The Soul-arium Train
The Soul-arium Train
On Friday, a friend and I went up from Dayton to Bowling Green to meet with some of the BGSU Crosswalk students to do outreach on the campus there using Soularium—a set of 50 picture cards used as a tool to start conversations with strangers, find out a little about their lives, and open the door for further conversations about God. My friend and I were joining about six other students from Bowling Green State University who had been meeting on a weekly basis to use Soularium to do outreach in the cafeteria. After picking partners, each couple took time to pray before heading out into the unknown crowd. I was paired with a sophomore I had just met named Marissa. We prayed that God would lead us to whomever He wanted us to speak with, that He would give us words to speak, allow the person’s heart to be open, and that the Holy Spirit would be at work and break down all barriers.
Marissa and I started walking around the cafeteria before she spotted a girl sitting by herself, reading a text book, and writing on some notebook paper. Marissa went up to her, introduced herself, told her we were taking a survey, and asked if she would be willing to participate. The girl introduced herself as Susan and happily accepted the invitation.
Marissa and I took turns asking our renditions of the Soularium provided questions:
Which 3 images represent your life right now? Which 3 do you wish represented your life? Which image describes God? Which images describes what you’ve experienced spiritually? Which image represents what you wish were true about your spiritual journey?
It was through these questions that Marissa and I found out that Susan had just moved out of her parents house and into a house with one of her friends, so she was stressed and very cautious about where she spent her money. Susan wanted more peace and less stress; she wanted more leisure time to sit back and relax while enjoying delicacies. Marissa and I also learned that Susan had some vague ideas of God and knew a little about Jesus, but she didn’t seem to fully grasp the understanding of God and Jesus’ sacrifice. When we asked her what image described her spiritual journey, she chose a photo of two people running in a subway. The boy in the photo was running ahead of the girl, reaching his arm back towards the girl as though he was trying to grab a hold of her hand, and the girl was reaching for his; however, there was about an inch gap between each person’s extended fingers. Susan said she felt like she kept trying to reach God but didn’t know how and could never reach Him. Marissa spoke up now and shared with Susan a little bit of her testimony. She could relate with Susan on this matter, because they had both experienced this kind of longing or searching. The great thing was that Marissa got to tell Susan how she found God and felt such comfort from that—the good outcome of the situation.
Now that I think back on it, Marissa was very good at engaging Susan in conversation, so they together did most of the talking. That was more than alright with me, because while they were speaking, I was silently praying that God would bring the Holy Spirit here to speak through Marissa and me and to open Susan’s heart to the knowledge and understanding of Christ.
At some point during the use of the Soularium cards, Marissa asked Susan one of her own questions: “If you were standing at Heaven’s gate and God asked you why you should go to Heaven, what would you say?” I asked myself that question, and it occurred to me that true Christians would know that the answer is found in Jesus Christ; it is through our recognition of his sacrifice that we are guaranteed eternal life with our Father in Heaven. Susan couldn’t give us that answer. She simply hoped that the good she had done here on earth would be “enough” to get her into Heaven.
After we finished with the Soularium cards, or “survey” part of our discussion, we asked Susan if she would want to read some scripture with us that could clarify some of the points we had just talked about regarding God, our relationship with Him, and Jesus. She was more than willing, so Marissa got out her Bible and started with Romans 3:23, which says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Susan pointed out that we are all sinners, and then I pointed out that if she really was standing at the gate to Heaven pleading her case before God, then her sin would disqualify her to enter. Then we moved on to Romans 6:23, which tell us that the gift God offers us is eternal life through Jesus. We continued to share verses with Susan that spoke of God’s love for us and the gospel of Christ. It was neat to see how, in our conversation with each other, God pointed out the connections between his truth in scripture and Susan’s life, and between scripture and knowing how to respond to God if, hypothetically, He asked you why you should be permitted to enter into Heaven.
After reading several Bible verses and discussing them, we went to the last verse, Revelation 3:20, which says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” As we read this, it occurred to me that if you do not know what that verse is talking about, it will not make a whole lot of sense. So putting it in God’s hands, we asked Susan what that verse meant to her. To my astonishment, she understood that Christ was standing at the door of her heart waiting to come in!
We talked a little more about everything we had just discussed, and it seemed like Susan understood that Marissa and I were still a bit hesitant to believe Susan was ready or fully understood what it meant to surrender her life to Christ. That is when I realized I could use a visual demonstration of recognizing exactly where a person stood with Christ, using a mix between something my teacher had once showed me and the New World Gospel Model that I had learned the week before to share the gospel with students at Ohio State University. The diagram had 3 circles, each that represented a world, and in each circle there was a chair, or thrown. The first circle had a cross outside of it, and a girl sitting on the chair; similarly it represented a world in which the person on the chair was in charge of her own life in that world, and Christ was not a part of her life. The second circle still had a girl on the chair, but the cross was in the circle; so in this world, the girl recognizes Christ in the world, but does not put Him in charge as Lord. The third world has Christ on the chair and the girl is next to Him, so both are in the circle; likewise, this world represent the girl who has allowed Christ to be Lord of her life—He is in charge and in total control and she is right there with Him allowing Him to take the thrown of her life.
Susan and I talked about this model for a couple minutes, and I asked her which world she would place herself in at this point in her life. She said she would be somewhere between the second and third worlds, so we talked about that for a bit. I explained to her and we talked about how God wants us to be in the third world, because in the third world we recognize who Christ is, what he did for us on the cross, his resurrection, and then we decided to follow him and surrender our lives to him. It seemed like she was understanding the third world and everything else we had talked about in the course of the conversation, so I looked at her and flat out asked her if she wanted to be in that third world and make the decision right now to put Christ in control of her life and totally depend on Him even though things may not go the way she’s planned. She said, “Yes!” We all looked at each other with big smiles on our faces, and offered to pray with Susan. So we prayed with her and gave the glory to God. Then we talked for a few more minutes and got her e-mail address so Marissa can e-mail her and possibly meet her sometime before school gets out for the summer.
After we left, Marissa and I prayed with each other and then talked about what each of us had learned from this experience. I learned that it is good to engage people in conversation even while they are looking through the Soularium cards; it is not as awkward, and it lets them know you are more about getting to know them through conversation than a survey. She decided it would be a good idea to use the Soularium response sheets to record their answers, and make them feel like we are actually taking a survey and not just telling them we are. Praying is always good. Trust God. Allow Him to work. God is amazing!
