Event salvation, e.g. magic word theology
North Americans think of salvation as an event, as a point in time where I can point to this day and say "I was not a Christian" and point to the next day and say "I am a Christian." Interestingly enough, the students in my Biblical Theology of Missions class believe that people come into the Kingdom in a process. There is no saying some magic words (repeat this prayer after me) and the immediate result being entrance into the Kingdom of God. My students admitted that perhaps that intense moment in time, that peak occurs sometimes, but the common experience of people in the former Yugoslavia is not like that. They come to Christ is tiny little steps and only Christ Himself could possibly discern when a person crosses into the Kingdom. Here it seems that an individual eventually comes to the realization that he or she is depending upon the justification and righteousness of Christ in faith (Rom 5:1), rather than trying to be good.
This really came to a head last year as we had a country-wide evangelization with a group of folks from California. They brought in some regular folks from their church, who had powerful testimonies. These men and women had honestly great testimonies and communicated them well. We took these communicators from the states around to our friends and acquaintances here and sat and drank coffee, and the locals heard these stories and at the end were asked if they would like to receive Christ as their personal Savior. About 80 percent of them said yes. All of those 80% were then lead in a repeat after me prayer . . . and some wanted to pray themselves. We were all thrilled and were rejoicing from our hearts. A year later?? Where are they?
In reality they are not in our churches. Our follow up with them was good, your connections with these individuals remains strong. I think that the real issue here is the magic word theology, the event salvation perspective. Maybe this works and really happens in America . . . but our folks seem fairly immune to coming into the Kingdom of God with a few magic words.
This really came to a head last year as we had a country-wide evangelization with a group of folks from California. They brought in some regular folks from their church, who had powerful testimonies. These men and women had honestly great testimonies and communicated them well. We took these communicators from the states around to our friends and acquaintances here and sat and drank coffee, and the locals heard these stories and at the end were asked if they would like to receive Christ as their personal Savior. About 80 percent of them said yes. All of those 80% were then lead in a repeat after me prayer . . . and some wanted to pray themselves. We were all thrilled and were rejoicing from our hearts. A year later?? Where are they?
In reality they are not in our churches. Our follow up with them was good, your connections with these individuals remains strong. I think that the real issue here is the magic word theology, the event salvation perspective. Maybe this works and really happens in America . . . but our folks seem fairly immune to coming into the Kingdom of God with a few magic words.