What is your approach to evangelism? Are you discouraged if you don’t see results? Do you like to play board games? Typically each player has a playing piece that marks their progress around the board. Each turn is an opportunity to advance. You don’t expect to win the game in a single turn. In like manner, your witness of me may serve as a turn to move someone forward. You are not responsible for the entire process. Ask your friends how many times they encountered the gospel message before they received it. Do you recall that Paul planted, and Apollos watered, and I gave the increase?

Do you belong to the one true church? You can easily think of churches who claim to be The One. Do you find such an attitude off-putting? Is any church entirely free from this? It is admirable when churches take steps to minimize this effect, but at the end of the day, or on Sunday morning, you pull into one parking lot rather than another for a reason. It is preferable to have a strong sense of community rather than a weak one. Can you maintain one without the other? Can you belong to a strongly bonded community that recognizes the validity of my body taken as a whole?

Does it seem to you that Christmas has become an entirely secular commercial holiday? Does it seem that it has lost its Christian distinctive when everyone celebrates it in about the same way? Christians present it as the arrival of the Messiah whose real work is yet to come, at the end of his life rather than at the beginning. Yet there is still much to celebrate at my arrival. I had to arrive before I could ascend. Do you see my coming into this world as fully human already validates the human experience even before the cross? Do you see aspects of redemption in the incarnation?

Some of my disciples struggled with the news that I had risen from the dead, despite the eyewitness testimony of their friends. Thomas in particular said that he would not believe until he put his hands in my wounds; hence the term, doubting Thomas. I did appear to him and he did believe. I pointed out that he had seen and believed, and said blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed. In which category are you? Do you know people with powerful testimonies of miracles and other supernatural acts they have observed?