Posted by Josh on: 02.13.2008 /
Conversations can be hard. Especially conversations about issues of faith, belief, and concepts as big as God, humanity, and human purpose. In a pluralistic society people of all different persuasions live side by side and, one can only home, in peaceful existence. However, our peaceful co-existence often comes through silence. Instead of having conversations with others regarding our understandings of God, humanity and purpose, we often choose to make such beliefs a personal commodity rather than value them for the answers to universal questions we truly believe them to be.
My wife and I are seminary students and one of our assignments this semester is to carry out twelve weeks of dialog with a non-Christian on the subject of faith, Jesus, and Christianity. My wife and I, feeling unable to inflict such conversations on our non-Christian friends, decided that we would actually prefer to have conversations with thoughtful and intelligent atheists. So, we went “fishing” (pardon the Christian pun) at the Conversation at the Edge blog hosted by Helen Mildenhall. Helen graciously posted a request for us, and within a day we had more responses than we could use. It seemed like an evangelist’s dream! Non-Christians who want to talk to Christians about faith!
Now, please don’t get me wrong: we did not seek conversation partners in order to “save” them. The only thing we want to save is our grades in our class. But we both are very interested in genuine one-on-one conversations about spirituality and faith. Why? Because we have remained silent for too long. Silence has led to division, almost more so than ideologies. As we engage in respectful and open dialog we can begin to come towards each other, in a world which tends to polarize along questions of faith. The practice of conversation-making is powerful.
Are you interested in conversation? After seeing so much interest in our little request for conversation partners on Conversation at the Edge, I thought this might be an exercise that more people would like to participate in. After talking to the folks at Off The Map, we decided that eBay atheist would be a great place to facilitate an exercise in one-on-one conversation.
Here’s how it works:
Leave a Reply
Comment by: Eliza
1 02/13/08 7:19 PM | Comment Link |Josh,
Will you & your wife let us know, here or at Conversation at the Edge, how your own dialogues went? Good luck on making good grades on it, & also having an interesting time! Is there a test at the end, or are you supposed to write about your conversations, for the grading?
And, do you know how the instructor got the idea for this assignment, & what the goal is, other than to hold the conversations?
I’d love to participate, but am swamped with work & can’t take on any new projects. Too bad, it sounds interesting!
Also, as an aside, at first I (an atheist) misread the title of your post as “Encouraging Conversions“… ;-)
Comment by: Julie Marie
2 02/13/08 9:21 PM | Comment Link |I’ll be following along :) As a semi single parent of a 5 year old I don’t have much time for conversating. Of course, I have all the time in the world to blog away after 11 pm at night..sigh.. I’m off to bed.
Comment by: Mike O
3 02/14/08 7:56 AM | Comment Link |It sounds like you’re also looking for Christians, right? If so, I would love to be involved. I’ll email you.
Comment by: Josh C
4 02/14/08 10:12 AM | Comment Link |Hi Eliza-
SO funny about your initial read of the title! Maybe we should have called it that to get more attention. :)
I hope that over the next few weeks that Karlene and I will be able to assimilate some of what we’re learning through our conversations into the posts. As for grading, we actually are keeping a journal of our conversations, so it might be good to share about that. Karlene is an avid blogger at her site http://www.karleneclark.com so I hope she’ll post some of her thoughts up there.
As to the professor’s intentions, I really think that the purpose of the assignment is to learn through practice how to have conversations regarding faith. In the modern evangelical world, talking with non-Christians about faith was centered around a three-prong apologetic (personal testimony, explanation of the other person’s need for Christ, and invitation). This model may have been “successful” in the past, but is simply offensive now. Christians need to learn how to talk about their faith with non-Christians in a way that doesn’t work like a sales pitch, and instead focuses on belief. At least that’s my take on it.
Comment by: Randy
5 02/14/08 3:26 PM | Comment Link |Josh,
You wrote:
Great synopsis. And totally what we are trying to address with what we call Doable Evangelism (doableevangelism dot com). Thanks so much for making your assignment public in this way. I look forward to hearing how this goes.
Where are you taking this class? Your teacher seems to be very aware!
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
6 02/14/08 3:39 PM | Comment Link |Randy, Josh’s teacher is Todd Hunter :)
Josh, what’s the book you’re using that this assignment is from?
Comment by: Randy
7 02/14/08 4:32 PM | Comment Link |Well then…DUH. Todd Hunter is more than aware. He’s my idol.
Oh wait…I’m not supposed to have idols. Dang. Ok…he’s my hero. How’s that? I mean, I’m not worshipping him or anything. I just want to be like him when I grow up (although growing up may be a lost cause for me by now).
Thanks Helen.
Comment by: Josh C
8 02/16/08 9:25 PM | Comment Link |HI Randy-
Yeah, Todd’s the prof and the class is at George Fox Seminary in Portland, OR. THe book that we were given is actually a workbook called “Holy Conversation: Talking about God in Everyday Life” by Richard Peace. I’m not completely sold on the book, but I do like the idea of learning to talk conversationally and thoughtfully with people who are not Christians.
I’ve “lurked” on Doable Evangelism, and I think we’ve met in passing at the OTM events in Seattle. Glad you’re doing that!
Josh
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
9 02/17/08 6:31 AM | Comment Link |Josh, I’m curious: where do you differ from the book in your approach to talking about God in everyday life (with people who aren’t Christians)? As you do this assignment do you have to do it ‘the way the book says’ or do you have some flexibility to make changes where you’d like to make them?
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
10 02/17/08 1:33 PM | Comment Link |Josh, guess what? I found someone else doing this project (at another school) and blogging about it
Comment by: Josh
11 02/22/08 8:46 PM | Comment Link |Helen- Thanks for the link! I’m excited to read through it!
Comment by: Can Christians and Atheists Co-exist? « Emerging Chaos
12 05/14/08 2:50 PM | Comment Link |[...] I have also made a new friend through a website called, Conversation at the Edge. I am currently enrolled in Seminary at George Fox in Portland and am required to talk about my faith with a not-Christian conversation partner for the duration of the class. And, yes, I will be graded on this. I have plenty of not-Christian friends whom I could have chosen as conversation partners, but some of my classmates posted their need for conversation partners and were overwhelmed with the response. So, I agreed to start conversing with one of the respondents and it has been delightful. I always enjoy making new friends - and I really like my new friend. We have already discovered we have a few things in common and she is a great conversationalist. You can read about our conversations on her blog. You can also read more about this idea of Christians and Atheists conversing at Off the Map’s eBay Atheist site. [...]