Reconnect

We should be evangelists first and apologists second. When defending the Christian faith, we should always strive to incorporate the Gospel into our defense. Why should we do this? How can we do this? Andy gives a brief explanation at the start of this episode, before reading an excerpt from his book Contradict - They Can't All be True to answer these questions, before running these concepts through in practice on Cross Defense, a radio show hosted by Rod Zwonitzer on KFUO out of St. Louis, Missouri! Enjoy.

Andy interviews Ken Chitwood about his article, "Building Bridges: Toward Constructing a Christian Foundation for Inter-Religious Relationships in the Shift from Religious Privilege to Spiritual Plurality" The key points for inter-religious dialog that Ken suggests are: pay attention, find, and form, friendships, listen and learn, dine, dialog, and do together, discern, and witness to the worldview. The article can be found linked within this episode's page at andywrasman.com.

First Reconnect July Fourth Special! Andy discusses the concept of "Christian Freedom" with Pastor Samwise Praetorius (Samuel Schuldheisz) by addressing the eucatastrophes of fairy stories and the Gospel connections that can be made with rock songs. They both share their top three favorite rock songs to use to share the Gospel. To see all the show links be sure to visit Episode 15 on the Reconnect Podcast feed at andywrasman.com.

Two high school students discuss the similarities and differences between Hinduism and Christianity with Andy. A slew of links are available on Episode 14's blog post at andywrasman.com.

God is big! But is God too big to fit into one religion? Andy discusses a bumper sticker that makes this claim with two colleagues, Theology teacher, Wes Bareford, and, Biology teacher, Ben Fisher. Get a copy of the discussion guide we used for this episode at the andywrasman.com's Reconnect Episode 13 blog post.

Andy found a bumper sticker at a New Age trinket shop in Ashville, NC. The sticker reads, "In the end, there are three things that shall last, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." This statement comes from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:13 to be precise. However, the sticker has no citation to the Bible verse, and faith, hope, and love are spelled using various religious symbols. What do the makers of this sticker intend to convey stripping the Bible citation and incorporating all of these religious symbols? Andy has created a dicussion guide for this episode, accessible at andywrasman.com . He uses this guide to discuss this sticker with two of his high school students.

Andy saw a Morpheus meme that read, "What if I told you, you didn't have to dress a certain way to go to church." With a slew of Facebook comments on this image, Andy brings the feedback to Reconnect to discuss church attire with George. There were way too many topics, stories, and scenarios pertaining to church attire that were critiqued, questioned, and addressed to be able to give a brief summary description for this episode. Just press PLAY.Go to andywrasman.com and look up Reconnect Episode 11 to see a replica of the meme that Andy created for Reconnect.

All too often religions are said to cause evil and to cause wars. The Crusades are often times mentioned to support this claim. Andy interviews Stephen Puls, a Lutheran high school history teacher, who explains what the Crusades were, why they started, and what went wrong. In the second segment, they turn towards looking at the role of Atheism in connection with wars! By the end of this episode, you'll have some great talking points whenever such an argument against religion arises. And of course, the goal is to use these talking points to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Some suggested ways of making this connection are also mentioned in this episode.

Have you seen the movie Footloose? It's about a youth who just moved into a very strict Christian community where he is signaled out as a troublemaker, almost instantly because he didn't adhere to the "Christian" principles of the town. He was essentially "shunned" because of it. That movie is based on real scenarioes that have occured for some poeple, becuase there are certainly Christian communities that stress certain rules and regulations amongst their members, such as don't drink, don't gamble, don't dance, don't be associated with known sinners, and etc.These religious expectations amongst some Christian circles have led many nonChristians who have interacted with such groups to assume that these rules are the norm amongst all Christians. They have thus become Christian stereotypes. Brett Shoemaker has made a list of ten Christian stereotypes that he hates. Andy grills him to find out if these stereotypes are in fact things that Christians should uphold and obey as commands from God, or if these Christian stereotypes fall into the realm of Christian freedom. If these stereotypes are NOT in fact mandated by Scripture, and if these stereotypes have become unnecessary burdens or divisions for nonChristians to hear and receive the Gospel, then how should Christians respond who DON'T fit these stereotypes? And if a Christian DOES fit these stereotypes, how should he or she respond to them if they aren't in fact Scriptural mandates for everyone. Andy shares many comments from Christians who disagree with Brett's list of stereotypes, many of whom thought Brett was a nonChristian mocking Christianity when he wrote this list. For more information and links for this show, visit the Reconnect Episode 9 blog post at andywrasman.com.

George and Andy, discuss a series of articles from Credo House entitled: 21 Things Christians Say to Hurt Their Credibility. In this episode they have time to discuss three of these statements:

1. "You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible."

2. "Good question. I'll find the answer and get back to you."

3. "One white lie will send you to hell for all eternity."

Andy and George agree that some of these statements really do hurt the credibility of our Christian witness and should be avoided, but they come to disagree with at least one of these articles, because they think the statement is in fact Scriptural, thus should be spoken, but maybe there is a better way of presenting the truth to a nonbeliever.

Other questions and topics emerge as they discuss these articles, such as: how do we know the Bible is the Word of God, how should we respond to questions we don't know the answers, is it possible for Christians to have all the answers to life's questions, what exactly is revealed to us in Scripture and why, how should we approach preparing answers to difficult questions raised against or about the Christian faith, why should churches teach apologetics, and the very controversial topic of varying degrees of punishment in hell!

If you want to chime in on any of these topics or give a short review of any episode of Reconnect, record a short 30 second to one minute long audio clip, stating your name and the episode number you are addressing, and send it to Andy at [email protected] as an mp3 file. If you have any questions you want addressed on the show, send them there via email as well. Thanks. Reconnect us, Oh Lord.