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Originally Posted by CharlieJ  Leslie, I would bring up baptism. Perhaps you could say something like this:
"You are saved the moment that you turn from your sin and your own way to believe in Jesus as your Savior and God. Now, that is invisible; I cannot see the moment you believe. However, God commands everyone who believes to be baptized. [Perhaps some more explanation on baptism] I want you to let me know when you want to be baptized."
The greatest difficulty in personal evangelism is what to do "at the end." After explaining the gospel and making sure they understand it, you issue a call to belief. What is the positive response to that? Well, belief. But I think we tend to want some sort of "signal" that belief occurred. That's why in broadly evangelical circles you see things like scripted sinners prayers, spiritual birth certificates in the back of tracts, etc. But baptism is a divine command and accompanied the call to salvation. The Ethiopian eunuch understood this and suggested it himself. I doubt your friends are theologically savvy enough to figure that out on their own, but you could suggest it. |
This makes a lot of sense to me but there are logistical problems. The guy was baptized Catholic and his wife was baptized Lutheran. They live in extreme SE Germany, near the Austrian border. There are NO evangelical churches in the area. There is one Protestant church, attended by 6 old ladies and pastored by a guy who is still spouting the ecumenical mantras he learned in seminary in the 1960's.
What do you say to them when they say that they were already baptized as infants? I lean toward credo anyway but don't want to offend them by saying that their infant sprinkling was meaningless. The second logistical problem is who will baptize them. I'm the only believer that they know and although I'm not as radically anti-feminist as some on the board, I'm not a female chauvinist sow, either. I really couldn't even think of doing it. I've tried mightily to connect with an evangelical person or church in the area, even a couple hours away, with no success whatsoever.
In a more encouraging vein, the guy (alone) will be in Ethiopia for 3 weeks in June. I'm trying to set up a dinner engagement between him and a Calvinistic professor at a theological seminary in Addis Ababa. If this goes through and if he makes a commitment then and there, the problem is solved--there's a pool at the church. However, he's still so far from the kingdom of God that I think it unlikely that he'll be ready to make the plunge that soon.