Lesson 3 of the 4 Chair Discipling course
You now know Jesus had a method, and why you can do what He did. The method begins at Chair 1, with people who are not incomplete or ailing but dead. The diagnostic changes everything about how you preach evangelism, and about how you enter a seeking person's world.
Most gospel preaching silently treats unbelievers as sick: people who need a dose of truth, a better argument, a cleaner example. The New Testament is blunter. The person in Chair 1 is "dead in transgressions and sins" (Eph 2:1), "hostile to God" (Rom 8:7), God's "enemy" (Rom 5:10). A dead man does not need rehabilitation. He needs resurrection.
If you absorb that diagnosis, two things shift in your teaching. First, the pressure of persuasion lifts: no argument raises the dead, only the Spirit does (John 6:44; 16:8). Second, evangelism stops being an event and becomes a process, because dead soil has to be broken before it can receive seed. That process is the transferable center of this lesson: Spiritual CPR.
Spader opens Chapter 5 from his own religious upbringing, devout and active yet unconverted, to press one point: a Chair 1 person may be impressively religious and still be spiritually dead. He collects the New Testament's own inventory of the lost condition:
| The Bible says the lost are… | Reference |
|---|---|
| dead in transgressions and sins | Eph 2:1, 5 |
| hostile in mind to God; unable to please Him | Rom 8:7–8 |
| God's enemies | Rom 5:10 |
| conformed to the ruler of the air; by nature objects of wrath | Eph 2:2–3 |
| the wages of sin is death | Rom 6:23 |
The payoff verse is Ephesians 2:4–5: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." The same word Paul uses three times in two verses, dead, is the one grace answers. The preacher's move is not to soften the diagnosis but to let it make the "But God" louder. As Howard Hendricks puts it, "You and I are in the land of the dying and on our way to the land of the living."
Spader says the lost person does not need rehabilitation. What do they need?
To a dead person, Jesus issues the lowest-cost challenge in the Gospels:
The Samaritan woman turns the same phrase outward: "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did" (John 4:29). "Come and see" asks for nothing but presence and observation; it invites a seeker to watch a Christ-follower's life up close. It escalates only as trust builds, toward "repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15; cf. John 3:3, 5). The sequence matters. Philip does not hand Nathanael a tract; he says, "Come and see" (John 1:46), and lets proximity do its work.
This is why the four-challenge spine matters even at Chair 1. "Come and see" (John 1:39) is the first of the four scriptures you are memorizing across this course. It is deliberately undemanding, because the demand is borne by the one who issues it: you must be worth seeing.
Here is the lesson's transferable center. Spader draws it from Isaiah 28:23–29, where the prophet pictures a farmer who knows that different crops demand different handling: "Does he who plows to sow plow continually?… When he has leveled its surface, does he not scatter dill, sow cumin?" Out of that agriculture, and the physical-CPR image of resuscitation, comes Spiritual CPR.
| Stage | The work | Why it is hard |
|---|---|---|
| C — Cultivate | Break up hard ground: plow, disk, pick stones. Build the friendship; enter their world. | "The hardest part of the process." Ground does not want to be broken. It is relational, slow, unmeasurable. |
| P — Plant | Sow the seed at the right time, depth, and way for this person. A thought, a verse, a question. | Isaiah names five different plants sown differently; there is "no magic formula." Discernment, not a script. |
| R — Reap | Share the gospel clearly and call for response. | Requires courage and clarity; reaping belongs to the one present when the soil is ready, not always the one who plowed. |
The release valve for the evangelism guilt most believers carry is John 4:36–38: "One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor." Not every believer reaps with a given person; some only plow, some only sow. All rejoice together. Your job is to discern which stage this relationship is in, and do that work faithfully, rather than measuring yourself only by conversions.
The CPR model is almost too preachable; resist the urge to make it a slogan and lose the weight. Try it this way: "Most of us feel guilty about evangelism because we judge ourselves by reaping alone. But Jesus said some sow and some reap, and all rejoice. Which stage are you in with the people you love? Cultivate, plant, or reap? Do that work well."
In Spiritual CPR, what is the hardest part of the process, and why?
From the model of Jesus, Spader distills four things a Chair 1 person needs from us. None of them is an argument; all of them are relational.
| A seeker needs… | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Christ-followers who enter their world | Presence before presentation. You cannot reach people you do not know. (cf. Mark 2:15–17, the "friend of sinners") |
| Believers who are prepared to answer | Ready with gentleness and respect for the hope in you (1 Pet 3:15); willing to sit with hard questions. |
| People who are available and invest time | Evangelism is time-saturated. Recall diatribō (John 3:22), Jesus "spent time" with His disciples; the same verb marks Chair 1. |
| Someone to present the gospel clearly | At the reaping stage, the message is named, not implied. "How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?" (Rom 10:14) |
And note the division of labor that keeps you humble. God draws the seeker and prepares the heart (John 6:44); the Spirit convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8); we cultivate, plant, pray, and, when it is time, reap. You are not responsible for the harvest; you are responsible to be the kind of soil-worker through whom the harvest can come.
This is where the lesson turns from content to conscience, and where it becomes turn-around-able for a congregation. Spader admits that after fifteen years in ministry he realized he could not name a single non-Christian who would call him a best friend, and began to pray his neighbors by name. The diagnostic is stark, and you should sit your listeners in it:
How many non-Christians would call you their best friend? Not acquaintances at work. Best friends. People who, if your name came up, would say, "He's one of the few Christians I trust." If the number is near zero, your church has a Chair 1 problem that no program will fix, only presence will.
Jesus was slandered for exactly this. "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:2). He let the label stick: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'" (Matt 11:19). In Chair 1, being a "friend of sinners" is not a compromise of holiness; it is the shape holiness takes. People who are dead do not come to the light because the light is brighter. They come because someone carried the light to them.
Three pastoral payoffs land from Chapter 5.
First, evangelism is a process, and that is freedom. The CPR model liberates believers from the reaping-only standard that paralyzes most churches. Your congregation can come home from a conversation knowing they plowed well, and that is faithfulness.
Second, the motive is love, not guilt or fear. Spader notes the New Testament's evangelistic engine is not the fear of hell (though hell is real, Luke 16:23) but being "constrained by the love of Christ" (2 Cor 5:14). Seven times Jesus is "moved with compassion" before He acts. Cultivate from love or you will quit when it costs.
Third, this is where the whole pathway starts, and where it most often stalls. A church that cannot reach Chair 1 people has no one to grow into Chairs 2, 3, and 4. The four-chair pathway is only as alive as its first chair.
A two-move message. (1) Read Eph 2:1–5 and land the diagnosis: dead, not sick; resurrection, not rehab. Press it until the "But God" hits. (2) Read John 4:36–38 and preach the release: some sow, some reap, all rejoice. Walk the CPR table. Close with the diagnostic question and a single charge: name one person you will cultivate this week.
1. Recite. Say the four challenges and references aloud, in order. You are building toward: John 1:39 · John 1:43 · Matt 4:19 · John 15:16. This lesson gave you the first in depth: "Come and see." Say it again tomorrow.
2. Read the source. Open Chapter 5, "Chair 1: The Lost". This lesson is its spine; the chapter has the autobiographical stories (Neil, Scott, Emir, Tom) that make CPR concrete, and the discussion questions at the end.
3. Keep the reference open. Skim the master map and note the Isaiah 28 Spiritual CPR card: Cultivate / Plant / Reap. It now reads differently after this lesson.
The hardest thing to teach at Chair 1 is the balance: how to be a genuine "friend of sinners" without either compromising holiness or staying at a safe, sterile distance. If you want help framing that tension for your setting, or want to think through how to field-test the CPR stages with one actual person you know, ask a follow-up question. You can also tell me which chair you most need to teach, and I will weight the next lessons toward it.