Evangelism Coach

First Time Here? Browse around, particularly check out our current series: Evangelism Scripts. See our popular series on Definition of Evangelism and Hospitality

Coming up in a few weeks, I’ll be teaching at a missions base in the Far west of Panama. 

I’ll be training missionaries in their concentrated lecture phase before they begin a 6 week outreach working in partnership with local churches among some of the unreached groups in Panama.

This has led me to reflect on different forms of evangelism. 

Conversational

Conversational evangelism is one form of evangelism. 

You talk one-to-one with a person for a while about deep spiritual things and perhaps get to explain the gospel.  Your conversation is one of several that God has brought about in the life of the person being witnessed to. 

This form of evangelism happens over a period of time, and requires fluency in the same language, and assumes that you can communicate as equals about spiritual things.

Children

You wouldn’t do the same for child evangelism.  Your conversation would be at a different level, or perhaps more at a teaching level.  The style is different.  You means of communication is different.  You might use object lessons or story telling to communicate the essence of the gospel.

Cross Cultural

I’ve been thinking recently about how would I explain the Gospel to an unreached people group?  If I had 6 weeks or 6 years?  What if they didn’t have a written language? 

If I am privileged to train missionaries going to work 6 weeks among unreached peoples in the jungles of Panama, how I can prepare them for effective short term work in partnership with the local church?

Are there ways of communicating the gospel in a short term setting like this?  Different worldviews for starters.

I am sure the question has been asked and answered in many different ways by mission groups all around the world during the last 100 years.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Evangelism Training Podcast:

Overflow Podcast Show
A 5 minute podcast on how you can overflow into your non-Christian friends lives. Overflow is the best ideas from the best books on evangelism.  Subscribe through iTunes.  From  Godsquad.com

Improve Search Ranking for your Church’s Website

I was introduced to a company that helps churches optimize their website and helps them place higher in search engines.  As a result of better search rankings (and a newly redesigned website last fall) some churches report seeing more new visitors to our church than ever before.  See Optimize Your Church’s Search Rankings Case Study page at Church Marketing Online.

In American culture, many would look online for information before they’d pick up a phone book, before they’d drive to the church on the corner.  If somebody was looking for a Presbyterian Church in Richmond — would your church’s website appear in the search Engine?  What might a visitor think of your church’s website?

Ministry Marketing Coach series

Chris Forbes of MinistryMarketingCoach.com (who has contributed a guest article here on ministry followup) wrote a great post about the our cooperative role in Evangelism.  We participate in the work the God is doing. 

Some have made evangelism such a passive sport, thinking it will happen all its own.  Chris’ contention is that there is a role that the evangelist plays, like a farmer who has to nurture the soil, SO THAT the plant can grow.  Check out: We need people to witness

Baptists fret over Calvinism’s impact on missions and evangelism

Interesting Statistics about Reformed theology causing a problem in Baptist life.  Check out Tiptoe thru the TULIP. 

Can Calvinist and non-Calvinist Baptists work and worship together?

It depends, some advocates of Reformed theology say, on whether Christians on both sides are willing to tiptoe through the TULIP — the acronym for five doctrinal specifics that mark Calvinism — without stomping on anyone’s flower bed.

PC USA Poised to Grow World Missions

I’m glad to see this article about PC USA Missions.

A proposed 2009-2010 General Assembly Mission Budget – which would increase the number of full-time, financially supported mission workers from the current 196 to 215 in 2009 and 220 in 2010 – was recently approved by the General Assembly Council (GAC).

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Every now and then, I put up a series of links that simply reflect some of the reading that I do.  

• Nathan Eshleman at Presbyterian Thoughts raises a provocative question about how the Church and Illegal Immigrants.  Having personally been involved in the immigrant community, and where my church is unable to send a mission team overseas, this question is personal.  The Church needs to get involved in the just treatment and compassionate care for immigrants.

• Tony Jones reposts a Response to Critics about Emergent Village, by Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Spencer Burke, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, Andrew Jones, Chris Seay.  Downloadable as a PDF.

• Jason McNutt writes “Hot Dog’s for Jesus.“  This is a great practical idea to serve the neighborhood and build relationship with it.  Servant projects like this can provide a lot of moments for causal conversations about faith that can be part of a person’s journey to faith.

• Eric Jones compiles a list of questions about raising mission minded children.

• Here’s an article about “downsizing” the Sunday service for the sake of mission.  Reduce the time and effort that needs to be put into the Sunday service in order to allow more time for leaders to “rub shoulders” with non-Christians during the week.  (Thanks to Benjamin Sternke).

• Confessing Evangelical writes a great post about evangelism methods and techniques, with a great quote from a speaker he writes about:

“Is your life the sort of life that makes people ask questions about God, and is your conversation the sort of conversation that answers them?”

Have a great weekend!

Popularity: 23% [?]

In part I of God’s Heart for the Nations, we saw God’s heart for the nations, and how reaching the nations is part of God’s ultimate plan.

In part II of God’s Heart for the Nations, we saw how the Father initiates in the choice of Israel to begin the process of redemption.

In part III of God’s Heart for the Nations, we saw how the Son accomplished the work of reconciliation.

In this final part, we’ll layout briefly how the Holy Spirit applies that reconciliation to us, and empowers us to fulfill God’s plan.

The end of history

The Bible points us to the goal of human history:  Revelation 7:9

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.

Regardless of skin color, flag, economic condition, gender, nationality, the people from every nation, tribe, people and language will be in worship.

We will enjoy the presence of those from Columbia, from Russia, from Australia to Uganda.  From Canada to Argentina.  Israelis who worship Jesus, Saudi’s who worship Jesus.

How do we get there from here?  Looking at world events, how does one get beyond ethnic slaughter, genocide, and other atrocities before reaching God’s goal of History?

The Holy Spirit  Empowers the Church

The disciples were unable to transform the world. 

Jesus had given them a command to go to all nations in Matthew 28:18-20

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

But they couldn’t do it.  How would a little rag tag band of 11 disciples reach the nations, going, making, baptizing, and teaching?

Instead, Jesus promised to give them the Holy Spirit, not so they could have psychedelic trips of charismatic spirituality.  Rather (Acts 1.8)

. . . so that you may be my witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to participate in God’s plan of drawing the nations to that day when the all the saints will worship.

On that day of Pentecost, it was a multi-national gathering.  The Nations had already gathered for a different reason.  The Holy Spirit was poured out, and the people heard the praises of God in their own language.  God was glorified.  It was a foretaste perhaps of Revelation 7:9.

On the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church, the nations heard the praises of God.

We are to be a blessing to the Nations. . . . .

We have received the Holy Spirit within us at conversion. 

Some of us have received the empowerment of the Holy Spirit upon us to be equipped for ministry.

We are not filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can feel stoned in the presence of Jesus.

We are filled to be a witness to the ends of the earth.

Back to the Father’s Heart for the Nations.

We are back at the beginning. 

The Father has worked his plan to pursue the nations.  Christ accomplished what the Father has desired.  The Holy Spirit applies that work of Christ, and empowers us to participate in God’s plan for the redemption of nations.

A whole Christ for my salvation, a whole Bible for my staff, a whole Church for my fellowship, a whole world for my parish.
                                                         —St. Augustine

A Closing Prayer

Give us your heart for the nations,
let us be light to the world;
use us to declare your salvation to the people of the earth.

May we be moved by compassion,
let us know your love for the lost;
Lord, use us to lead them to the cross.

Father, here we are,
standing in your presence;
send us forth to lead them to the cross.

“Heart for the Nations” by Martin Nystrom and Gary Sadler. 1994 Integrity’s Hossanna! Music/ ASCAP.

Let me Suggest this?

Spend a few moments in prayer, asking God for His heart for the nations.  Salvation is not about you.  He wasn’t thinking of “you, above all.”  Rather, God wants to use you in His plan to reach the nations.

 

God’s Heart for the Nations Series

Part I of God’s Heart for the Nations
Part II of God’s Heart for the Nations
Part III of God’s Heart for the Nations

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In part I of God’s Heart for the Nations, we saw God’s heart for the nations, and how reaching the nations is part of God’s ultimate plan.

In part II of God’s Heart for the Nations, we saw how the Father initiates in the choice of Israel to begin the process of redemption.

Today, we’ll focus in on how the Son accomplishes the redemption that will be for the nations.

In the film, “Finding Nemo,” Nemo’s father goes looking for Nemo at all costs.   It’s an act of pursuing love.  It can be a wonderful parable about the Father’s love and pursuit of us. 

Lost people matter to God.

Jesus uses the word “Lost” so I’m not ashamed to use it when appropriate.  We see the parable of the Lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son in Luke 15 as parables of the Father’s heart for his children.  We see that Jesus came to seek and save the Lost.  We read that Jesus had to go through Samaria to reach the Samaritan woman.  Lost people are not a nebulous them. 

They are people with faces, names, and people that we know.

The Father’s Heart

He longs that no one should perish (1 Tim 2.4).  In fact, God so loved the world that he gave His only son (John 3.16), not to condemn the world, but to save it.  The lake of fire was not prepared for humanity, but for the devil and his angels.

God’s Solution

God was pleased — so it says in Colossians 1:19-20.

The verb “please” has in it’s root the idea of taking a decision because of the intended pleasure from carrying out the decision.

You can be pleased by surprise or by intent.

If I tasted a food that I have never tasted before, I might find something tasty and be pleased by surprise.

Or I might be surprised by a rotten flavor that I may never want to have in my mouth again.

One can be pleased by intent.

After walking in the hot sun in the afternoon, I know that my body will be refreshed and cooled by jumping into a swimming pool. Knowing that the outcome of my decision will produce pleasure, I will make that decision. Or put it this way.  I know the caffeine buzz I will get by drinking a morning cup of coffee.   Knowing that pleasure is coming, I drink my coffee.  I’m pleased by intent.

Consider this:

Was God pleased by accident?

Or was God pleased by intent?

Did the incarnation bring God a surprise? Or was it his plan that he foreknew would bring him joy to send his son into the world?

Two aspects to the Father’s pleasure

God’s pleasure came as a result of

First – the incarnation. “To have all of his fullness dwell in Christ.” God became man.  That’s an act of pursuing Grace.

Second – the purpose.  “To reconcile to himself all things.” To restore to himself the fallen creation.  That’s an act of pursuing Grace. 

All things — nations, peoples, individuals.

To every nation

This blessing of God can be offered to every nation on earth – offering reconciliation, hope for healing, and hope for restoration. Abraham’s offspring will continue to bless the nation.

It is the work of the Son that makes this possible.

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