WHAT?
The goal of the Shorter Christian Handbook is to teach new believers, strengthen existing believers, and save more people. By helping other Christian men create their handbook on what it means to be a Christian. Then go show others you are a Christian by your actions and good deeds. My hope is this website will give you the foundation to do this. I created “Plays” that have given me confidence to discuss and share my faith with others. My Plays are meant to be simple, to the point, and in a systematic order to train one up.
WHY?
I heard a pastor state that Christianity is one generation away from extinction. I believe one way to keep this from happening is to do a better job on training one up on the way to go. If the current method is not working, then let’s try something different. After all, it would be insane to think doing the same thing over and over again will yield different results. My solution is for each Christian man to create his own handbook on what it means to be Christian to him. My handbook has different actions which I call Plays. The Plays are somewhat in the order of priority and importance. But can be run in any order just like in a game. By focusing on a limit number of Plays, we will get prepared quickly. Then we can use our Plays to help others. And when someone asks you what it means to be a Christian, you can simply cite your Plays or you can use these.
I call them Plays instead of steps because how sports trains up players to win games. In football, we first draw up the play, walk through it, run it full speed, scrimmage, play the game, watch the film to learn what is working and what is not working, fix mistakes next week in practice, and repeat. I saw from coaching my son’s 1st grade basketball team that at the beginning of the season they did not know how to play basketball. But by the end of 3 months, they looked like a team. They could run an offense, defense, shoot, dribble, defend, etc. Because they were trained with a step by step process. They also produced stats which show how well they did. If we had a coach or player with no stats, we would say we better get someone else. The sports method of training is something that should be considered to keep Christianity from becoming extinct.
The goal of this handbook is to teach new believers, strengthen existing believers, and save more people. Your Plays will give you confidence to discuss and share your faith with others. As you interact more with others, your faith, knowledge, and good deeds will grow. It is important that your handbook is simple, to the point, and in a systematic order to train one up. Jesus first round picks were two fishermen. They were not 5-star recruits. These fishermen did not go to seminary. Keep your Plays simple.
HOW TO USE?
Go through each section of this website in order. From left to right sequence. Tryouts is the next section. Then write down the Plays that you can relate too and start practicing them. Feel free to add your own plays. Soon you will be able to scrimmage and then run them in the your life.