Learning to teach a biblical worldview, and walking someone toward baptism.
Do these first when you sit down, right after the RPM check-in.
“One conversation. One question. One person willing to sit in the next seat.”
Almost every real spiritual conversation you will ever have starts with a question, not an answer.
When it is brought up to teach a biblical worldview, often the biggest fear is “I do not know enough.” “How will I know what to say?”
You are picturing a conversation where somebody asks you something about suffering or evolution or why there are so many churches, and you have nothing, and you stand there looking foolish and make God look foolish with you.
The truth is, you do not know everything. Neither does anybody who has been doing this for thirty years. There is no point at which you finish learning and become qualified.
But that fear is built on a wrong picture of the job. You are imagining that teaching someone means having answers ready. It does not. Almost every real spiritual conversation you will ever have starts with a question, not an answer.
You also just finished a study. Somebody walked you through it, session by session, and it made sense enough that you got baptized at the end of it. That study is a tool. You do not have to build anything new, invent anything, or come up with a curriculum. Just open it up again with someone else. That is what makes it reproducible.
This week is one practice with two halves. Learning to open the Bible with somebody, and learning to ask them the question at the end.
Ask instead of tell
Start with a question and then be quiet long enough for it to get uncomfortable if needed. People believe what they say out loud far more than what they hear from you.
Start where they are
Start with whatever they are actually asking about, even if it is out of order, even if it is a hard one.
Let them read it
Hand them the Bible and let them read the passage out loud. It is a completely different experience than hearing you read it, and it puts the words in their mouth instead of yours.
Say you do not know
When you do not know, say so, and then go find out and come back. This will build more trust than any answer you could have given. People have been talked at by confident religious people before. They are grateful for honesty.
Do not try to win
You can win the argument and lose the person, and we do not want that to happen. If it starts turning into a debate, stop and ask them where their belief comes from. There is almost always a story underneath the objection.
For the second half, walking somebody toward baptism, there is really only one skill, and it is asking.
Most people are never asked. They sit in the room for two years, and everybody assumes somebody else has had the conversation with them, and nobody ever does. Then they drift off and everyone wonders what happened.
Asking is not pressure. Pressure is asking eleven times, or making somebody feel like they are letting you down. Asking once, plainly, and then genuinely accepting whatever they say is not pressure. It is respect. It treats them like an adult who is capable of making a decision about their own life.
And when they say yes, remember the thing you already know from your own experience: the water is the start. You came up out of it on a Saturday and then Sunday came. Which means the day somebody you walked with gets baptized, your job is not finished. It changes. That is the day you hand them this guide.
It is less difficult than you think.
None of that requires expertise. All of it requires that you already have a relationship, which is what the first three weeks were for.
This is the order for a reason. Week four does not work without weeks one through three. People do not often open their lives to somebody who they have not shared a meal with, and they should not.
Somewhere along the way, following Jesus got sold as an upgrade to your life. Better marriage, less anxiety, more peace, a community that gets you. Some of that turns out to be true. But read what Jesus actually said to people who wanted to follow him. He told them to count the cost first, like a man figuring out whether he can afford to finish a building before he starts it. He told them it would divide families.
If you sell somebody a comfortable version of this, you have set them up to quit the first time it costs them something. And it will cost them something. It might cost them a friendship, a relationship, a job, or the version of themselves everybody around them was used to.
So tell people the truth. All of it. The honest version is more attractive than the polished one anyway, because people can tell when something is being sold to them.
And here is the flip side, which is just as important. Jesus never asked anybody to carry it alone. Everything hard about this is meant to be carried inside a family that shows up. That is not a consolation prize. That is most of the point.
The person you walk toward the water is not signing up for a program. They are getting adopted into something that will cost them and hold them at the same time.
Here are the ones that actually come up as someone is growing their understanding of God, and what to do with them. Notice that none of the guidance below is an answer to memorize. What each one has in common is that the question underneath the question is almost never informational.
“If God is good, why is there so much suffering?”
This is something The Feast study guide starts with. If we truly want freedom, that includes humans making decisions that cause a lot of pain and suffering. Even if my direct actions do not cause suffering to myself, I am the result of a long line of decisions going back to the garden of Eden. God does not want you to suffer and he feels the pain alongside us while Satan causes the hurt. The good news is that God has a plan to take away suffering forever from this world one day.
“Why do you go on Saturday?”
The seventh day is listed in the Bible and it is what Jesus kept. You do not need to make it a fight about who is right. Just tell them what you found and why it mattered to you.
“I have been hurt by church people.”
Believe them. Do not explain it, do not defend anybody, and do not say that was not a real Christian. Say you are sorry it happened, and mean it, and understand that they may need a long time. A lot of the people around this network are in exactly that category, which is worth telling them.
“I have done things I do not think God forgives.”
This is a very important one on the list and the one people are most afraid to say out loud. Do not rush past it with a verse. Sit in it with them, and then tell them what happened to you. Your story is more useful here than any argument. Remember that God’s patience with us is a lot longer than our patience with ourselves.
One more thing. When somebody brings you something you have never thought about, the right move is almost always to say you do not know, ask if you can look into it, and then actually come back with something.
That last part is where people fail. Come back. Even if what you come back with is that you asked three people and none of them had a clean answer either. Coming back is the thing that builds trust, not being right.
Two conversations most people never have because they do not know how to open them. Here is wording you can steal.
To invite somebody into a study, the version that works is small and specific. Something like: I have been going through this thing that has honestly challenged me, and I would rather not do it alone. Would you read it with me? It is a few weeks, one chapter at a time.
That works because it does not put them in the position of joining your religion. It puts them in the position of doing you a small favor, which people are much more willing to do than you think.
For the baptism conversation, plain is better than smooth. Something like: Can I ask you something directly? Have you ever thought about getting baptized? And then stop talking.
That silence is going to be uncomfortable and you have to let it sit. Do not rescue it, do not soften it, do not add a qualifier. The discomfort is where the person is actually deciding something.
Whatever they say, take it at face value. If it is no, or not yet, or I do not know, the correct response is fine, and then you keep being their friend exactly as you were before. If your relationship changes based on their answer, they were a project after all, and they will know it.
And if it is yes, we will be ready to celebrate.
Read it in your own Bible before you keep going. Philip gets sent down a desert road for no stated reason. He goes without being told why.
On the road there is a man from Ethiopia, an important official, riding along and reading out loud from the book of Isaiah.
Stop there for a second, because this is the most encouraging detail in the passage. The man was already reading. God was already at work in his life long before Philip showed up. Philip did not start anything. He walked into something already in progress.
That is almost always the situation. The people on your names page are not blank. Something is already going on in them that you cannot see.
Philip runs up to the chariot. Not strolls. Runs. There is an urgency in this that is worth noticing.
And then he asks a question. That is his entire opening move. He asks the man whether he understands what he is reading. He does not preach. He does not introduce himself as an authority. He asks a question about the thing the man is already holding in his hands.
The man’s answer is the reason all of this exists: how could he understand unless someone explains it to him. Then he invites Philip to sit down next to him.
So Philip sits in the next seat, and he starts from that exact passage, the one the man was already stuck on, and he tells him about Jesus.
Then the man sees water and asks the question himself. What is stopping me from being baptized. Philip did not have to push. He explained, and the man got there on his own, out loud, with his own mouth.
And then look at what Philip does after. He leaves. That is it. He does not build a ministry around it, he does not follow up for years, he does not put the man on a leadership team. He is sent somewhere else and he goes, and the Ethiopian goes on his way happy. Church history says that man carried the gospel into Africa.
One conversation. One question. One person willing to sit in the next seat.
Multiplication
We expect and celebrate disciples, leaders, groups, and microchurches to multiply over time. Simple, reproducible rhythms are prioritized over complex systems.
Four weeks ago that page was blank. Circle the one you are going to keep pursuing.
Look at your names and answer two questions honestly.
First, who is closest? Not who is most likely to say yes. Who is already reading Isaiah in the chariot, figuratively speaking. Already asking questions, already circling something.
Second, who would you ask? Those may not be the same person, and if they are not, that gap is worth talking about when you meet. Usually the gap is fear, and fear is easier to deal with once it is named out loud in front of somebody.
You already know what is going to be asked, which is on purpose. Think about your answers before you get there. It is a conversation, not a quiz, and there are no right answers to hit.
Start with these
If the conversation has room
Everything here is something you start doing this week, at your current level of knowledge, with the people already in your life. Say out loud which one you are committing to before you leave.
If the answer to the first one is no, come back and tell us anyway. A no is real information and it is not a failure. Philip got sent down a road with no explanation. Sometimes you do the obedient thing and the result is somebody else’s to see.
Ask somebody to read with you
Ask one person on your names page if they would read something with you. Use the study you just went through. Ask plainly and then let them answer.
Say you do not know
Have one honest conversation where somebody asks you something you cannot answer, and say so instead of guessing. Then go find out and come back.
Circle one name
Write down, on your names page, the one person you are going to keep pursuing after these four weeks end.