We believe there is great benefit from looking at the suggested “stages” both in the Engel’s scale and in the book, I Was Once Lost. These resources could prove very useful to someone who is offering spiritual guidance because part of what this information may do is help make your suggestions relative to their navigational needs.
Thus, taking the time to know where people are relative to coming to faith in Christ and then using that information in a non-manipulative way, can allow you to build the necessary trust that is extremely helpful in the process of clarifying things and the critical information needed for any good advice you might offer.
However, is what they had to say the last word that can be said about this?
It is extremely important at this point to understand our view of how we see corporate and individual aspects of journey guiding process. At the bottom this view needs to be squared with the scriptures, but space will not allow it here. It is our view there are two extremes with respect to this issue. On the one (extreme) hand, it has been argued that in effect people are (or can) become followers of Christ by being socialized into the body of Christ. On the other (extreme) hand, it has been argued or practiced that the first responsibility in all cases to proclaim the gospel to everyone who will listen.
We hold that the first view is unscriptural and untenable because we believe socialization by itself is insufficient and that the second position is too rigid and its narrow application is also unsupported by the scriptures. We propose a third way which we believes better fits with the scriptures. That is, while we hold that in some cases the proper thing to do is to proclaim the gospel as a first order of business, there are many cases where we should take the time to understand so we can “season our speech with salt so that we may know how to respond to the person...” This third way is flexible enough to respond to certain individuals and sub-cultures who exhibit greater skepticism with respect to the gospel or messengers of the gospel. It also is friendly to another important aspect of the gospel which is the social impact of the gospel in that while social involvement (essentially doing good) is an end in itself, it is also instrumental in helping those outside our community understand what the gospel is all about--the redemption of people as a part of His whole redemption of creation.
Now back to the propositional proclamation, explication and defense of the gospel. Without the benefit of high quality empirical evidence (we do not know of any studies that would measure all the sorts of things we would want to know about people’s progression to faith and it seems unlikely that non-Christians would willing participate in such a study) we need to try to make reasonable assumptions about that path.
And those assumptions should be based, where it is possible, on relevant insights and principles that emerge from similar domains of research. Most of what we’ll discuss below is beyond our direct control because it has to do with certain properties that the person with whom you may speak has and that affects their response--their interest in spiritual things (and especially interest in the gospel) and their willingness to engage in conversation.
Interest in the Gospel
As I have suggested, several factors come to mind that once identified could provide light. One factor would be the actual amount of interest a person has or would in the gospel have if they got beyond their emotional and intellectual caricatures of the gospel. Another would be the actual amount of interest a person has for engaging in conversation about the gospel. This set of criteria, assuming we could get reliable information, would enable a spiritual guide to know how open a person is to dialogue about the gospel and how willing a person would be once they understood the gospel to become a follower of Christ. The question that remains is how do we discern these sorts of things?
Correct information about the Gospel
Another related set of criteria might be how much actual information a person has about (concepts of) the gospel before your conversation and the actual amount of information a person thinks she has about the gospel. That is, holding everything equal--which typically doesn’t happen in the real world--you’d expect it would be helpful if a person’s actual information about the gospel and what they think they know about the gospel is very close. This can be seen through a negative example: suppose a person think she knows a great deal about the gospel and in fact does not really understand it; you’d expect, ceteris paribus, that communication issues might arise including the possibility of talking past each other (since at least at the outset you might well be operating on different definitions of important gospel notions). By itself it would not be determinative as to whether a person may eventually respond to the gospel; what it can do is muddy the discussion and make it more tedious. Further, what sort of picture do they have of what it means to follow Christ instantiated in persons they know and respect.
Attitude toward the Messenger
And somewhat related to that is the nature and perhaps the number of negative experiences that a person has towards Christians--the bearer of the alleged good news. The greater the number and the higher the subjective “seriousness” of the “objection” to Christians, you’d expect the more difficult communication can become and the more resistant a person might be to discussion about the things the things of the gospel. And you might say, ceteris paribus, the earlier these issues develop in a person’s life the more likely addressing them will be more formidable. At least, you’d expect that statistically.
For example, suppose you were speaking to a colleague about religious things and in the course of that conversation you find out they have visceral dislike for Christianity because of some outrageous behavior of their parents, who also claimed they were followers of Christ. Again, ceteris paribus, you’d expect such a person to be less willing to enter meaningful dialogue and engage in a serious way about the things of the gospel or if they did you’d expect them to be rife with caricatures as to what the gospel can do for a person. And it also raises the possibility that one of the reasons they wish to dialogue is that it gives them an opportunity to merely vent their anger.
On the other hand it seems reasonable to think that people who have good associations with religious people and especially Christians, especially people who were close to them emotionally and had some degree of control of their life, but whose lives exemplified the grace and truth of the gospel, would be more favorably disposed to have meaningful conversations about the gospel.
With this brief introduction, let us share with you a matrix that could help locate a person’s current stage in the west side of the terrain of which we spoke. Click on this sentence to move onto the next section