Young Life’s founder on making the gospel matter
What follows is an excerpt from Jim Rayburn speaking at the Leadership Training Institute on August 27, 1950. Here he addresses young staff from Acts 17, where Paul addresses the Athenians about their “unknown god.”
I wonder why it’s such a strange idea that we should be nice to lost folks? Paul was. The Lord Jesus was. But has it ever been very impressive to you that you should go way yonder out of your way to be nice to fellows who are lost?
We give messages in churches and people will come up and say, “My, this is very, very interesting: novel, but interesting. I’ve never really heard of anything like this … this Young Life idea. Really, I don’t know what to think. It certainly is a new thought.”
Well, what is particularly new about it, please? We’d like to know what is new. This idea of being nice to the lost. Strange? Novel? Unusual? If we mean to live for Christ, aren’t we supposed to go around and ruffle folks? No! Here [Paul] is, the personification of the weakness and gentleness of the living Christ.
What an audience … intelligent, leading, top-notch men in all of that great city.
“As I walked around your city I see you’re attentive to gods. I notice all these objects of worship that you had and there was one that I notice particularly. I notice you have an altar TO AN UNKNOWN GOD” (Acts 17:23).
We get a beautiful play on words here. He says, “I saw this altar TO AN UNKNOWN GOD” and then he uses the same word, this one that you unknowingly worship, is the one I’d like to talk about. I’m told that Greek scholars of our day do not know what the Greeks meant by this unknown god. This doesn’t seem to be clear.
But Paul would drive right down through the middle of this matter in the most beautiful, tactful approach that you can imagine. He meets them at a very familiar point in their lives and he goes on further. If we are going to be impressive with this message of the gospel of Christ, then we have to do it in a way kids will understand.
The reason why I just love to take 1 John 5:12 (“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”) and jump right in with a message on that majestic subject is because there I am doing the same thing that Paul did on Mars Hill. I am hitting the kids right where they live.
If there’s anything kids are interested in, it’s life. We want life, and we don’t care what we have to do to get it. That’s important, that’s fascinating, that’s compelling, so we talk to them about life. We don’t talk about sin, we talk to them about life. You’d be surprised how easy it is to talk about the fact that they’re sinners if you talk to them about real life, who he is and what he has done. My, how they respond to the sinners’ part then.
Here, Paul came with the greatest introduction I have ever heard. I am sure a bunch of learners would be interested in that. “It’s true we do have an altar here to a god we don’t know.” They thought up every god they possibly could and thought they might have left out one. Then begins this majestic three-point message, this wonderful gospel message without even the mention of the Lord Jesus Christ in it, yet the wonderful approach to the gospel.
1) There is a God, a real, true, personal God who made us, who runs us, who knows us, who walks with us. There’s a real, true, personal God who lives, in whom we live.
2) Then there’s a meeting day with that God. There is a judgment day, a time when we will personally come to meet him.
3) There is a resurrection. There’s a man who has been raised from the dead. This proves even our personal meeting with God. If you want to preach to kids…Preach to them on a day. A day God has appointed. A day in which he will judge the world.
Now, gang, I am through for tonight, but I just call to your remembrances. We can jump over this majestic passage — one of the most precious helps that the Lord has ever sent my way in teaching things of God — down to the conclusion.
It shows you how much it really matters to come to grips with this matter of stirring kids’ hearts, to approach them carefully, tactfully, gently, and lovingly, to get them God’s truth. And then it says, “Some mocked, others said we’ll hear you again. Some clung to him and believed, among them was Dionysius.” The supreme court judge was the first main convert.
We notice it all through the scriptures, but gang, it is really wonderful that after Paul’s proper and scriptural and Christlike and majestic approach to this terrific pagan situation, the chief justice said, “Lord, I believe.” I like the Old English here, “Some clave unto him and believed.”
They ran to this gospel preacher Paul and they grabbed him and they clung to him and they said, Finally, we’ve heard something that clicks. Finally, we see reality. Here we are offering ourselves to the man whom God raised from the dead.
Now Jesus Christ is exalted in the life of a passionate, fervent, loving, gentle, careful witness. That’s our job.
- What resonates with you about Paul’s approach?
- Who is someone you would describe as a “passionate, fervent, loving, gentle, careful witness”?
- How can you apply this “kindness to the lost” in the upcoming week?
