Having Meaningful Conversations With Not–Yet Believers

I had the privilege of attending the recent Drive Conference hosted by Andy Stanley and the North Point family of churches (#drive13). A common theme at Drive was conversations: Healthy conversations with your staff or team, hard conversations, and especially conversations with not-yet believers.

In Session 1 Gavin Adams, lead pastor of Watermarke, a North Point satellite church, shared from Colossians 4:5, 6. “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt”.

Gavin shared that conversation is the key, the central point of relationship. Conversations create connections. Conversations create community. If we understand this in our marriage and family, why don’t we understand this in conversations with outsiders?

I have been so guilty of forgetting this principle! By conflict, confrontation, and “speaking the truth”, I have frozen people’s hearts with ice. I had the truth of the gospel to tell them, but was unwilling to have a conversation. Picture your neighbors heart frozen permanently in a block of thick cold ice from all the hard exchanges you’ve had with him/her. Then in subsequent interactions, your direct banter just adds layer upon layer of frost to an already frozen and resistant heart.

Yet Jesus, our Savior and our model, melted people’s hearts with conversation. Take the reviled tax collector Zaccheus in Luke 19:5. Jesus said to him, “come on down, I want to stay at your house today”. Jesus didn’t say you are an evil tax collector, a puppet for the Roman infidels and an extorter of God’s people. Repent or burn.

Instead our Lord went to his home to have a meal and a conversation. Zaccheus, the despised tax collector welcomed him gladly. But more than this! In the course of an evening conversation, Zaccheus recognized his sin and his life was changed forever.

These are the types of conversations I long for; full of grace, seasoned with salt. Thankfully I am learning, and am having more and more of them these days.

1. How are you personally engaging in conversations with outsiders?

2. Is your ministry designed for conversations?