1/19/26

This week had so many interesting ministry engagements - whether on campus, at a coffee shop, at an In-N-Out, or in a church! Here are a few fun things from this week that you might be interested in reading about and hearing!

This was our second week with Cassi and Thomas, the new NCP apprentices, but it was our first week back on Cal-State Fullerton campus this semester! Last Friday, the new apprentices began DMC 1 with Viany, me, and another brother we just recently met who is studying at Biola currently. This has been such a lively group to have in a DMC so far, and we're excited to continue on in the Sermon on the Mount! Part of the homework for week one of DMC 1 is to compile and share with three people a 3-min version of the story of how you came to follow Jesus as His disciple. The apprentices had a great opportunity to practice sharing this on Monday when we went to the Orange Circle to evangelize and continue our training/preparations for the upcoming semester at CSUF. 

The apprentices did a great job jumping into the awkward and practicing some of the tools that we've been teaching them in this first orientation week as they were sent out to share their testimonies with complete strangers! After our time of being sent out to share, we discussed how things went and heard of the great conversations that were just waiting to be had all around us! After debriefing their experiences from the morning of evangelism, we continued our Bible-dialogue training as we moved into column 2: analyzing the text!

After getting the apprentices set up to work on their column 2 homework, Colt and I went to talk to some JWs who just set up in the same area we were at earlier that morning! It's been too long since a JW has let me talk to them, so Colt and I were both stoked for an opportunity to engage with them - and together for the first time! After having a conversation during my winter travels with a family friend of ours who is an ex-JW, I've been persuaded to try a new approach which is distinctly different from my previous angles; however, I decided to stick with the old guns for this time with Colt. This is kind of how that went...

Colt and I started our conversation with the JWs by casually walking up and asking them if they are Jehovah's Witnesses (which we already knew) and then asked if we could ask them a few questions about that. They appeared immediately uncomfortable with the mere fact that we were talking to them, but one of them hesitantly affirmed that we could ask them questions. The other lady was not so hospitable and immediately, even before knowing anything about us or our curiosities, aggressively told us that we weren't allowed to ask them anything about the Trinity. I was slightly shocked at her so-open repulsion to this significant doctrinal difference which separates them from nearly every other group which wants to claim to be Christian; but out of my desire to converse, I allowed this limitation to be temporarily placed upon myself. This second lady was very angry and hostile towards us through our entire engagement, and I'm still astounded at their extreme resistance to talk to us about why we should be JWs. At one point in our conversation, when they said that they have their beliefs and we have ours (trying to get us to stop asking them questions), I asked them if they were familiar with the Bereans in the book of Acts. They said that they knew of the story, so I pressed them to imitate the interaction of the early church and these noble people who reasoned through the scriptures together so as to persuade each other. This bought me a little bit more time, and I also added that their claim to be the witnesses of Jehovah implies that they actually witness and share what they are convinced is true. They weren't exactly pleased with this, but I think it's a pretty fair point to make as we were literally asking them why we should become JW as opposed to "mainstream Christians".

As we were finally allowed to ask them why we should be JWs, they unfortunately decided to try the "We restored Jehovah's name to the Bible where trinitarians took it out" card. Bad move. In evaluating a chess match, there are different move classifications that describe how advantageous a particular move was - the worst category being a blunder which is a serious mistake which costs you significantly in the game. That is what happened here. The claim that JWs "restored" the divine name to the Bible is so clearly false that it's embarrassing that they even try to play it. In fact, their mention of this extreme difference between their Bible "translation" from literally every other credible Bible translation only highlights their ironic weakness. They claim that trinitarians took "Jehovah" out of the original manuscripts and therefore changed scripture to suit their doctrines, but literally the exact opposite happened as there are ABSOLUTELY ZERO OCCURANCES of "YHWH" in ANY New Testament manuscripts. This means that the JWs are the ones who have clearly changed the scriptures to suit their doctrinal dispositions - not vice versa. This is a hard pill to swallow for them, so the subject got shifted...

They continued to try to tell us why we should become JWs, but they just proceeded to list doctrines that are mutual and provide no need to convert. This is such a common experience for me with all of the JWs that I've engaged with so far - that they don't want to discuss the differences which make them distinct. This is odd to me as these should be the things which they champion. They literally only need to establish that the Watchtower is God's authoritative organization and that Jesus is not God and the rest would work itself out, but they refused to discuss these. This should inform us in our evangelistic efforts in a number of ways:

1. Don't be hostile towards those choosing to engage with you - even if they appear to come as challengers. If our beliefs are true, then we should expect God to bring those people to us to talk to. Let's be internally consistent with our beliefs.

2. Be eager to share with people why they should believe as you do. You don't need every answer, but at least be willing to share what you know from your experience and point them to further resources/people if it would truly be valuable.

3. Know what sets you apart from other groups which you claim to be in opposition to. If you are ignorantly opposed, you are just prejudiced. The things that set us apart as distinct should be what we emphasize in these types of conversations. It would be crazy for a math teacher, when asked about why their class is the best class, to answer that it's because they have homework, notebooks, or whiteboards when all of these things equally apply to the other classes they claim to compete with. Instead the teacher should emphasize the distinct attributes of the class which sets is apart as special. Likewise, we should know why we are distinct from other false religions - at least at a basic level.

We continued in our conversation, and the ladies asked us why we believed in the Trinity - an odd question to ask if you don't want to discuss this, but I'm probably just confused because I'm only 20 years old. This was their next response as we sought to answer their question: that we should trust them to be right because they have been studying the Bible everyday as a JW for longer than we have been studying the Bible. This is an extremely common fallacy that JWs like to use with me to avoid addressing the actual issue, but when pressed with the same standard, the JWs backpedal very quickly. I asked them if there are any mainstream Christians that are older than them and been studying the Bible longer than them. Naturally, they had to accept that this is true, so I told them that their appeal to their age could equally be applied against them and that their point was null. They seemed to realize the validity of this as they moved on and asked us to tell them why we believe Jesus is God. 

At this point I made a bit of a joke, anticipating the incomming phrase I've heard time and time again. So many times, if not every time, when asking JWs why they are JWs, they've told me that it's because JWs "just read the Bible and believe it." So, when asked why I believe Jesus is God, I just answered, "Well, I just read the Bible and it says so." This was slightly more provocative than I usually engage, but it was certainly comical to see them struggle to respond when someone else took their silly "gotcha questions". Don't worry, I proceeded to give them biblical examples, but I personally thought it was really funny to watch them struggle to respond to their own common fallacious assertions.

When we moved to scriptural examples, I wanted to try a new passage approach that I haven't been able to try out on the field yet: Mark 1:1-3 paired with Isaiah 40:3. Here in Mark's gospel, the author makes a clear tie between the prophey in Isaiah 40:3 and John the Baptist and Jesus. The prophecy says that the voice crying out in the wilderness will prepare the way of YHWH. This is a clear passage describing the divinity of Christ as the author or Mark sees the two prophecied characters being fulfilled by John and Jesus. The latter figure, fulfilled by Jesus, is supposed to be fulfilled by YHWH. I wasn't sure how they would respond to this approach as it seems abundantly clear to me, but they interpreted this passage to mean the figurative way of life of YHWH. While I do think this passage's scope includes the way of life guided by YHWH, I think we would be foolish to neglect the emphasis of Christ's divinity. So, long story short, I wouldn't recommend this as your primary passage in JW conversation as it works better in a whole spread of OT passages about YHWH that Jesus fulfills. You live and learn. Theology on the ground is definitely different from mere theory; therfore, try out your theory and see what works the most effectively for your target demographic. Contextualizing is SO important! We talk a little bit about this in our Archways training as we take a look at Paul's methods of missiology if you want to hear some more about this idea.

We continued to converse with them, and Colt tried to discuss with them the passage where Isaiah sees the glory of YHWH and the passage in John where Jesus claims to be the one that Isaiah saw. By this point, the JWs where done listening and ended the conversation, but this is a very interesting approach that I wish we could have heard their response to it. However, as Colt and I debriefed  this conversation afterwards, we agreed to try the approach I was recommended to try by my ex-JW family friend. The approach focuses on putting pressure on trying to reconcile the JW excommunication practices and Jehovah's nature of love which even ortients towards His enemies. This is a nice mix of emotional and theological appeal, so I'm curious how they will respond. I'll let you know how the new approach goes once we get to try it out.

There definitely was more that happened this week that I could tell you about, but due to the press of time and capacity to present it all to you, I'll restrain from doing so.