HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED IN CROSS-PURPOSES
1. Tell your story: We are inviting you to tell your stories about how Jesus changed your life. You can tell your story in writing, on video, or you can design your own web page and we will post it as an HTML page on this site. And tell your story to those around you. To submit your story, start HERE. We are hoping in the next couple of weeks to present several ways that you can give people ways to link directly to your story on this website - both from links from your own website, and from business cards and other contact literature that you can hand out.
2. Volunteer to help: We need help with web design, proof-reading stories as they come in, video editing, and most of all with collection of stories from where you live. If you are interested in becoming a part of this ministry, or if your church would like to participate in a Cross-purposes related outreach, please e-mail Jeremy at witness@cross-purpose.org.
3. In the Future: part of our vision is to develop media avenues in which the story of Jesus, and tof the people whose lives He has changed, can be presented in traditionally secular enviroments. Think of a 30 second montage during the SuperBowl of people talking about how Jesus changed them. Or a presentation in any other similar secular venue. Think of shirts that don't simply say something about Jesus, but instead invite people to ask the wearer about the Hope we have.
4. Change your mindset: Even more than this, it is our hope to encourage believers to change their concepts of the gifts that Jesus has left them. The most precious thing He has given us to invest is the new life He has created in us. Our sense of personal identity and our primary focus of conversation should be wrapped up in that change.
THE CROSS-PURPOSES VISION
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: "Now have come the salvation and the power and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. Revelation 12:10-11a (NIV).
About 2 years ago, a Chuck Slocum came to me with this verse and said "could this be why followers of Christ are not effective in sharing the hope they have in Jesus? Could it be that we have too often ignored half the message - our personal stories about what Jesus has done for us." The more we talked, the more I felt my friend Chuck was right. When we tell people about Jesus, we generally do so in an expositional form - we read them Bible verses and tell them what they mean (the "Roman Road" for instance). Or, we illustrate God's plan to them, through tracts or visual tools like evangecube. There is nothing wrong with these things, and when we evangelize this way, we cover the first half of what overcame the powers of this world - the blood of the Lamb. But this is not "the word of our testimony." That word is what makes our message real and powerful. It's our personal statement of how God changed our lives through Jesus.
The Apostle Peter wrote
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. . . II Peter 3:15 (NIV)
Peter didn't write that we should give the reason that anyone can have hope in Christ. He wrote that we should give the reason WE have hope in Him. When Jesus left His disciples, He left them with a statement of purpose. He told them "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."
So what is a witness? A witness is someone who can reliably speak about an event because they have seen or experienced it first hand. For those of us who have believed in Jesus, we have seen and experienced first hand the restoration of a broken relationship with God, the transformation into new creatures that comes from God's Spirit living in us, the sense of purpose and mission that we have in this life, and the hope that comes from assurance of life eternally. If we are going to be what Jesus has called us to be - His witnesses - we have to tell people about this first-hand knowledge we have of our relationship with Christ, and the change He brings to our life.
- Jeremy