One interesting thing that he pointed out was that the quote,
"Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words."
often attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi ought in fact NOT to be attributed to him. Saint Francis never said it. Dr. Allison said that he and his research team scoured Francis' writing corpus and other literature and simply could not find it anywhere. So - St. Francis never said it.
I have always had a distaste for this quote. The fact of the matter is that this quote becomes an excuse for people to not share the Gospel. There comes a point when you simply have to use your mouth.
If you want to listen to Dr. Allison sermon, it can be downloaded here. It is really good and funny also and you will learn some practical lessons on Evangelism:
Another thing I learned from Dr. Allison that I want to mention, and which I will have to check up myself is that Jesus was always asking questions. So we need to learn to ask questions when sharing our faith. Our tendency may be to do a big dump, without listening to other. He gave some interesting stats:
Jesus was asked: 183 questions
Jesus asked : 307 questions
and finally
Jesus answered : 3 questions.
What he means by Jesus answered 3 questions is that Jesus did not simply give "yes/no" or "XYZ is this" answers. Take a close look at what he says. Jesus sometimes answers questions with questions. Jesus sometimes answers with a parable. He sometimes says something that sounds oblique or indirect. What Jesus does do however is get you to think.
(Example: Matt 9:11 --> When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
Here Jesus does not give an answer like "Look - because this is a good thing to do. We have to eat with bad people also and not just good people. It is God's desire that we do this."
Instead we get ... 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
What answer would you give if you were one of Jesus' disciples, and were asked the following:
Matt. 9:14 Then John's disciples came and asked him, "How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" )
One final thing (from my sermon notes is ) was Dr. Allison's 3P's of asking questions. As I reflect, I realize that this is really the pattern that question taking always takes in conversations, even if you are not being intentional about it.
(1) Perfunctory: small talk stuff - "Will it snow today?"
(2) Personal : At some point you ask personal stuff: "So what do you do?" "Do you have kids?"
(3) Personal-Spiritual: You can guess...
