Theoretical
Puritan Board Professor
For starters, hello to everyone on the board.
Through observation and personal prayer, I believe the Lord has put me into the position of helping bring a friend of mine at college to our great faith.
Here's a bit of a background on Elizabeth (name changed) and then I'll relay how I came to become friends with this young woman.
She is a Navy/Contractor kid who grew up in Britain, and her family is pretty religiously apathetic. For her high school, she went to the high school at a small town near the university, and apparently many of her closest friends there were evangelical churchgoers who invited her to attend their congregations. She has said she misses attending church, but her beliefs are basically those of a universalistic moral theist. For her part, she's fairly religiously apathetic, but notably does not have any of the typical hostility towards Christians or Christianity I've observed in most of the non-believers I know. She is a very practical-thinking person who tends to prefer meat-and-potatoes substantive matters without delving into little details.
My friendship with her started last summer when I was taking a summer course and she was a summer freshman research fellow working in a lab. We got to know each other fairly well over that time, and she also ended up being one of my students in a freshman seminar I TA. She is a very good friend of mine, and I've become something of an older brother to her.
I know she deeply respects me for (a) being one of the few guys she knows who actually treats her like a lady rather than as "one of the guys" or as an inferior being (she's rather tomboyish, but still feminine), (b) being willing to be available 24/7 to help in whatever way I can (something I offer only to good friends for obvious reasons), and (c) helping her through many of the storms of first-year college life.
As a disclaimer and qualification to a lot of the things I will say below as well as my evangelistic approach, I will say that I have been romantically attracted to her for some time; however, I refuse to be unequally yoked in a romance, so I have suppressed those desires and I believe she's entirely unaware of interest on my part. With that said, I want her to have a Godly husband, but who that is or whether I might be that person is utterly, utterly secondary to my desre for her to be a believer. I mention this because I am worried I might mishandle things and put out a message I don't wish to send.
There are several things that I believe I can do to help share the faith with her. First is to introduce her to my friend Madeline, who is a lovely Christian (French, Reformed Anglican) and who would make a profound impression on Elizabeth by simple virtue of the fact that Madeline's life and heart are absoiutely golden and inspiring to all who meet her. I think fostering this friendship, which both young ladies would likely enjoy has a lot of growth potential for everyone involved. Second would be to invite her to attend my church and for Elizabeth ideally to start becoming a regular attendee, and the circumstances should be good for her to at least attend the service. Third, I believe that ideally Madeline and I would get together at some point and hammer out an approach as to having a major conversation with Elizabeth that would probably be over at my apartment (a single) with just the three of us having dinner and then a good conversation afterwards. This conversation would be ideally the time where we most directly and overtly present both our testimonies and the truth of the Word to her.
Anyway, having explained the matter well enough, I would greatly appreciate any advice and counsel on how I should proceed evangelistically. So far in college and in life, I have a 100% failure rate on bringing people to the Lord , although I have been able to lead a broad evangelical into a Reformed understanding of the faith. My old church hardly taught me anything worthwhile evangelistically, and the shallow evangelicalism in which I used to be involved still throws off my priorities to this day.
Sorry for the incredible length of the post, but as I've been impressed by the insight of members of this board, I would greatly appreciate counsel, and would be happy to clarify anything more if that is necessary.
Through observation and personal prayer, I believe the Lord has put me into the position of helping bring a friend of mine at college to our great faith.
Here's a bit of a background on Elizabeth (name changed) and then I'll relay how I came to become friends with this young woman.
She is a Navy/Contractor kid who grew up in Britain, and her family is pretty religiously apathetic. For her high school, she went to the high school at a small town near the university, and apparently many of her closest friends there were evangelical churchgoers who invited her to attend their congregations. She has said she misses attending church, but her beliefs are basically those of a universalistic moral theist. For her part, she's fairly religiously apathetic, but notably does not have any of the typical hostility towards Christians or Christianity I've observed in most of the non-believers I know. She is a very practical-thinking person who tends to prefer meat-and-potatoes substantive matters without delving into little details.
My friendship with her started last summer when I was taking a summer course and she was a summer freshman research fellow working in a lab. We got to know each other fairly well over that time, and she also ended up being one of my students in a freshman seminar I TA. She is a very good friend of mine, and I've become something of an older brother to her.
I know she deeply respects me for (a) being one of the few guys she knows who actually treats her like a lady rather than as "one of the guys" or as an inferior being (she's rather tomboyish, but still feminine), (b) being willing to be available 24/7 to help in whatever way I can (something I offer only to good friends for obvious reasons), and (c) helping her through many of the storms of first-year college life.
As a disclaimer and qualification to a lot of the things I will say below as well as my evangelistic approach, I will say that I have been romantically attracted to her for some time; however, I refuse to be unequally yoked in a romance, so I have suppressed those desires and I believe she's entirely unaware of interest on my part. With that said, I want her to have a Godly husband, but who that is or whether I might be that person is utterly, utterly secondary to my desre for her to be a believer. I mention this because I am worried I might mishandle things and put out a message I don't wish to send.
There are several things that I believe I can do to help share the faith with her. First is to introduce her to my friend Madeline, who is a lovely Christian (French, Reformed Anglican) and who would make a profound impression on Elizabeth by simple virtue of the fact that Madeline's life and heart are absoiutely golden and inspiring to all who meet her. I think fostering this friendship, which both young ladies would likely enjoy has a lot of growth potential for everyone involved. Second would be to invite her to attend my church and for Elizabeth ideally to start becoming a regular attendee, and the circumstances should be good for her to at least attend the service. Third, I believe that ideally Madeline and I would get together at some point and hammer out an approach as to having a major conversation with Elizabeth that would probably be over at my apartment (a single) with just the three of us having dinner and then a good conversation afterwards. This conversation would be ideally the time where we most directly and overtly present both our testimonies and the truth of the Word to her.
Anyway, having explained the matter well enough, I would greatly appreciate any advice and counsel on how I should proceed evangelistically. So far in college and in life, I have a 100% failure rate on bringing people to the Lord , although I have been able to lead a broad evangelical into a Reformed understanding of the faith. My old church hardly taught me anything worthwhile evangelistically, and the shallow evangelicalism in which I used to be involved still throws off my priorities to this day.
Sorry for the incredible length of the post, but as I've been impressed by the insight of members of this board, I would greatly appreciate counsel, and would be happy to clarify anything more if that is necessary.