We are in the middle of our Difficult Issues Series this summer. The Difficult Issues Series exists to equip CrossWay to answer the most difficult questions we hear when sharing the gospel. In preparation for Brian Kumkoski's talk on "What do you say to the Jehovah's Witness at your door?" on August 6, I wanted to post a summary of his talk from last year. You can find a transcript of Brian Kumkoski's entire publication, "What do you say to the cult member at your door?" at www.crosswayonline.org Things You Shouldn’t Do
- Don’t get involved in talking about peripheral issues. Stick to the central message of the Christian faith: the person, nature, and work of Christ—who He is and what He did.
- Don’t attack the founder of any cult group. We don’t want to argue about people, we want to discuss their system of theology—their doctrine. Don’t deal in personalities because people become instantly offended when you do. Ephesians 6:12 tells us,
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against
the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” - Don’t dodge questions. If you don’t have an answer, say, “That’s a good question. I’m going to write that down and get back to you because I’m sure there’s an answer.” The person you’re talking to will respect you for doing that.
- Don’t let the cultist hopscotch around the text. Stick to the issue at hand. Jumping around from text to text is a distraction from the real issue of Jesus’ nature as fully God and fully man. Make sure the interpretation of the text is understood in its immediate context.
- Don’t approach the cultist with a spiritual chip on your shoulder. Don’t come at them with a feeling of superiority, looking down at them instead of reaching out to them.
- Don’t lose patience in discussing and reasoning with the cultist. Remember what you were like before Christ saved you. Remember the spiritual blindness and how it took God the Holy Spirit to take away the blindness so you could see, understand, and believe the truth in Christ.
Things You Should Do
- Do remember the previous six don’ts.
- Do define your terms. This is one of the most important dos in witnessing to a cultist. The cults have their own vocabulary. A cult uses Biblical terms to describe its theology but redefines the terms according to their own beliefs. We saw this with the nature of Jesus Christ. It’s the same with a cult’s use of other biblical terms.
- Do recognize that they are people before they are cultists. Recognize that they are sinners in need of a Savior. Recognize that they have jobs, families, and problems just like us. Recognize that dialogue characterized by antagonism or hostility is contrary to speaking to them with grace and truth. Besides, a posture like that will quickly shut down any dialogue about the true nature of Jesus.
- Do have a genuine love for them. Love them for Jesus’ sake, not out of any false or wrong motive. Instead of viewing them as an annoyance when they knock on your door on Saturday morning, view them as a potential object of God’s mercy orchestrated by the sovereign hand of God.
- Do labor patiently and exhaustively. This means that even if you have to go over something again and again, do it for the sake of the gospel.
- Do listen attentively. Let the person you’re talking to know that what they’re saying is important to you. Don’t say, “Well, that’s what you think.” Don’t be thinking about how you’re going to respond to them without listening to what they have to say. Listen to the person and disagree lovingly, but listen first in order to win their trust and respect.
- Do pray for them. All the time you are talking with them be praying for them. It is God who saves by His Word and Spirit. It is through the new birth that blind eyes and deaf ears are opened to the truth as it is in Christ.
