Taking an opportunity at TEDx to explain the gospel
From a talk at TEDx
Tyler Ellis, currently on staff with a nonprofit called Let’s Start Talking, which specializes in recruiting and training teams of all ages to go on summer mission trips overseas, spoke in November 2019 at a TedX event at Wiley College in Texas.
The talk was originally called “Jesus Is Not A Role Model”, which TED evidently changed to “Finding Meaning in Daily Acts of Good”. Tyler used the opportunity to discuss observations he had made as he talked to people about faith. It resulted in a clear explanation of the gospel to the audience gathered for the TEDx event.
In addition, the video of the talk has been posted on the TEDx channel on Youtube and is available for any viewer.
Tyler, whose personal website is here, discovered that by asking people questions about their faith, it created in him a passion for befriending and learning from people with different beliefs and backgrounds than his own. He conducted 50 interviews, with 20 questions, over two years which soon turned into a series of unexpected adventures and discoveries.
One of his interview questions was 'If God in heaven are real on what basis do you believe God will or will not accept you into heaven?'. Despite the
diversity in the people that he interviewed, he discovered an overwhelming consensus that if God does exist then acceptance in heaven depends on performance on earth.
He also found that people would tell him, 'That was one of the best conversations I've ever had!' Over fifty percent of the people that he interviewed wanted to meet up again. They wanted to question him especially about two things:
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do you believe all paths lead to God?
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with reference to Jesus, how can one person's death enable another person's forgiveness?
Listen to how he answered those questions in this 15 minute talk:
Shouldn't we be taking more advantage of such public platforms?
How do you speak at TED/TEDx?
See this TED guidance. This is for a main TED event which is very difficult to qualify for. Local events (which are called TEDx and are not organised by main TED) are perhaps easier to get a slot as long as you have something original around a theme of the event. Tyson had some research built up over time.. You cannot just do a preach! There are many of these - see this event diary for the UK. You need to click the event link and go to the event page and find out the theme and how to apply.
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From a talk at TEDx, 11/02/2020