FAQ Sermon Series Preview

Have you ever been asked a question you don’t know the answer to?  (If you are breathing, you should have just nodded your head “yes.”)  Being asked a question you can’t answer is never fun, but when you feel like you should know the answer, it goes from uncomfortable to humiliating.  Since none of us like to be in situations where we feel humiliated, we tend to steer ourselves only into conversations where we think we know the answers.

On one particular episode of the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Ray agrees to talk to his daughter about the “birds and the bees” in order to impress his wife.  In preparation for this conversation, Ray studies up by reading a number of books on the topic.  When the time comes for Ray to “have the talk” with his daughter, he shows up with an arsenal of info to answer what he anticipates his daughter’s questions to be.  However, things don’t go quite like Ray had planned out . . . [watch this video below]

When the conversation takes a turn, Ray bails out.  I would guess it was quite some time before Ray ventured into this conversation with his daughter again!

Recently, my friend Mark Burget shared this clip with me to illustrate an important point about the spiritual life.  Often, as Christians, we steer the conversation AWAY from spiritual things when talking to our non-Christian friends because we are afraid we will be asked a question we do not know the answer to.  This fear often prompts us to run away from the conversation altogether and retreat to safer ground.  Shoot, many times we steer away from asking tough questions with our CHRISTIAN friends because we don’t want to appear as though we don’t already have all the answers!

Knowing this dynamic exists, we wanted to take a series of messages this fall in our main worship services at Wildwood Community Church to ask some of the bigger questions we have about our faith.  Questions like:

• Is there Really a God? (September 8)
• Why believe in Miracles?  (September 15)
• Is Christianity just a psychological crutch? (September 22)
• Is the Bible Reliable?  (September 29)
• If Christianity is true, why are there so many hypocrites? (October 6)
• Is Christ the Only Way?  (October 13)
• What about those who have never heard about Christ?  (October 20)
• The Gospel seems too easy.  Is salvation really by grace through faith? (October 27)
• Can we really be sure of our salvation? (November 3)
• Why do the innocent suffer? (November 10)

In this series, that we have called “FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Christianity,” we will be seeking answers to these questions for ourselves  . . . as well as equipping our minds with thoughts to share with others as these frequent questions are asked.

We will be kicking this series off this Sunday, August 18, at Wildwood Community Church.  In the first three messages of this series, we will be looking at three preliminary truths that will help us understand the relevance of this series.  These messages will cover the basic motivation of this series in a 1-2-3 format:

1. Every one person is important to God.   (August 18)
2. Two important principles to remember in evangelism.  (August 25)
3. Three common barriers to people following Christ.  (September 1)

Bruce Hess and I are excited to team teach our way through this series this fall.  We hope you plan to join us . . . and invite others to join us also as we progress through these important topics.  We hope to see you this Sunday in either our 9:30 or 10:50 services.