Vision of the Possible- Chapter 8

Overview

This chapter covers the subject of evangelism.  How important it is and different strategies and ways we can use evangelism to get us to our ultimate goal of church planting.

Comments

There is so much in this chapter that could be commented on but I will narrow it down to a few things.  Most importatantly, evangelism is so key and at the same time we can easily get distracted by doing “other good things” and not focus on sharing the good news of Christ.

With the few people we have seen come to Christ, I consistenly try to share with them that it is all of our jobs to share the news of Christ, to share his love to allow people to see Christ in us or a difference in us that people will desire.  As Sinclair points out, sooner or later they are going to be more effective witnesses then us. 

I liked the idea of using broadcast evangelism with followup to reach a “wider net” of people.  I have not figured out how to do this yet but a local guy in our village has started a radio station here and we constantly hear people listening to it.  One of the people helping me with my one story translations mentioned we should talk to the owner to see if we could play a story a week on the station and have a discussion afterwards.  This person is an unbeliever and believes that this would be received well by the people here.  I still have a way to go on the project but who knows God may have plans for something like this.  We will see. 

How we need to support our fellow missionaries, as mentioned in the chapter, that labor for many years without seeing any fruit.  God is planting seeds and he sees this labor as important and what an act of obedience to the Lord’s call that we can all learn from.

Sinclair mentions 17 evangelism points and I am going to mention a few that stuck out to me:

1. Prayer- I need to be praying more consistently and specifically for people who God has placed in our paths.  It is the key to everything.

2.Be Bold- There have been times, because of where we are, that I have backed off from sharing Christ more boldly.  I have been timid to not raise alarms and I felt afterwards that I should have been more bold.

3. Don’t limit myself relationally-  Don’t be content with the 3-4 familes that we are good friends with but instead constantly be trying to meet new people.  Don’t put all my eggs in a few baskets.

4.Pray for the sick in Jesus’ name- We have lots of opportunities to do this here and we have not taken advantage of it much.  We often say we will pray for them and do but I need to take the opportunity to pray with them in person and see God work.