God has placed our church in the midst of a community that is very needy at both a spiritual and material level. This offers us many opportunities as followers of Jesus Christ to reach out to those around us.I have challenged our church family to give out a New Testament at each door in our community in 2009 (click here for inexpensive NTs). We hope this will show the people who reside near the church building that we care about them. We also hope this leads to more concrete opportunities for service. The ultimate goal is that God will be glorified through the salvation of many sinners.
Since we will be knocking on many doors in the community, this article by Ed Stetzer interested me. One of the main findings is that people tend to be significantly more open to an invitation to a church gathering than they are to a gospel witness. This makes sense since an invitation to attend is much less threatening to a person's worldview and belief system than is a discussion of Jesus Christ. Despite this, I certainly hope that we will have opportunities to share about Christ and the cross.
The article is worth the few minutes it will take to read.
2 comments:
Eric--IBS is great, isn't it? We've used them many times.
When we've gone door-to-door, one of the things we've found that people were open to was prayer. We go to a house, introduce ourselves, and ask if they had any concerns or problems we could pray for. You'd be surprised how people open up, especially if you're clear that you're not looking for donations or trying to sell them anything.
It's good because it invites God to work in their lives, and makes them aware of what God may be doing. Plus, it gives you a connection with those people, and a reason to contact them again.
We actually saw God do some cool things, including a healing, some people get jobs, and other times when God just seemed to move.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it through on a long-term basis. But, from my perspective, it forced me to recognize that all our efforts at evangelism really depend on God, if there's to be any result. Prayer is just a great way to bring God in from the very beginning.
Richard,
Thank you for the input on prayer. I will definitely keep that in mind when we go door-to-door.
Post a Comment