Let Me Say it Again: Don't Wait to Share the Gospel

I suppose if I could convince the average Christian of one thing, it would be that there are people just waiting to hear the Good News, to hear a word of hope, to have someone pray with them-- they are ready with an open door to the Gospel.

I was thinking about my first real evangelism visits in the first church I served.  I have told the story many times. It has many layers, some that keep cropping up that I did not realize at the time!

Basically, I was at a loss for what to do, young pastor, first appointment.  I remembered of course the many times my mentor Howard Willen would take me with him on visits.  And I had a powerful word from God, "Every house to the county line is mine." Of course, He has them all, everywhere, but it seems He was pushing me to get to work where I was.  So I started at the first house as you leave the city limits on the way to my little church, 12 miles away.  The first few houses people weren't home, and one lady went to the Christian Church.  I made it up a hill to a beautiful farm house. I knocked.  A man answered and when I told him who I was, he said he was glad I cam and ushered me in to see his wife.  She was in great grief and distress over the anniversary of her son's death in the army. We had a great time of prayer (I still wasn't sure what I was doing!) But that first day of visiting opened a relationship with this family, their two grown children, a son-in-law and granddaughter, all coming to Christ.

It  happens so many times!  Not always, but often enough, someone has just been waiting to hear about Jesus!  I have learned to not worry about whether I will be received, but rather have come to pray and expect that God is sending me somewhere He has prepared.

Don't Wait to Share the Gospel

This is how it happened… or maybe I should go back just a bit…

I cringe, I hate it, makes me puke whenever someone says you should wait before you share the Gospel with someone.  Inevitably, they say “it’s all about relationship.” Or if they want to double down, they say, “St Francis said you should preach the Gospel, use words only if necessary.” First, don’t slander Francis by suggesting he would ever say that, beause he didn’t.  And second, hardly anyone TALKED about Jesus more than Francis!

So yesterday was one of those days where I was very distracted by a lot of things that had to get done but were not hugely important.  The urgent was crowding out the important.  On top of that, it was a hard day to be a pastor and a dad—a lot of pain going around.  About 11:30 I said to myself I better spend some real time in the Word and in prayer, or this day will get out of control.

About 3 o’clock, same thing.  So I cut thru the hospital on the way to church.  I felt like I wanted to sit at a bench outside the hospital.  I have never sat there before or thought about it, so why today?  I opened the Bible, was reading Psalm 34.  I was struck by the title, “When David pretended to be insane before Abimelech.”  A few minutes later out comes a guy pushing an IV pole.  There are many other places to sit, but he made a bee-line for me.  He asked, “are you a pastor?”

He proceeded to ask for prayer.  I asked him if he was a believer in Jesus.  No, but he needed prayer.  I told him more than prayer he needed salvation in Jesus’ name.  He proceeded to tell me a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t just confess to people.  Under 5 minutes after the conversation started, I had shared with him the wonderful love, forgiveness and sacrifice of Jesus for him, and he believed in Jesus as his Lord and Savior. “I haven’t felt peace like this before,” he said.

So there you go.  God gives everyone divine appointments like this.  You need to be ready because people are waiting for you to tell them the Good News!!

VBS Update

I think I am supposed to give a decent update on VBS.  But I am worn out from all the awesomeness and I am not quite sure what to say.  So let me leave at this for now:

36 kids gave their lives to Christ at VBS yesterday.  God rained down blessings.

VBS is almost over.  Maybe I should wait until tomorrow to write about it.  But I can’t.  It has been an amazing 4 days.  I don’t really want it to end tomorrow.  I know, I know, the volunteers will be spent.  They have really poured it out… working on decorations, crafts, writing and performing, music, singing, dancing, telling the story, playing games, cooking and preparing snacks, registering, being in the classes with the kids, being a listening ear… what haven’t they done?

I simply do not think there is an adequate way to thank them.  What could we say or do?  The amount of time, effort, and love has blown me away.

The crazy thing is, I get to run around and be crazy and soak it all in and sing and shout and answer serious questions about Jesus.  I put in the least but I get to have the most.  What a gift.  What a church to be a part of! You give us a place.  Money. You let your pastor take about 2 weeks helping and hanging out at VBS.  And then you pour out such creative energy!  I realized this VBS that I talk a lot about how cool it is that we write our own VBS, but there is no way it can happen without so many people who are so talented and dedicated.  Jessie has done an amazing job cultivating volunteers and casting a vision with energy that WE CAN DO THIS!

Tomorrow, I get to share Jesus plainly with kids who have been immersed in the Word all week long.  Will you pray with me that hearts are ready to respond?

After VBS today, my son John, Mike Adams and Michael Crouch went out and did some door to door evangelism before it rained.  Mike caught a huge bass when he was done visiting houses, while he waited for me and Michael.  We had a divine appointment… I’ll write about it later… but can you imagine? VBS and door to door evangelism in one day?

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.

What Do I Know?

I have some crazy friends.  Just got off the phone with my best friend, John Crissman.  He said, “Gotta go.  Just drove up on an accident.  Need to call 911 and go pray with some people…” You need people like that in your life.

But wait there’s more crazy people in my life.  A few weeks ago Michael Crouch asked me something in our LTG (Life Transformation Group.  Check it out at www.cmaresources.org ).  I am not sure what we were talking about that led to this, but Michael said, “Do you know anyone who does door-to-door evangelism?”  Seth, our other partner fake-coughs and points at me.  Michael asked, “so when do we go?”

Today, we got our act together and headed out.  Before we left, I gave a few pointers, answered a few questions he had.  Here are some basics.  When you go door-to-door during the day, you won’t meet as many people as on an evening or on a weekend.  You’re trying to get out as many cards with your church info as you can.  And you come back later, evenings or weekends, and people remember that you came by.

Michael asked, “does anyone invite you into their house?”

“not very often.  Usually when they do, they are Christians who are amazed and thankful that there are people out there doing visitation.”

I mentioned that we are also trying to form relationships, to look for ways that the Gospel touches a need in their lives (think Paul in Athens, Acts 17).  I like to ask people if I can pray for them, and if they are cool with it, to pray right there on the spot.  It means a lot to people, and it gives you something to talk about when you come back, because you will go back, right?  RIGHT?  RIGHT!

So. We go out armed with some great cards Debbie Perry made us and a pile of tracts that Phyliis Varnado got for me.  Tracts? you say.  Yes.  “Do they work?” you ask.  My response: I don’t do anything that doesn’t work.  It’s why I go door-to-door.  Because it works.  And I took a vow to do it.  All Methodist pastors take that vow. But that's another story for another time.

We find a lot of people not home.  So we leave a card with church info.  We run into a few people who go to the Christian Church.  I meet Sue Wells’ nephew.  Isn’t it funny how Sue fits into so many of my evangelism stories!?

This was a great day because we got the door shut in our faces by someone who claims atheism.  I was glad that Michael got a little taste of how it goes sometimes.

And the best… we run into Craig Melzer, who flings open the door and angrily asks what we are selling.  I don’t know if it shocked Michael, but I think he was happy I knew Craig and that he was just joking!

I find that Michael is really gifted in keeping conversations going on the front porch!  I mentioned that to him, and he says it’s like a recruiting visit (he is a college coach).  He says you just have to get over the jitters.

Michael watches a little.  Then he says, “I think I have the hang of this, let me try.”  At this point, I have a tear in my eye. How awesome is that—he wants into this evangelism gig bad!  And he does really well.  So I just hand it over to him for the rest of the visits.

At the end, we have the best evangelism visit I remember in a loooooong time.  We knock and a voice hollers, “Come in!”  We open the door and there’s a guy on the couch who is surprised to see us.  “I thought you were my friends!”  I said, “we want to be your friends.”  And he invites us in.

Turns out he is from Saudi Arabia, studying at the university.  He has a soccer jersey on his wall that looks like Borussia Dortmund’s, so I ask about it and it is actually for his favorite team in Saudi.  Michael opens up some conversation about faith and the young man says he is a Muslim.  Michael says he has started reading the Koran, and has finished the first chapter, “The Cow,” and the young man is impressed and happy that we care.  We talk a bit about Jesus in the Koran, and I ask if he has read the “Injeel,” Arabic for the “evangel” or Good News.  He has a little bit.  He mentions that “Christians think Jesus is something like God, but Muslims believe there is only one God.” Michael suggested that he read the New Testament to see what Jesus has to say for Himself.  We encountered what I have heard is a common objection Muslims have—that the New Testament, because of translation has been corrupted.  I think we will be back. And we hope to form a great friendship with this guy.  Michael and I have both been impressed by Muslims’ willingness to talk about serious issues—way more than the average Americans.  I wish, in retrospect, that we had not gotten sidetracked on apologetics issues and had been clear about the Good News.  I think we were blown away that we got invited into a house, and that our new friend was so happy to talk.

As we walked back to the church, Michael gave me some grief: “I thought you said we wouldn’t get invited in to anyone’s house.”

So in a few weeks, Michael and I will hit the same streets again one evening or on a weekend, hopefully to talk with pray for, and hopefully get the chance to share the Gospel with some of the people in our town!