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I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus

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For so many of us, sharing our faith is a frustrating exercise. We have the best of intentions, but end up being jerks for Jesus. We avoid non-Christians like the plague for a while. Then some one or some thing convinces us that we really ought to evangelize. So we gear up with self-righteous, fire and brimstone fear of hell for the next round.

And we wonder why Christians have a reputation for being judgmental, close-minded and angry. Why would anyone else want to be a Christian when we make it look so uncomfortable?

If this sounds familiar to you, you are going to love "I Once Was Lost". Get ready to be amazed at how easy sharing Jesus can be. It's a freeing, wonderful book full of insights and practical applications. Not a how-to book on evangelism. More like a how-come what we have been doing hasn't been working. And biblical, helpful ways to see the whole process of coming to Jesus differently than you ever have before.

Emphasizing relationship over religion and loving over lecturing; this book will give you the confidence to share what you love about Jesus and let Him handle the rest. A very special book that every Christian ought to read.

How can we effectively evangelize non-Christians in a postmodern age?

How are postmodern people coming to Christ?

What lessons can we learn from their spiritual journeys that might help us as we work to fulfill the Great Commission?

In I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taughts us about Their Path to Jesus (IVP, 2008), Don Everts and Doug Schaupp draw on their many years of experience in ministry to postmoderns in order to help answer these questions and more. I Once Was Lost is a book born out of evangelistic efforts in a postmodern setting.

Throughout their ministry among postmoderns, the authors began noticing certain common experiences among their friends' journeys to faith. These experiences led them to some conclusions about evangelism to postmodern people.

Using the Parable of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-27) as a foundational guide, the authors describe the postmodern journey to faith as both mysterious and organic. Conversion is mysterious in that it comes only from God:

"There is something spiritually liberating when we admit and declare what is beyond us and where we are powerless. We cannot create life. It is impossible for us to predict why some of our friends will choose Jesus and why others just won't. We don't know how to change hearts... This lesson has freed us from the modern temptation to view conversion as mostly a psychological phenomenon, an inner event that can be controlled and manipulated and triggered if we preach the gospel just right..." (19)

Liberated by the mystery of saving faith, the authors conclude that "the monkey is off our back, and onto God's back, where it belongs. The Scriptures teach us that God is ultimately in control of salvation." (19) God's sovereignty forms the foundation of conversion, but that does not keep the authors from seeking to evangelize effectively. Instead, it lends a certain humility in their efforts.

I Once Was Lost is less a prescription for evangelism to postmoderns as it is a description of how effective evangelism is taking place in certain circles. The authors see five thresholds in the postmodern journey to faith:

From distrust to trust. (Somewhere along the line, they learned to trust a Christian.)

From complacent to curious. (They become curious regarding the Christian faith of their new friend.)

From being closed to change to being open to change in their life. (The hardest threshold to cross.)

From meandering to seeking. (At this stage, they begin actively, purposefully seeking God.)

The Kingdom itself. (Trusting in Christ for salvation and confessing him as Lord.)

The authors then devote a chapter to unpacking each of these thresholds and showing the theological and biblical underpinnings for each one. The first threshold is rooted in the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus came and became one of us. The authors warn, however, that In our "incarnational" evangelism, we should not succumb to relativism by pretending that all religions are the same.

The second threshold takes place when the non-Christian begins to see the transforming power of Jesus in the life of the believer. Seeing someone follow Jesus naturally leads to the "Why" question and moves the non-Christian from complacency to curiosity. The authors give practical advice in stoking this God-given curiosity (ask good questions and tell parables). One minor quibble here: The authors wrongly interpret Mark 4 regarding the purpose of Jesus' parables [55], but that aside, they put forth many good ideas for evangelism at this stage in the process.

In threshold three, we are encouraged to give non-Christians the gift of space and permission to explore. The authors believe that moving from being closed to change to open to change is the most difficult step to take. That's why they encourage fervent prayer during this stage (73).

In their zeal for helping people "explore" Christianity, however, the authors put forth the idea that Christianity is one option among many to be "tried." I don't like the terminology they use of "giving God a trial run" (71). Such terminology fits fine in our capitalistic, consumerist culture, but not in the biblical worldview of the God who rightfully claims our lives.

Christians should practice "nonjudgmental truthfulness," and "gentle honesty" at this stage (75). How can one engage in this type of dialogue? By taking a conversation deeper. One example the authors give hardly seems like a "deeper" conversation:

"We all need help to get by. We might get our fix at Starbucks, at a party or on the Internet. But we all need a fix. I find my fix in God. What do you think about a spiritual hook-up?" (76)

But despite the trivial, street-talk given in the examples, the authors are right to assert that "sometimes the most loving thing we can do for someone is not to beat around the bush in conversations, but instead to just call them out on how they are afraid to change" (78). They go further in saying, "We underestimate the importance of our role in speaking words of challenge. If you tend to be that way, please don't let your own comfort level guide how much you speak the truth in love, or you may never get around to it" (81). Bold, but helpful advice indeed.

Once the non-Christian reaches threshold four and begins to be more active in their pursuit of God, the authors recommend that Bible study take centerstage. At this stage, "people do not need to know what you think about Jesus near as much as they need to know what the Gospels say about Jesus" (98). I appreciate the centrality of Scripture that forms the heart of this section of the book.

The authors recommend a sense of urgency at the "kingdom" threshold. It is here that Christians should press the claims of Christ upon their friends, encouraging public commitment to Christ upon personal conversion.

I Once Was Lost is a short book that contains a great amount of helpful material for those interested in engaging a postmodern world with the gospel of Christ. I was pleasantly surprised at the emphasis on Scripture, the encouragement to gently confront, and the reliance on the Holy Spirit's power in seeking to effectively evangelize others. Despite a few weak spots, the book contains much to be commended and deserves a wide audience. I Once Was Lost makes me want to roll up my sleeves and get to work as a more passionate evangelist in this postmodern age.

I was a little worried about the book's approach when it stated it that there are five stages a pre-christian goes through before understanding what it takes to make a commitment to Jesus (as in, "Oh no, not another formula..."). But as I read I saw these stages as not being so much "steps to peace with God" but more like "steps to understanding the journey they are on". It is a book that snaps everything into place in your head if you have ever tried to unsuccessfully (or successfully) lead someone to Jesus. You will say, "Oh, that's why that person reacted the way they did!". Many times we operate on a different level than people are on. Too many times we are too eager to dump all of our knowledge and training on someone who is asking for just a little understanding. Other times people are ready to make the commitment but we are not seeing it and we let the opportunity pass. This book helps you to discern where people are in their quest for Christ as well as letting you know you are not the only one who screws up the evangelism adventure. A must read!

Everts and Schaupp help the reader become sensitive to the typical stages college students move through when they become Christians.

This book would be particularly helpful for those who work with college students or want to better understand college students--as it describes the pressures, thought processes, and friendship dynamics of this age group.

It would also be helpful for those who ask the question, "Does anyone today convert to Christianity as a thinking adult?" Indeed they do. Everts and Schaupp try to find patterns in the journeys of the people they have observed moving through this process.

They identify Trusting a Christian, Becoming Curious, Opening Up to Change, Seeking After God, Entering the Kingdom and Living in the Kingdom as key "thresholds" that people move through.

The book is nice and concise (134 pages) and reads quickly. Everts and Schaupp are not trying to make an argument that these are the thresholds all Christians need to work through. Rather it is sociological or anthropological work--similar to the famous Kubler-Ross stages of loss (denial, anger, acceptance, etc.) or Christian Smith finding the phenomenon of "moralistic therapeutic deism" in teens.

Everts and Schaupp essentially share their experiences and then ask if this resonates with others. This is not to denigrate their experiences--they have done a significant amount of interviews and they are in as good a position as anyone with their experience in college ministry with InterVarsity to make these kind of observations. Does their model have explanatory power? I think it does.

If they are right that college students (and perhaps teenagers and adults as well--who knows?) that become Christians, move through these thresholds well, what are the implications for how college ministry and church ministry should change if they want to see more people become Christians? The unmissable point is that these students who have moved through these thresholds certainly did not do so because of one event or program. Someone needed to listen to them, give them advice, challenge them and encourage them. Though Everts and Schaupp sketch a process, they explode the idea that some specially designed program would be able to mass-produce followers of Jesus. This book is much more about how to do spiritual direction than how to do evangelistic programming.

The book does not contain much formal theological language. In my quick reading, I do not remember a reference for example to the Holy Spirit or to baptism. Their goal is not to reflect theologically on conversion. Similarly they do not engage developmental psychology or other sociological research and draw parallels between that research and their conclusions. An academic researcher would want to do interviews with a representative sample of people who became Christians in college to test Everts and Schaupp's tentative conclusions.

One final note, the book has in its subtitle the controversial word "postmodern"--What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus. I would simply say that this word plays almost no role in the book. It is not a book that views postmodernity positively nor one that views postmodernity negatively. The book describes students at colleges in California and Colorado in the last twenty years--that is all the authors mean by "postmodern."

In conclusion, I would highly recommend the book as insightful, brief, hopeful and stimulating. College students will be loved better by people who read this book.

Don & Doug,

thank you and IVCF for this resource. With all the postmodern stuff out there I found this book extremely helpful. I appreciate you guys not entering into the whole postmodern church deal and just sticking to ministering to people. The 5 threshholds were helpful with subpoints for each of them.

thank you for your honesty and for listening to your community and to God about turning your experiences into a resource.

This book looked good, from reading the cover, the back, and the introduction but it did not live up to the packaging. I was expecting actual stories from some of these hordes of people the authors mentioned instead of snippets and accounts retold by the authors. The writing was inconsistent, possibly because it was co-authored, and it was annoying to have the authors continually telling us who was writing (Don). I did find some interesting and useful content here and there, especially in the last third of the book, but for the most part I found it to be too basic and sometimes boring.

An absolute must read book for ministry leaders who want to better understand the process it will take for postmodern people to come to Christ. When I was a teenager, I went through Evangelism Explosion training at my church. Yet Evangelism Explosion doesn't resonate with people today, and unless we try to understand the 21st century mindset of post Christian people, our outdated evangelism efforts will continue to frustrate us. This is a very good book, a quick and very simple and easy to understand read about understanding how to relate and reach postmoderns for Christ

I Once Was Lost offers a great and non-academic introduction to evangelism in a post-modern, Western culture. What I liked about this book most was that it focused on relationships rather than a step by step program on how to "do" evangelism. While it did suggest that there are five general "thresholds" that people go through (or are in) prior to their acceptance of Christ's grace and kingship, the emphasis was on interpersonal dynamics. That is to say that all of the unhelpful, cliche' and stupid "modern" efforts at merely informing people of what the Bible says in a street-corner or door-to-door style presentation was happily absent from this book. To the contrary, all of the examples of postmodern evangelism given by the authors indicated a long-term, traveler oriented relationship between intentional Christians and those who had yet to meet and love the dynamic character of Jesus of Nazareth.

Of course the respective authors intend for their book to be helpful as Christ followers seek to lead others all the way to their King, and they offer a general map of waypoints that have matched their own experiences in the field. Nevertheless, I Once Was Lost clearly indicates that our role as evangelists is to help another person take a step closer to Jesus rather than farther away, regardless of the point when and where our lives intersect or where they depart. Maybe we will be so fortunate as to help a person meet and get lit up by Jesus and accept him all in one phase of life, but it is more likely that we will carry on what the Holy Spirit started with someone who came before us and will continue after we fade from the scene. As the authors pointed out, God is the only one who sees the big picture, and he is the one who uses us for his purposes to save in our pre-Christian relationships. God saves people, not us, but our responsibility (and indeed our honor) is to be a key person in this particular phase of our friends' faith-journeys.

I Once Was Lost helps readers look for and identify patterns that may well help them discern where their friends are at in their own faith-journeys, and then take them to the next level with God. That is a message and a reminder that we can all use.

Thanks for reading me,
-CL

This isn't a "one size fits all" evangelism book.

I Once Was Lost is about the "five thresholds" that thousands of postmoderns have crossed to come to faith in Jesus. They explain them while honoring the mystery and organic process of conversion.

For people of faith in Christ, this resource will help you to meet your friends where they're at in exploring the person of Jesus.

There are only a few books that I make my leaders read, this is one of them. I think it is the best book on the disgusting word of evangelism. Many of me and my friends have such issues with evangelism because of our post-modern viewpoints and I Once Was Lost gave me a framework for helping my friends without making me sick to my stomach because of it's lack of relational intelligence and individual respect. Definitely worth reading.