Just Be A Farmer

When I was a kid in church I was always hearing about this man who led 22 people to Christ. Or this other man who has led 34 people to Christ. I really didn't believe all that. The Holy Spirit does the work, not us. Secondly, there was always something that didn't sit well with me, even as a kid, when I heard that that so-and-so led that many people to Christ. Was it bragging or a sense of self-importance or self-righteousness? I don't know but I wasn't buying it.

Scripture calls us "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19). That's true but I often see myself more as a farmer (Mark 4:1-20). One who plants the seed, is on his knees weeding or watering the plants. I have never "led someone to Christ" especially with the under-lying meaning of leading someone to saving faith. That's not my job. I'm just the mouth piece when the situation calls for it. More often than not, I see myself in daily conversations as planting seeds. Sometimes its just a word or a sentence said at the right moment.

All this is to say, don't feel defeated if you're evangelism scheme or witnessing prowess doesn't seem to be working. You & I may just be the first person to start the unbeliever thinking more deeply about his or her spiritual condition. We many never see the fruit of our labors and that's OK. Just keep going. Just use those tiny opportunities to plant the seeds. Just be a farmer.

Do Cities Really Matter?

Justin Buzzard, Stephen Um and Jon Dennis discuss why cities matter and the books they wrote on this important issue.

D.A. Carson's endorsement of Why Cities Matter:

“Recent years have witnessed a torrent of books on urbanization and on urban ministry. Many of these are specialist sociological studies; others are ‘how to’ manuals so comprehensive that the Spirit of God could walk out and we’d never miss him. What has been lacking is a short, reasonably comprehensive, impassioned, and simply written survey of the trends and issues, combined with unwavering commitment to the eternal gospel and a transparent love for the city. Whether or not you agree with all its details, this book supplies what has been lacking. Written by two younger pastors on opposite sides of the country who share their devotion to Christ and their years of fruitful ministry, this book is neither sociology nor manual (though it has some features of both), but a clarion call to Christians to look at cities with fresh eyes and cry, ‘Give me this mountain!’”
—D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

You can find their books here and here.

Specific Prayer

    At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.
(Colossians 4:3-4 ESV)

A Culture of Evangelism?

A great discussion. Thought provoking...

Check out the upcoming Evangelism Training Workshop at Redeemer Church on 26 January 2013.

Theology of Sleep

T4G 2010 -- Session 5 -- John MacArthur from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

John Macarthur's book The Jesus You Can't Ignore: What You Must Learn from the Bold Confrontations of Christwas one of the free books given away at T4G this year.

Five Ways to Grab 'Em

Kevin DeYoung, in his post here, suggests five ways to grab the attention young people for the church. In his insightful article he frankly admits that it is easier in some ways and harder in others to reach the next generation. However, he boils it down to five necessary suggestions:

1. Grab them with passion
2. Win them with love
3. Hold them with holiness
4. Challenge them with truth
5. Amaze them with God

Ultimately, if we're not oozing with passion ourselves for the Lord, we won't engage them. He concludes, If we are to grab the next generation with the gospel, we must grab them with passion. And to grab them passion, we must be grabbed with it ourselves. The world needs to see Christians burning, not with self-righteous fury at the sliding morals in our country, but with passion for God. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “I’m not looking for someone to set the world on fire. I want to know that if I dropped you in Thames it would sizzle.”

"My Aim Is Never To Win Someone To Christ"

Interesting statement to be found in a book about evangelizing. I happen to agree with it. Why? As the author explains, it's difficult to go from nothing to a "decision" very quickly. Who is this author, you ask? It's Greg Koukl, author of Tactics, A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions. I'm not finished with this book yet but have found it a breath of fresh air so far.

Let's get back to his aim, he states that, ...It may surprise you to hear this but I never set out to convert anyone. May aim is never to win someone to Christ. I have a more modest goal, one you might consider adopting yourself. All I want to do is put a stone in someones shoe. I want to give him something worth thinking about, something he can't ignore because it continues to poke at him in a good way (pg 38).

At last, someone with a reasonable approach to evangelizing. He then goes on to recognize that in some Christian circles it's expected the Christian "close the sale." This is the sort of witnessing technique I was accustomed to hearing about in my youth and disliked it. Koukl counters with, You don't have to try to close every deal. I have two reasons for this view. First, Not all Christians are good closers. How very true that is. We are not salesmen for Christ, nor should we be. Many of us are not harvesters as Koukl points out, we are just ordinary gardeners. Here's the second reason....In most situations, the fruit is not ripe. The nonbeliever is simply not ready (pg. 39). Again, he nails it. He'd rather put a stone in a nonbeliever's shoe than try to take things too far, too fast. I agree.

On page 40 he offers the following, I encourage you to consider the strategy I use when God opens the door of opportunity for me. I pray quickly for wisdom, then ask myself this: What one thing can I say in this circumstance, what one question can I ask, what seed can I plant that will get the other person thinking? Then I simply try to put a stone in the person's shoe. I believe that to be wonderful and very wise advice. We often take to much upon ourselves. We must re-enforce in our minds that it is the Spirit who brings someone to belief. We are only the mouthpiece and often just one of many.

I truly look forward to finishing this book. It has certainly surpassed my expectations so far.

Evangelism?

How do you evangelize? What do you say? What should you say? Stumped on how to share the basics? We shouldn't be but we often are during those situations. Mark Dever sums it up best in his The Gospel and Personal Evangelism where we read: ...the good news is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in his image to know him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from him. In his great love, God became man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law himself and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn and trust him. He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ's sacrifice and that God's wrath against us had been exhausted. He now calls us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ alone for forgiveness, If we repent of our sins and trust Christ, we are born again into a new life with God (pg. 43).

This a a great read on the who, what, why and how of Evangelism. If you don't have this one - get it, read it and put it to use. Let me know what you think.

Dever on Creating a Culture of Evangelism

My church will be having an Outreach Sunday on July 12. In light of that I have been thinking much on the issue of evangelism. I believe Dever's thoughts in this video are very insightful...

Should We Evangelize in Church?

This is a topic I’ve long thought about posting but why reinvent the wheel, right? Tony Payne has done a great job exposing the fallacies of why church gatherings (Lord’s Day Worship services) are not for evangelism. Sounds odd to many of you? Payne in just a few paragraphs lays out the truth of the matter and I commend him for it. I was raised in a church where virtually every service was evangelistic and to some degree that led to a season of apostasy my late teens and early twenties. I’m quite, possibly overly, sensitive to this subject. Many of my friends of youth left the church never to return. They were not taught the true principles of faith, worship, love and service to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Instead, we were hammered, week after week, to be saved or to renew their commitment to Christ. It was and is so weak and ineffective it is nearly unfathomable to me why folks return to these churches week after week. What a revelation the Reformed faith was to me when I first began to learn its teachings in my early twenties. This is true Christianity I thought and I never looked back on that weak Arminianism I was raised on again. A worship service that has all the prescribed elements will be and is, by its very nature, evangelistic. There is no need to have an "evangelistic" service or alter calls or tent meetings. Our Father can use a proper sermon on any portion of Scripture to bring about his will. It is all so unnecessary and man-centered otherwise.

Payne writes, …even if we acknowledge that there will be ‘gospel’ things happening all over the place in church, it is also important to say that evangelism is not the purpose of Christian assemblies. It is certainly not their focus. In the New Testament, churches are characteristically the fruit of evangelism, not its agent. Evangelism usually takes place outside the assembly—in the marketplace, the synagogue, the prison, and in daily gospel conversation.
More to the point, theologically, the Christian assembly is a fellowship of the redeemed. It is a manifestation, as well as an anticipation or foretaste, of the great assembly that Christ is building—the assembly of the firstborn in heaven that will be revealed on the last Day (Heb 12:22-24). The purpose of our earthly assemblies, therefore, is to fellowship together in what we already share—our union with Christ—as we listen to and respond to him together, and build his assembly by the words we speak.

This runs counter to the common (although often unspoken) assumption that one of the main aims of a church gathering is to be attractive to non-Christians—to draw them in, to intrigue them, and to evangelize them. Perhaps it's a legacy of the parish model, where those attending the Sunday assembly were often not Christians at all, and evangelism consisted of preaching the gospel to them. Or perhaps it is the influence of the seeker-service model, where the main aim is to attract and win over unchurched Harry. Or maybe it's a bit of both.

There is an important difference, it seems to me, between running a Christian gathering whose focus is on evangelizing the outsider, and running a Christian gathering that is welcoming and intelligible for the outsider, but where the focus is on fellowship with Christ, in speaking, hearing and responding to his word.

Thanks, Tony for putting this into proper perspective for us all. Read the whole article here.

(HT:BTW)

Packer on Evangelism

I find quite a few little gems reading Packer. I recently pulled out my copy of Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God and while perusing it I came across the following that I had highlighted.

The truth is that real personal evangelism is very costly, just because it demands of us a really personal relationship with the other man....If you wish to do personal evangelism, then - and I hope you do; you ought to - pray for the gift of friendship. A genuine friendliness is in any case a prime mark of the man who is learning to love his neighbor as himself.

This is so true. We must all take a step back and look at where we are and where we're going. I admit I have much work to do in this area. May God bless us all in this important work of evangelism.

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