Come and see: Try Jesus!
October 8, 2026
2,000 year later – Jesus: who is this man?
October 8, 2026Can anyone change your mind? Probably not . . . surely not on the things that matter, such as values, personal tastes, or beliefs. But at times you may simply discover something so good, so powerful, that you cannot unsee it, and then choose a different path. This leaflet is not here to change your mind. (Each one of us comes with our own story, shaped by years of experience and pain, and nobody walks up and says, ‘Here I am. Change me.’) Rather, this is written so that you may have an encounter.
Let’s start with the reason why.
Honestly, life is beautiful when it is. But when it’s not, it badly hurts. And that’s when we might want to change . . . typically looking for a quick fix. We’ve learned to hope that something new will bring the change we’re after, only to be disappointed, again and again. Think of the last diet, the famous treatment, the ‘proven’ method that worked for others but failed for you.
People, especially, play this role to perfection: another group of friends, a rising political party or movement,
a different church, a recently launched social media platform, a fresh candidate for office – they all arrive with a promise . . . sometimes a messianic one.
Rooted in religious culture, the word ‘messianic’ has come to describe the arrival of someone who can finally deliver what all the others failed to.
And so, people hope, and wait, and follow. Some are satisfied, whether out of genuine conviction or comfortable loyalty. Others part ways in disappointment. And some, still, are ready to fall for the next one who comes along with the same old promise.
‘Been there, done that,’ you might say. Fair enough. But what if the others were genuinely poor substitutes?
Imposters, even?
And what if, in rightly dismissing them, you quietly accepted the idea that no real solution exists at all? What if that conclusion, reasonable as it feels, is itself a kind of practised resignation?
What we’re inviting you to is not a debate; not a weighing of arguments or a presentation of evidence designed to prove a point. Those things have their place, but not here, and not now.
Since you’ve landed on this page, you may already have noticed the project’s title: Try Jesus! It doesn’t hide anything. If you have never heard his name, we can assure you: there’s a world to discover about him! If you have heard it, then his name undoubtedly comes loaded: for some, it’s the name above all names; for others, it has been twisted to justify hypocrisy and harm.
Whatever his name evokes for you, we are not here to sell you our Jesus. We’re here to invite you to try him.
Two thousand years ago, two young men called Philip and Nathanael learned from their teacher about a man called Jesus, proclaimed as the Chosen One. They tried to get closer.
When Philip finally met this Jesus of Nazareth in person – believing him to be the long-awaited Messiah – he went straight to his friend with the news. Carrying his own baggage of preconceived ideas, Nathanael was quick to dismiss it:
Come on. Your Jesus . . . from Nazareth, of all places? He cannot be the Messiah. Certainly not mine.
If you wonder about this radical position, know that people said nothing good ever came from Nazareth.
The Hebrew Scriptures never once mentioned this village. Even fewer chances that someone from there could change the world. It was completely overlooked.
Philip’s reply was a confident, unhurried invitation: ‘Come and see.’ We call this: ‘Try Jesus!’
And what you’ll find in this project is a series of encounters where real people, people like us, met Jesus of Nazareth in person. To learn more, we invite you to open the Gospels and a few other passages and books in the Bible, reading the stories as they are.
Walk with us into thirteen real-life encounters with Jesus. See what these very different people brought to the table, what they discovered, and how they left. More importantly, see why their stories still resonate today.
Can anyone change your mind on crucial things? Probably not. But what we hope for is that you will discover something worth a second look, something good enough to make you pause, sit with it and reflect. Surely, what you do next is up to you.
Worth a try?
The Try Jesus! invitation is simple: come and see for yourself. Not through someone else’s filtered opinion, not relying on secondhand claims. But getting the eyewitness accounts, the primary sources, their own stories. As if you were there, front row.
Take your time. Doubts are welcome. Questions are honoured, and answers are promised. We know: it’s a journey.
