Between Two Worlds announces InsertBible, a free series of MS Word macros for biblical scholars to use to insert ESV and original language texts into a word document.

I have finished re-reading Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult by Nick Pollard. I love the realistic title of this book, which says nothing about making evangelism “easy.” This is the best book that I have seen on reaching those who are more postmodern in their thinking. Pollard is an evangelist and a speaker living in Great Britain who spends a lot of his time sharing the Gospel with university students. His writing style displays genuine humility and a willingness to share his failures as well as his successes.

Most of the traditional approaches to evangelism work fairly well with those who have some Christian teaching in their background and/or accept a fundamentally Christian world view. They also work fairly well with those who have learned quite a bit about the Christian faith and are exploring the possibility of becoming a Christian. But an increasing percentage of those around us, especially in the younger generation, no longer fit into those categories.

Pollard begins by dividing potential recipients of the Gospel message into four categories:

• people who are just about ready to become Christians
• people who want to become Christians, but are holding back because of questions and doubts
• people who are genuinely interested, but not sure where to begin because they know so little about Jesus
• people who are just not interested, either openly hostile or just apathetic

He then organizes his book by talking about how to reach out to each group, beginning with the last and working toward the first. The section on reaching the fourth group is by far the longest section and provide the subtitle for the book: “How to Interest People Who Aren’t Interested.” This, of course, is the most difficult group to reach.

How can we reach those who are not interested, and who may be satisfied with their world view and current manner of life? We are not called to preach the Gospel only to the interested, but neither can we force Christian beliefs on those who don’t want them. In this context, Pollard talks about the need for “Positive Deconstruction,” which involves encouraging satisfied non-Christians to explore their assumptions a little more deeply and helping them to see the areas in which they are inadequate. Once they see the need they will be more open to hearing about Jesus. That means that sharing the Gospel may begin with talking about a lot of other things. Many people today are simply not ready to jump right into the Four Spiritual Laws. This is something that was called “pre-evangelism” over 30 years ago by Frances Schaeffer, founder of L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland (see his book The God Who Is There).

The PCA webzine has a detailed discussion by Mark Bergin on Global Warming and Christian Stewardship. He discusses the various positions taken by different Evangelical groups and explores the biblical basis for caring for the environment. [Sighted on Between Two Worlds]

Justin Taylor shares his personal guidelines about how to talk to others belivers about race in Race and Grace. See also the discussion of this article on his blog.

It’s been five years since we were stunned by the terrorist attack on our own soil. I wanted to share a few thoughts on what has changed, and especially what has remained the same. This will be more of a commentary on current events rather than a theological post, but I think that it is important that we seek to understand the times in which we live from a biblical perspective.

1. We are still not “safe”

To be sure, we have made some progress in protecting ourselves against future terrorist attacks. There have been no new attacks on our soil these past five years. Some potential attacks have been thwarted before they could be carried out. For this we should be thankful.

But are we “safe”? No, we are not. We are repeatedly reminded by news stories on this topic just how vulnerable we really are. In a society that obsesses about safety, this is not a comfortable thought. But the fact of the matter is that it is impossible to be certain that we can thwart all attempted terrorist attacks. There are just too many ways it could be done, and to make a serious effort to stop them all would require draconian measures that we would rightly reject. We were not “safe” before the 9/11 attacks. The difference now is that we are aware of that fact.

Absolute safety in this world does not exist apart from placing our lives in the hand of God. That is not to say that He guarantees protection of our lives and our possessions, but rather that we should trust Him with our souls, even if it turns out that He allows events to transpire that usher us into His presence rather sooner than we had expected. As Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). I’m all for safety, and we should take prudent measures to protect ourselves. But we need to realize that we live in a fallen world, and we cannot guarantee that nothing bad will happen to us.

2. There are still people who want to kill us

We have not succeeded in capturing Osama Bin Laden, despite our considerable effort. We have captured some of his key assistants, and hopefully significantly hindered their efforts. But there seems to be no shortage of people who are dedicated to bringing down “The Great Satan” as they call us. Americans have a difficult time understanding this. Many naively believe that if we just “make nice” and stop bothering them that they will go away and leave us alone. Unfortunately it is not that simple. The terrorists are motivated by strongly held religious and political beliefs, and it is unlikely that they would be placated by anything short of turning the U.S. into an Islamic state and instituting strict Shira law.

Many involved in the public debate on these issues come from the perspective of a belief in the basic goodness of human beings. That’s why they simply cannot fathom the level of hatred and blood lust in the hearts of certain people. But if we understand the fallen condition of man we should not be surprised about the existence of hatred and savagery in the world. For the foreseeable future, there will be violent men in the world who are convinced that Allah has chosen them to kill the infidels (especially Americans). This is something relatively new to us as Americans, and we are still struggling to comprehend it. But it is the world in which we live, and we ignore it at our peril.

[I realize that not all Muslims are violent and anti-American, but obviously there are those who are, and who use their religion as a reason to justify their violent actions.]

I had originally intended to add a few more points, but this post is already long enough. Perhaps I will do a “part 2″ later on (no promises!). Meanwhile, let me know what you think.