Rollin With The Syndicate

I’d like to tell you about a great time we had today.  A few weeks ago, my evangelism study group decided to get out of the books and hit the streets.  We were looking to do some evangelism in ways that could really benefit our ministries, help hold each other accountable, and just make sure that we were really getting after it.

So we are making a circuit of our towns—Frenchburg, Salyersville, Morehead, and Camargo.  7 of us hit Salyersville—me, my son John, Mike Adams, Taylor Wilson, Jacob Wilson, Matt Ellis, and Andrew Donner, the pastor of Salyersville.

We met for breakfast and then we hit a neighborhood behind the parsonage.  With 7 of us, we really made short work.  Matt Ellis and I worked a section, and it was a good day, on a bunch of levels.  What ends up happening on a weekday is that you find a lot of people not home, and that’s ok… because part of what you are doing is getting the word out about your church and its services.  You can come back later of an evening or weekend and catch them at home, and they have already had some contact.

But you also find some people at home.  Three visits stick out.  We met a woman from the Church of Christ.  She was very happy that we were out talking to people about Jesus.  I find that happens quite a bit—Christians are happy to bless you in the work.  And I hope they are inspired to give it a try, to get out there and witness!

We walked up to a guy reading on a porch.  We saw pretty quick he had a Bible and a commentary out.  He is a Baptist Sunday School teacher, very committed to building up a small church in the country.  We had a good laugh because he thought we were Mormons. “Never been so glad to see some Methodists,” he said.  He offered us some cold water bottles.  It was getting hot.  He had a horse in his front yard.  It grazes a little in his yard then goes up to a cousin’s house and then to another house before it goes to the barn to sleep.  Ah, life in a country town.

I have to talk up Matt Ellis a little bit.  He took most of the visits and did a great job.  He wasn’t done when we left Salyersville.  He was still witnessing at a gas station when we stopped for drinks in West Liberty!  I have to say that some good ministry happened there with Matt, too.  I was able to tell him one of the secrets of evangelism.  One of my best buds Steve McKinney, if he hears me whining or complaining asks, “have you told anyone about Jesus today?”  It’s good advice, because as soon as my feet hit the street I’m a brand new man, telling people how good Jesus is to forgive us.  I get to pray for people who have it worse than me and at any rate I realize the Lord has been pretty good to me.  There will be a lot of hard fighting, but I’ve read the back of the book and we win. Pretty soon, my grievances and resentments are gone, and even my real sorrows fade away.

The visit that was the most important: we met a guy who told us that he had been hurt badly on  the job, showed us some wicked scars from surgery, and told us he lived in constant pain.  I was immediately transported to India, where I saw so many worn out bodies and heard so many stories of healings.  Why don’t we see it?  Probably because we don’t believe it, don’t know how badly we need it.  So we prayed right there for him fervently.  I am still praying that Andrew may get to visit him and hear a marvelous testimony of healing and the power of the presence of the Lord in our suffering.

The other two teams have their own stories to tell.  I think we are going to see a lot of fruit from this thing we’re doing.  I’m calling us “The Syndicate.”  If I am dreaming, we will expand this to a big team of other pastors and lay people and we will go out and hit the streets and country roads and byways.  How cool would it be if we prayed each other up and got together with our teams in each others’ towns and just blitzed it?! If 15 or 20 people handed out 100 flyers, tracts and door hangers, praying for the needs of people and sharing the Good News of Jesus?  I might be getting close to showing a critical mass of people that door-to-door evangelism is not weird or useless.

Commitment

So I wrote this last week.  Sorry I did not post it then.

It’s been a killer week so far.

I rebuilt Mondays because they had become a depressing time sink of no real plan, just catching up and doing whatever came along.  So Mondays is now discipleship, evangelism and Bible study.

Yesterday was awesome because first thing I met with three university professors who want to do evangelism training. Well, alright!

I had some awesome testimonies in a noon discipleship group about listening to God and then being in the right place because of it, as well as some heavy prayer cover from those guys.

Evening discipleship group was awesome for some more prayer cover and then some great words about how God has dealt with us!

Today I met with a guy, Michael, who usually does evangelism with me on Mondays, but he ran a marathon on Sunday and was thinking we should go Tuesday because he might want to rest. Whatever, dude.  We spent some time working on our elevator pitch testimonies.  There was a lot of creative energy.  We talked about writing a book called “World’s Worst Evangelists,” where we only talk about the times we screwed it up or nothing happened, just so people will know it’s not an amazing train of awesome conversions on every street corner.

He tells me this great story.  He was coming back from the marathon and stopped to get gas and lunch.  He saw a homeless guy sitting on the curb.  He felt God tell him to go witness to the guy.  So he drives by and asks the guy if he wants to get lunch.  He can tell the fellow is high, and it takes him a while to process what was going on and to work out if it’s safe.  Michael admits it must have seemed pretty sketchy—skinny white kid in a black neighborhood asking a dude to get in his car.

They go to McDonald’s and Michael tries to share Christ with him, but the guy is so high he just can’t really talk without a long delay.  Michael takes him back to the gas station and drops him off.

Here’s the thing.  This is a win.  God knows Michael will obey, without worrying about whether it will be “successful.” God knows He has his man.  But I think one day someone is going to share Christ with this guy, or he will need some help and he will remember a guy tried to help him in Jesus’ name.  Michael is is a link in this guy’s conversion chain (what's a conversion chain?).  I pray that the other people God sends to talk to him will also obey sincerely and promptly.

The Gospel Plow

One of our church members, Norma, told me about her response to my surfer-discipleship story.  She said that she loved her Dad, and one of her strongest memories is how he would plow their fields with a one-horse plow, and she would walk behind him, making sure to walk in his footsteps.  Wow!  I am not sure you can wear out the Gospel implications in that!

It reminds me of something that our friend Theo has said, "Memorize what the backside of Jesus looks like so you can be sure you are following Him."  He goes on to say we should know what His heels look like!  I am reminded of Teddy Ray's prompting me to have a Holiness/Evangelism/Discipleship conference called "Beautiful Feet."

Yesterday, another member, JoAnn was talking to some people at the grocery store.  She told them about our church and invited them.  The two she talked with were interested, saying they had been thinking of going to church.  JoAnn asked for their numbers, if they were interested in the pastor calling them.  They gave her the numbers.  Awesome to work together in the fields of the Lord!