Judging by comments on this blog, if some of us were in the days of the early church we would have upbraided the Apostle Paul for his “in your face” approach in cities like Ephesus …

paul worked within a cultural context – so do we. paul was direct, but he used culturally natural methods to address people… and i’m prettty sure he never called any of the women who walked by “drunk whores.”

tryin…

I don’t feel bad about a tract. Have at it.

But i will always stand by the evidence in numerous threads here that PB does have a superior sense of his evangelism methods.

he could stand in a paisley body suit and sing nursery rhymes for all i care, it’s not the methods, but his attitude with it when people don’t do things the way he does things.

if you want to talk about what’s “in line” with ODM land that would be the classic “if you don’t do it the way we do it, then you’re a God-hating manpleaser”…and that’s PB and his ilk to the “T”.

seriously, i know this is awful, but how stupid are some of you people?

take a breath nathan. i know it can be frustrating… but take a breath.

how much more plain can i state the following?

never made any claims about the biblical/non-biblical character of a tract.

never made any claims denying or affirming the efficacy of said tracts.

so i guess i will have to chew my cabbage twice… sheeesh.

ok.

here we go…

i don’t give a flyin’ (you fill in the blank) if he includes a tract or not.

So please don’t speak of “ODMishness to me.

the point is that PB constantly castigates compassion ministry of others as being inherently sub-christian if such compassion isn’t done the way he does it.

my POINT…here we go…ready?

My point is that just including a tract doesn’t have anymore guarantee of sharing the gospel because there’s NO WAY to ensure it will be read.

If said tract IS NOT READ then his supposedly more complete compassion ministry is functionally the same as the very compassion ministries he castigates regularly.

Unless he makes the recipients of the food stop and read the tract in front of him there is a HIGH PROBABILITY that the tract is useless, thus making his compassion ministry NO DIFFERENT from the caricatures he traffics in about others who do not (or would not) include a tract.

sheeesh.

i never said anything about tracts good or bad.

seriously, how dense do you have to be?

The other thing I don’t like about them particularly is that it’s essentially buying into the modernist/gnostic notion that salvation is primarily about buying into a specific set of ideas. It’s driven from a very disembodied type of theology that puts information above relationship.

I’m not saying that all tracts are entirely wrong or that we can even avoid some the “knowledge transfer” aspects of evangelism, but I generally think they aren’t the best use of resources.

How in the world can you get upset about someone including a tract for goodness’ sake? Or make a character judgment that the person doing so feels superior to others? Please.

Evangelism is commendable. Judging by comments on this blog, if some of us were in the days of the early church we would have upbraided the Apostle Paul for his “in your face” approach in cities like Ephesus where they shouted “Great is Artemis!” for 2 solid hours to shut him up. How brash. How arrogant. How over-the-top his approach.

I just don’t get it. Please explain.

never made any claims denying or affirming the efficacy of said tracts.

go back re-read what I’m saying in my initial comments.

i’m not chewing my cabbage twice.

the point ISN’T the tract OR the food.

that’s abundantly clear.