Five Minute Ministry

Purpose How to be prepared to contend for the faith when you´re least likely to be ready. i.e. Saturday afternoon and you are mowing the lawn or you are heading out to do some shopping and the doorbell rings. Uh oh... there are two ladies with satchels or two young men wearing white shirts and clip-on ties. You may be tempted to hide or tell them bruskly to go away. After all, this is a really bad time, but isn´t it always? They are prepared and you´re not. My modest goal is to give you some tools that will allow you to be ready a few weeks or months from now when they come to your door, and they will, count on it. What about those other challenges like having a neighbor or co-worker talk to you about their heretical church, false religion, or You don´t want to be starting a fight but you want to say just the right thing.

About eight years ago I was at an apologetics conference in St. Louis and a former Jehovah's Witness, Charles Smith, relayed a very interesting story. He said he was asking another man, who had been a JW for forty years, what was the first thing that made him start to doubt the Watchtower Society. The man told him, "Thirty-three years ago a good Christian woman asked me a question I couldn't answer. She asked, 'Why do you think it was so important to Jesus that you are born again?' I didn't have a good answer to that question and it bothered me." This story has always made me think that if this man had been asked more questions like that, ones he couldn't answer, then it probably wouldn't have taken so long for him to leave the Watchtower. With this in mind, I've been thinking of those kind of questions that the average Christian, the ones who don't want, and aren't prepared for a long debate, could ask the Jehovah's Witness or...