EQUIP CHURCH OUTREACH GROUPS WITH LEAFLETS

Let’s start with the obvious. Sharing your faith is a daunting task. We live in a culture that is increasingly hostile toward the message of Jesus Christ. And many unbelievers have a very negative perception of Christians who “proselytize”. In our relativistic and pluralistic culture, evangelism is a very unpopular practice.

Faced with these obstacles, many Christians prefer to think of evangelism as an optional part of the Christian life. And we are very good at coming up with excuses, aren’t we?

• I don’t have time to share my faith.
• I’m not very good at talking to people I don’t know very well.
• I’m afraid I would get questions I don’t know the answers to.

But these excuses are just that – excuses. Biblically, there are two rock-solid truths that answer nearly every excuse that we pull out.

Drive these two truths into the hearts and minds of your church family. These truths will ground your church’s mission to reach the lost.

God is at work around you.
Much of the apprehension about evangelism comes from a misplaced sense of responsibility. We think we are responsible to get results, but we’re not. We are responsible to be obedient.

But it’s more than that. We are really being invited into the mission of God in the world. Through Jesus Christ, God is reconciling and redeeming people from every nation and people on earth.

This mission is guaranteed to succeed. And we get to be a part of it. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

So we are not manufacturing opportunities to share our faith. We’re not forcing the gospel down people’s throats. We’re simply looking for the opportunities that God brings our way.

God has placed your church in a community of people who need the gospel, and God has placed your people in families and neighborhoods. He’s given them co-workers and classmates. He’s providentially arranged for them to interact with people that need to hear about Jesus.

Their task is simply to pay attention to where God is at work around them. And your task is to equip them to be faithful witness wherever they go.

God is at work within you.
He has given you everything you need to faithfully carry out this mission. You have the Word of God, you have the Holy Spirit, and you have a local church.

Most importantly, you have a story to tell. Your life has been transformed by the grace of God. You may not have all the words to describe that experience, but you understand enough to tell people who you were before you met Christ, what happened when you trusted Christ, and how He’s worked in your life since then.

Peniel Nogueira Dourado