June 11, 2001

Jackson: You don't have to be smart to tell about Jesus
___By Craig Bird
___Baptists Today
___You don't have to be real smart to tell folks about Jesus Christ; but being stupid doesn't get the job done either, according to Richard Jackson.
___Yet the overwhelming majority of Christians today feel under-equipped intellectually and theologically to obey the Great Commission--and often go at the task backward when they do attempt to witness, he said.
___On the smart side, he asks rhetorically: "How smart would you have to be to convince someone that a carpenter's son, born in an obscure Middle Eastern village 2,000 years ago, who never got more than 200 miles from home, never went to high school, never starred in a movie, never wrote a book, never got a doctor's degree and died as a condemned criminal when he was 33 years old has anything to do with their eternal destiny--let alone with their day-to-day lives?"
___ On the stupid side, he asks: How many people respond to being told they must "quit drinking, smoking, cussing, chewing and dipping Garrett's Sweet Snuff" before they can "come and be miserable like the rest of us in church?"
___Those two major misconceptions cause solid, Bible-believing men and women "to stay away in droves" whenever they hear phrases like "evangelism training" or "how to witness" coming their way from the pulpit, the Brownwood evangelist said. Not because they are unconcerned, but because they are afraid.
___"They need to realize we don't need to debate or clean up lives. We simply present our friends and casual acquaintances to the love of God," he said. "God will convince them and clean them. Jesus said when he is lifted up he will draw all men to him."
___This is a message Jackson has delivered across the United States in the past two years, a message backed by a "witnessing New Testament" he developed and published with help from the Lockman Foundation, which owns the copyright to the New American Standard Version of the Bible.
___To date, more than 300,000 copies have been distributed.
___At Hendrick Health System in Abilene, copies of the testament are available in all the waiting rooms. In two years, about 4,000 copies have been distributed, including one to each employee at Christmas 1999.
___"The success of the testament is that it helps laypeople witness to the people they meet in the normal traffic patterns of their lives," Jackson said.
___While other witnessing programs may overload people with information, the Covenant of God's Love New Testament takes a minimalist approach. It is a no-frills self-guided tour through the Scriptures.
___

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