7/24 Research

 This week has been a week of planning, research, and fellowship. My goals for missional work is as follows: do one witnessing or evangelism event a month, one service project a month, and one blog post a week. This week I found the witnessing events for July, August, September and November. Next week’s blog post will be about witnessing at another pride community event. While look at this weekends pride community event I stumbled across a couple Wicca events in the fall, my conversations with people (three men) throughout the week focused on Wicca, witchcraft, and new age stuff to prepare for the events this fall.

Tuesday I talked with a guy on the phone over lunch who was active in the Wicca religion before he gave that up and started following Jesus of Nazareth. It was very informative to talk with him. I heard that Wicca is mostly a peaceful religion,  an opposition to traditional religion is not being peaceful, i.e. crusades, 9/11, etc. Always be on guard and keep an eye out for the enemy,  it is paramount to put on the armor of God. Spiritual warfare will happen but it may not be loud and dramatic, but inticing and subtle ways. I heard it is likely to hear a combination of pluralism, scientism, and relativism from people practicing wicca. One pluralism example is they have their own version of the trinity: the maiden, the crone, and the mother. A lot of people are atracked to Wicca because of all the beatiful and pretty items, (i.e. rocks and minerals ("crystals"), candles etc.) but be on guard not to pick them up, for one you do not know what can be in them or what they are "charged with", and once you start picking up items and can be hard to put them down.

With Wiccan’s spiritual attacks are much more likely than physical attacks, they are very peaceful generally. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take a stand against the devils schemes (Eph 6:11), comes to mind while writing this. Be patient with people.  Know that people will be trying to sell you on wicca, like you will be telling people about Jesus. A lot of things that people like about wicca is how Christians should live: peacful, kind, charitable, etc. Don't agree with what people are saying, compromising yourself, just to keep the conversation going with someone.

Tuesday after work I called a guy who had experience with paganism and witchcraft. He stressed being careful when talking with people in these religions, most people are not true followers it is just popular but the ones that are true can be violent. Things that people have on their bodies can be indicators, mainly ruins, images of pagan gods, symbols, etc. We talked about how to approach people, not being aggressive but doing so with gentleness and respect (1 Pet 3:15).

Last thursday morning I caught up with a guy over coffee before work. I talked with him and his, and his wife's, experience with witchcraft and spiritual warfare. They have had experience with spiritual warfare, he used to be a pastor. What I heard from this conversation is that spiritual warfare is something to take seriuosly.

When going out to witness for Christ to people, make sure I am in a spot where the enemy does not have a foothold (active sin) and if others are joining me, ask them about their salvation and if they have any footholds for the enemy. Create a pre witnessing check list: questions to ask, prayer, salvation check, foothold check, and heart posture check.