Leaders Today July 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An absolute must read book for ministry leaders who want to better understand the process it will take for postmodern people to come to Christ. When I was a teenager, I went through Evangelism Explosion training at my church. Yet Evangelism Explosion doesn't resonate with people today, and unless we try to understand the 21st century mindset of post Christian people, our outdated evangelism efforts will continue to frustrate us. This is a very good book, a quick and very simple and easy to understand read about understanding how to relate and reach postmoderns for Christ
Ya Can't Treat Everyone The Same July 8, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was a little worried about the book's approach when it stated it that there are five stages a pre-christian goes through before understanding what it takes to make a commitment to Jesus (as in, "Oh no, not another formula..."). But as I read I saw these stages as not being so much "steps to peace with God" but more like "steps to understanding the journey they are on". It is a book that snaps everything into place in your head if you have ever tried to unsuccessfully (or successfully) lead someone to Jesus. You will say, "Oh, that's why that person reacted the way they did!". Many times we operate on a different level than people are on. Too many times we are too eager to dump all of our knowledge and training on someone who is asking for just a little understanding. Other times people are ready to make the commitment but we are not seeing it and we let the opportunity pass. This book helps you to discern where people are in their quest for Christ as well as letting you know you are not the only one who screws up the evangelism adventure. A must read!
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