Video Transcript: Personal Outreach and Evangelism
welcome back. We're into another session of developing great commission skills. We're still in that final skill of leaving a gospel footprint. And our subject for today is personal outreach and evangelism, personal outreach and evangelism. Now here's the deal. As a pastor, the effective Great Commission pastor or leader must practice what is preached significantly engaging in personal outreach and evangelism through personal involvement in the community. Now I want to lean into that message from Jesus that directed from Jesus as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. Well, what did Jesus do? Well, Jesus went into the villages. He went into the countryside. He went into the marketplace. It seems like you always find Jesus out in the harvest, because what you can't harvest, you can't gather the harvest unless you're in the harvest. So as pastors and leaders, we've personally got to be in the harvest. Again, we have to practice what we preach. We can't ask people to be doing things that we're not doing ourselves. Now here's a couple of definitions. We've mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again. Outreach has to do with building sustainable relationships with people in the harvest. We're going to come alongside them. We're going to invest in their lives. We're going to be arms length away, because, more than likely, as God begins to draw them toward faith, something's going to happen in their lives that's going to wake them up spiritually and if we're standing right beside them, walking through life with them, it's very good chance that they're going to turn to us. So that's why we do outreach to build sustainable relationships with the prospect somewhere down the line of being able to engage in evangelism. Well, what is evangelism? Evangelism is when we clearly articulate the message of the gospel. Now, evangelism is much stronger when it grows out of outreach. So these two work together. We do outreach to build sustainable relationships, to embed ourselves into other people's lives, waiting for the opportunity, looking for the opportunity, praying for the opportunity, to then move to evangelism, where we can share the faith, where we can introduce them to Jesus Christ. So here's the question, are you doing that? Are you building sustainable relationships? Are you always on the lookout within those relationships for the opportunity to share the gospel. Now, when it comes to personal outreach and evangelism, there are certain barriers to the practice of personal outreach and evangelism, and I hear certain ones of these repeated again and again. So I put together a list of five of these barriers that I frequently hear from people as I talk to them about these things. The first one being well, evangelism is not is not my gift, not my spiritual gift as if because I'm not a gifted evangelist, then I am freed from that responsibility. God is not depending on me to do that kind of thing. Well, here's the deal. Yeah, it is true. Some people have a true spiritual gift of evangelism, but all of us are called to evangelize. Gifted or not, you know, God is going to do the heavy lifting. The Holy Spirit is the one that's going to regenerate. We're not going to make those things happen, but if we put ourselves out there, then God will work through us,
even though we may not be gifted. Now, one thing I find interesting is that you know, Timothy is the one in the Bible that people point to frequently, as you know the master Shepherd, the sensitive, the empathetic Timothy. You know, he's not the firebrand that Paul or Peter are. He's the classic Shepherd, caretaker of the flock. And yet, you know, Paul says, Paul says to Timothy to do the work of an evangelist in his letter, second letter to Timothy, he instructs Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. Well, I would say, from my vantage point, Timothy did not really have the gift of evangelism, but Paul still encouraged, exhorted him to do the work of an evangelist. Well, all of us need to do the work of an evangelist, whether we have the spiritual gift of evangelism or not. We are children of God. We are followers of Christ. We've been commanded to go and make disciples, and so we need to go and make disciples. Secondly, with all that I had to do as a pastor, maybe as a leader in some that's working in some very demanding profession outside of the church, I don't have time to invest in building sustainable relationships. Well, that's unfortunate, but you know, back in skill four, we spent six sessions talking about managing ministry time. The truth is, you do have time. You just have not taken the time to figure it out if your life does not allow you the time to invest in other people with the intent of sharing your faith, then you've got to recalibrate your time. So I would invite you to go back to managing ministry time skill number four, and review the ideas there and find ways to create space in your time frames where you can, in fact, be with people, invest in people, and have the opportunity, perhaps, to share your faith. Number three, my congregation has high expectations regarding my ministry to them. I don't think they would be willing or understand if I compromised on that in favor of ministry to the community. Well, I guess I'd have to start by asking the question, what's wrong with this picture? Jesus made it very clear that gathering the harvest is a priority, if not the priority. And so if you as the pastor or key leader in a church, are serving in a church where the culture has created a scenario where the congregation is all about themselves and wants you to pour yourself into them at the expense of going and making disciples. You've got to begin to shift that culture. You've got to begin to teach and train and develop people spiritually so that they can grow to maturity, which would mean that they're what Romans 12 present your bodies as living sacrifices. You see, the church is not there to just do what the congregation wants. The church is there to gather the harvest through the congregation, through the congregation. Okay, now let's move on to number four, personal outreach and evangelism are not why I signed up for ministry. Let me tell you a little story back when I was in seminar, wait a moment, back up, back when I was in ministry in California, prior to that particular church plant. I had been a professional musician by trade, and I spent my professional life at the piano in all sorts of context, concerts, nightclubs, recording studios, and the more serious I got about my faith, the more conflict I was feeling with my
particular profession, and I felt that God was calling me into into ministry, but I didn't quite know what to do with that. Well, an opportunity was. Presented to me to to connect with a church planter, move to Southern California, start a church where I would be handling the music and arts aspects of ministry. But as you might know, when you're planting a church, the things that need to be done go far beyond what your particular job description is. So I found myself doing many other things. I did a lot of our communications that went out to the community. I did a lot of work with with teaching Bible Studies, discipling people, even some very light counseling here and there. And as my ministry began to expand, I remember beginning to think that there was more to what God had for me than just being at the piano and just working with our artists in our church. And I remember very specifically one day I was in the office with our church planter, and he was informing me that something had had transpired that was going to require him to be away from our church for three consecutive Sundays. Now, at that point, we were about two and a half years into our church plant, and we had grown very quickly with many, many people coming to Christ by way of profession of faith, and we had been very careful about who was in the pulpit. We wanted to make sure that anyone who was speaking to our congregation that they understood what our vision was and what our approach to ministry was, and very, very few people had preached other than our planter. Well, this was going to be three Sundays in a row, and he was concerned about finding the right person or people, and so he was discussing that with me, and all I can say is, all of a sudden, I felt myself saying to him, I'd like to preach. Now, I had never thought about preaching before, but it just, it just bubbled up in the middle of that conversation. Looking back, I think it was the Holy Spirit prompting me to recognize that my call to ministry was expanding, and I did have this desire to preach the Word, to step into that pulpit and open the Word of God and share that with people. Well, he looked at me in a strange way at first, and then he stopped, and he thought that could work. That makes sense. The next thing you know, I was preaching my very first sermon. Soon thereafter, I began to make preparations for perhaps going to seminary and getting my master of divinity degree, learning, theology, Bible, sermon, preparation, all of those things that go into being a preacher teacher. And I saw that as a calling. Now I think that lots of us who go into pastoral ministry have a calling of a similar nature, where that that preaching element is first and foremost. And so you know, why did we sign up for that ministry? Well, we signed up that ministry because we want to be preachers. We want to be teachers, but there's so much more to ministry than just the preaching and the teaching, and we've got to be careful that regardless of what prompted us to sign up for ministry, we cannot shirk the responsibility of going and making disciples, as Paul said to Timothy, do the work of an evangelist. So we've got to expand now. I want to share something else from Paul from Romans 10. Let me read this passage to you. It says this, For
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. Now, I have heard this passage preached many, many times, and you know, there's a progression that's going on here. How can they believe if they haven't heard? How can they hear without a preacher? How can they preach unless they're sent see, there's a there's a there's a climb up the ladder here. But many times when I've heard this passage preached, the person preaching, the preacher doesn't get to the top rung of the ladder and stops with the preaching. And the preacher will say something like this, you know, how are they to call on Him if they haven't believed? How are they to believe if they've never heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching? And then the whole message is on the value of preaching. Now, certainly preaching is valuable, but this text is not about the preaching. It's about the sending. How are they to preach unless they are sent, sent where, sent into the harvest with the good news. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? Once again, think about the gospel footprint. Well, what is that business of the feet of those Well, if you can imagine in bygone centuries, when important events like, say, a military conflict was taking place and a battle ensued, they didn't have the kinds of communications that we had today, so they actually had runners who would be messengers that would run from the battlefield and bring the news back home so the people could know, did we? Did we? Were we victorious? Were we defeated? And you can imagine running across that terrain, your feet get pretty beat up. And so feet are anything but beautiful, but the feet that bring good news are seen as beautiful. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news? Well, how beautiful are the feet of those who make gospel footprints? So regardless of what your original calling to ministry might have been, however exclusive, it might have seemed, your call to ministry has to include going and making disciples, leaving gospel footprints in the harvest, And then finally, personal outreach and evangelism are way outside of my comfort zone. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. Well, you know, it's not really in my comfort zone. I'm not comfortable talking about people to people about these things. Well, here's the deal, those who rise above that challenge often do so by simply being uncomfortable. It's like, well, I'm uncomfortable doing this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm just going to deal with my discomfort. But you know what? I have a friend, a colleague, who's been in ministry for lots and lots of years, and he is the most dynamic, personal evangelist I have ever been around. If you're going out with this guy, if you're going to lunch, or you're going to any kind of thing out in public, You better brace yourself, because he's going to be sharing the gospel. Now, I'm not recommending that all of us be that bold
and wild and crazy with how we share faith, but he he makes an interesting point. He says, You know what, if your comfort zone won't allow you to feel good about sharing the gospel, then you need a new comfort zone. So his approach to being uncomfortable in sharing the gospel is not to just overcome your discomfort and live with it, but to actually change your comfort zone by the grace of God. Call upon God to do a work in you that changes that comfort zone. Get over that difficulty. Force yourself, push yourself move forward and move into a new comfort zone. Build a comfort zone that is quite comfortable with talking about these matters of God with folks who are outside of the faith. Now that brings me to kind of a comical place that I'd like to share with you. I'm talking here about a book by Brian Tracy, who's kind of a motivational speaker. The book is called Eat That Frog, and supposedly, this title has emerged out of a statement attributed to Mark Twain that says this, eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. Well, you know, if sharing the gospel, if sharing the gospel is like eating a live frog to you, all right, deal with it, but push yourself. Go through it. Buckle down. Work through it. Pray through it, move through it, so that you can create a new comfort zone. Now, how exactly are we going to do this? How are we going to change the comfort zone? Well, here's a couple of ideas. Number one, we're going to pray about it. We're going to pray like crazy that God would ease our discomfort, to help us to become more relaxed, more settled, more forward looking, actually, highly desiring to be in those conversations. Pray for God to change the way you think, the way you feel, the way you act when it comes to personal outreach and evangelism. Secondly, practice, practice, practice. You know the old joke, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Well, there's nothing like practice repetition. You know, athletes, when they're learning a new skill, they talk about, I need more reps. I need more reps because I've got to get this skill to the point that I'm feeling very natural, very comfortable, that it's automatic. I don't have to think about it. Well, that's where we need to get with sharing our faith. So we need to practice, practice, practice. And another thing that can be helpful is to partner with someone. You know, if you're a pastor, connect with another pastor. Leaders. Connect with leaders. You know, have a group, one or two, two or three, other people that are partnering with you. Where you're you're you're meeting this challenge together, and so you're encouraging each other, you're praying together, you're sharing what's going on in your conversations. You're getting feedback, you're celebrating wins, and you are finding comfort for when things got difficult. You're learning from the experience of others. They are learning from you. So I think that these three elements can really go a long way to changing that comfort zone, or that discomfort zone, prayer, practice and partnership, okay now, for opportunities, for personal outreach, to work, there are two categories that I want to touch on Before we before we wrap up. First of all, there's direct engagement. And
secondly, there's indirect engagement. Direct engagement would be outreach and evangelism that you are actually doing yourself. You are engaged in evangelism yourself. You are making establishing sustainable relationships personally with people. You are sharing your faith personally with people that would be direct direct engagement. Now there's also, for those of us that are in leadership positions, we can have indirect engagement, and that would be those times when we're helping to train others. We're working with others in developing these skills. And so we are not directly impacting people in the harvest, the folks that we are working with are directly engaging. We are indirectly engaging by working with them and training them and helping them to gain facility in building relationships and sharing faith. But once again, we have to be able to do this ourselves. We have to practice what we preach. We have to if we're going to send others into the harvest, we need to send ourselves into the harvest. And so, you know, when pastors and leaders are in the harvest and they're training others who go out into the harvest, this is how we up the ante. This is how we go from very meager engagement to larger and larger and larger engagement in the community. So one final thing before we close, I want to talk about closing the gap, the gap between where we are and where we want to be. If you if you do a self evaluation in terms of your skill at building relationships, your skill at sharing your faith, your engagement in building sustainable relationships, your engagement in sharing your faith, and you realize, gosh, I'm really not doing that, or I'm not doing it very often, or I'm not doing it very well, but you project out into The future, and you envision yourself as someone who very often and very effectively builds relationships, very often and very effectively shares your faith, you realize that there's a gap between where I am and where I want to Be. Well, don't just hope that things get better. Wishful thinking doesn't get the job done. Done. Really think through strategically. What are the steps that I need to take in order to move from where I am to where I want to be, in terms of connecting with people, building relationships, in terms of being able to get into gospel conversations and be able to share my faith. Now, typically, those steps are not complicated, but they do require discipline. So make a plan work the plan, and I believe the plan will work. So that wraps up our video on personal outreach and evangelism next time we will be looking at corporate outreach and evangelism. So between now and then, I simply pray that God would bless your efforts with your studies, that God would bless your ministries, that God would bless your your families, that next time when we get together, you'll be ready to dive into corporate outreach and evangelism. God bless Amen