8/24/25

This week, Nick, Viany, and I led our second group of people through the Archways training we've developed. This training is meant to equip you in conversational evangelism as you learn to identify and walk through the archways in every-day conversations that connect a person to Jesus and His Gospel! Feel free to check out the video below of the training from this week!

This week at Huntington Beach, we had some great conversations as people engaged with the question, "Is only one religion true?" This idea that all roads lead to heaven seems to be a terribly common misconception that even finds itself on the lips of churchgoers I've talked to. Our current cultural emphasis on inclusion and tolerance certainly plays into this muddied message, but I think that it's also cultivated by a mere ignorance of biblical teaching. There seem to be many people who misunderstand God's love as antithetical to exclusivity, but that's simply not the case. On the contrary, true love requires exclusivity and intolerance towards those things which oppose the entity being loved. How could you claim to love righteousness without hating sin? It's not possible. These interactions remind me of the responses that we had at CSUF when we posed the question, "Is Jesus Inclusive or Exclusive?" With this question, we discussed the total inclusivity of Jesus as He offers salvation to all people (Titus 2:11), but also the total exclusivity of Jesus in how we accept that offer through Christ alone (John 14:6). When we mix these up, or only have one, we get an incomplete picture of Jesus and the Gospel.

We had good engagement with this question, and it seemed that those who talked with us about it were generally quite open and seeking. We even had people trying to engage with the board when we set it down to get lunch afterwards. The whiteboard was leaned against a wall at the place we stopped for lunch, and we had a number of people stop to talk. There were two young ladies from the nearby coffee shop that talked to each other about it, and one of them added their thoughts to the board with their own dry erase marker. We talked to them and learned that one of them is currently exploring Christianity and the teachings of Jesus for herself right now. She wants to interpret the scriptures for herself and is not attending a church currently, but she seemed very open and eager to engage with it more in independent exploration. 

I talked with some JWs at the beach as well that day, and this time was allowed to stay for quite some time! I haven't engaged with JWs as much as I'd like to recently as I haven't had good responses - usually being pushed away the instant I ask about their doctrine. This time I just focused on learning about their conversion to the JWs - when and why they converted. I've done this in the past with many JWs, but it takes a long time to get to the heart of the conversation, and I will likely not see them again (or at least for a while) as they are at HB Pier. However, this time I went ahead and took the more long-term approach in order to simply gain insight into what they value as individuals. What they shared was not all that uncommon in my experience asking this question to JWs, and they mentioned many things I've heard from others as well. They said that they were driven away from traditional Christianity due to hypocrisy and disobedience they found in the churches, and they said that they found the JWs to actually obey Jesus in His commands. While I do have some critiques to their point, I can whole heartedly agree that this is an issue in Christianity today and many Christians don't obey Jesus. They also emphasized that Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of God and that many people don't preach this. I can also agree with this point generally speaking. They also said that JWs know the true name of God and others have changed it or removed it from the scriptures. I've got to be honest; I don't really understand this point yet. I've heard multiple JWs use this as a reason to be a JW, but I don't understand the weight of the argument. I need to further investigate this.

Aside from the name of God point, I agree with the points that they raised which compelled them to be JW. However, you can be right about many things and still be dead wrong. They claim to uniquely know the name of God, yet they reject Jesus for who He said that He is - thus rejecting the One who sent Him. The reason that I find this so fascinating is that it seems that JWs don't care much about their controversial beliefs which actually distinguish them as not Christian, but they lead with the doctrines that most Christians agree with. I think that expressing the shared beliefs about particular doctrines might make it easier for a JW to consider the legitimacy of other Christological or ecclesiological issues, but I'm not certain. I really want to have a conversation with an open and seeking JW where we can discuss all of this, but I haven't found that yet. It seems that engaging with them on the street doesn't do too much as they aren't usually open to doctrinal discussions (and might call security on you for asking) and will probably just point you to JW.org for any question you ask. I've tried setting up a home visit with them to talk in a more relaxed environment, but as of right now, I haven't heard anything back. One very interesting insight from these conversations is that people are looking for what Christianity is supposed to offer, yet they aren't finding it in the Church and therefore go to cults to get a perverted version of it. We run into this all the time - that people know Christianity is supposed to be more than what the American church is selling, so they join high-control religious groups who appear to have more zeal for obedience and discipleship (whether or not that's actually the case). I'm certainly not advocating for the cults, but I'm rather reflecting on the reasons that they draw people in successfully and how our disobedience contributes to that issue.

We start back up at CSUF this week, and we look forward to the ministry we get to do with this demographic! Please join us in prayer as we continue with the whiteboard method and seek to try our new street-preaching spin on campus this semester!