Understanding our Mission Field outside Our Front Door

My ministry allows me to travel and work with urban churches all across the United States and Canada. I see the world flooding into both countries. God is bringing the world to the edge of the property budding up to our church buildings. I believe He has allowed this because our churches have not been active or concerned to go and take the gospel to them. God is not so concerned if our country stays Anglo Christian as much as He is our country being multi-cultural Christian.

 This past week I worked with 60 seminary students. 15 high school students, pastors, denominational workers, associational directors of missions, missionaries, and laymen conducting a week long evangelistic out reach in the high risk, low income communities of Louisville, Kentucky. Praise God for the one thousand plus people who trusted Jesus as Lord and Savior.

 I was amazed to find how many different people groups live in metro-Louisville. There were many Muslims and Buddhists that we found living in there. It turns out that our government is relocating these folks from different countries from refugee camps. Some of the people were not open to receive material on who Jesus Christ is and how he had paid for the sins of the world. Yet we found others that were open to talking about Jesus and hearing about the “Truth”, Jesus and several trusted in Jesus.

 Louisville saw a mass saturation of the gospel by witnessing teams, through door to door, block parties, festivals, food drops, concerts and back yard Bible clubs. Through each venue the gospel was shared with lost people. The greatest mistake at this time that the churches and entities can make is to feel that they can put their feet up and kick back. An aggressive approach needs to be taken to continue the work. Otherwise thousands of people will stay on the road to hell and there will be many missed opportunities to see more people born into God’s Kingdom.

 Lost people hearts have been softened, unchurched believers have been given hope by the witnesses. Pastors and congregations have seen that they can reach their ever changing and heart hardened communities with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The soils have been cultivated and the hard packed is now turned, the rocky and thorny soils have been worked, and fertile soil has been planted. Now is the time for the laborers to continue to go into the harvest fields and see an even greater harvest by the local churches. It is a mistake to stop now when so much work has been done. The work will never be done, until Jesus returns and the Judgment Day takes place.

 Churches more than ever need to continue prayerwalking their communities, doing door to door evangelism, street witnessing, and crusades. Believers need to continue striking up conversations as they are out during their daily routines and see if people are ready to hear about Jesus Christ. They need to continue to saturate their city with the gospel.

 One major law of the harvest is that you cannot see a harvest if you do not sow seed. Cultivation is another major component of seeing a harvest. In third world countries, farmers have been taught that they had to cultivate the soil after turning the soil and broad casting seed. The lack of cultivation resulted in poor fruit bearing corps. After the farmers learned how to cultivate they saw increased baskets of corps, far greater than they had been getting.

 Follow-up evangelism is a major component of a mass evangelistic effort. People will read the gospel tracts they were given. The Holy Spirit s working on the hearts of lost people. He is getting them ready to bear fruit, only if someone will care effort and continue the work of cultivation and harvesting. The work of evangelism will not be finished until Jesus comes to judge the world. Until then we must continue the work. 

 An assessment of the local churches needs to be conducted to see if they are ready to conduct follow-up. If additional training is needed to empower them to do effective follow-up then an extra equipping session should be conducted.

 The president of the Baptist seminary in New Orleans stated in his speech at the Southern Baptist Convention report for his institution that studies show if Southern Baptist continue to do things the same way they have been doing as far as evangelism that Southern Baptist will go from 16 million to 7 million by 2050.

 Let me make something clear, I know that is not about being Southern Baptist as much as it is about being saved, but God used Southern Baptist to reach me with the gospel and I am appreciative to God for using them and their faithfulness in the 1980’s. I owe God and the SBC much. I just want to continue the work that was begun in me. Thank King Jesus.

Don’t Fall for the Lie that the Gospel Is In a Code and Must Be Decoded

I recently received an email from a Christian Web site that was asking question, “What is the gospel?” As I contemplated the question, I thought have we gotten so far away from biblical teaching that we are asking the question “What is the gospel?” No wonder our churches are declining. No wonder we have churches full of people who are clueless as to what it means to be a Christian. No wonder we have preachers cursing from the pulpit. No wonder we have pastors and churches promoting a beer ministry or bar ministry. We have forgotten who Jesus is and what He did for us. We have no clue as to the holiness of God and His attributes.

In the search of new and better way of doing ministry, so-called politically correct evangelism and seeker sensitive worship services, we have lost our identity as a people of God. We are to be holy because He is holy ( 1 Peter 1:15) The gospel means “Good News”, Jesus came preaching the Good News, “the kingdom of God is at Hand.”

The reason why it seems that evangelism does not work is due to the church working in harvest fields that are not prepared. Jesus taught on the four different kinds of soils, the hard packed, the rocky, the thorny and the fertile. The church must pray in the communities for the people asking God to set them free from bondage. Evangelism is about spiritual warfare. I think too many Christians that there is a devil out there and he is working in the spiritual realm and then in the physical realm. Lost people need to be prayed for by the churches.

The gospel consists of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). God the Son, Jesus, the second person of the Trinity came to earth and live a perfect human life. He started his ministry after God the Father, the first person of the Trinity called Jesus to full time itinerant preaching and teaching ministry. After three years of miracles and preaching the kingdom of God, Jesus paid for our sins on the cross. Then after three days in a tomb, he resurrected from the dead with a new body, thus making the only way to heaven and to God the Father. Now that is the gospel, and it is available to the whole world, (John 3:16).

Jesus strategy for evangelizing the world was to go where there were lost people. He being the full embodiment of the gospel took the good news wherever he went. When Jesus came into a city, the gospel was present. When he went into a village, the gospel was present. So now a born again believer receives Jesus as Lord and Savior, we get Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit, but we also get the gospel. So that wherever  a follower of Jesus goes, there goes the gospel.

So if the gospel is in us, then we must let it out. How does this action happen? It occurs when the believer opens his or her mouth and lets the gospel out. Evangelism is a God driven action, it is  a Holy Spirit driven action, 1 Corinthians 9:16. The Spirit of God compels the Christian to proclaim the gospel to people wherever he might be. Evangelism should be as natural for the believer as breathing. Why? Because the gospel is a part of the spiritual DNA of the believer. It comes into you the moment you trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

 I have written a book that discusses the lie that the gospel must be figured out. Or that the church must find a secret way or better way of sharing the gospel. The gospel is to be presented especially when we are told not to mention it. The problem with the Church today is not that it does not know the gospel, but that it has been told that we must first find special way, a new way of sharing.

The first century church was persecuted and told not to speak about Jesus, but they continued, Acts 4, 5, 6, 7. But the Bible says that they were turning the world up sided down, Acts 17:6. The church today cannot be accused of this. Instead the church is turning away from the world, or it has become just like the world. God forgive us for sinning against God for not sharing the gospel. We have the truth, Jesus, let’s go tell the world about Him and turn it up side down.

Getting the New Believer Connected to the Church

I have been involved in many evangelistic outreach in urban centers across America working with churches from coast to coast. I have seen hundreds of lost people trust Jesus as Lord and Savior. Many of these people were involved in hard core lifestyles and involved in hard core habits and groups. Others were suburbanites, and yet others were in the upper socioeconomic status. And just recently God has taught  me a lesson why it seems some individuals are more difficult to get connected to the local church.

Since February I have been assisting in mentoring a 44 year old man. He has been a business man during the week and a biker on the weekends. He confessed that he had been on some type of mind altering substance since the age of 14. He told me that he had been in rehab centers from Florida, to Virginia, to Tennessee and Georgia. He had spent thousands of dollars training to kick the habits, but he was not able to lose the desire to get high.

It was not until he was on the verge of losing his second wife, and had lost his job that God got his attention. He moved back to Georgia, to a suburb of north Atlanta and got into another Alcoholics Anonymous group.. This time he was serious about trying to lose the desire for drugs. His sponsor encouraged him to seek God, not a god, not a tree or a chair god, but God Almighty. I can gladly say that in his desperation he called out to God to take away the desire for any mind altering substance.  He asked God to forgive him of his sins. Just like that God took away his desire and he was a changed man.

During dinner on night this new brother in the Lord, told me that he could not explain why or how he had lost the desire to stop doing drugs. His only explanation was it had to be God, because he was not able to do it himself. This fellow went from not being interested in talking about God, not attending church and trying to stay away from Christians, to now he is consuming all the Christian books he can get his hands on and reading his Bible everyday. He prays regularly and needless to say is in church.

He had to be instructed/discipled on a nightly basis. He called my son who was mentoring him every evening after dinner by phone answering the many questions the new follower of Christ has. He had to be instructed to be baptized. I explained to him the why and the how of baptism. It was a joyous night to see our new brother in Christ follow Jesus in believer’s baptism.

I am also mentoring another new believer, who trusted in Jesus the second week of March. He had voluntarily stopped being involved in drugs and alcohol but he still felt empty. He knew there was something more to life. He was seeking God. He attended church occasionally and even had prayed the sinner’s prayer at church. But yet he said that he did not feel anything nor did you desire to come to Bible study or church on a regular basis. He said he felt nothing.

I visited him at his home one evening and shared my testimony how I came to have my sins forgiven and how I invited Jesus to be Lord and Savior of my life. When I asked him if he wanted what I had, he said, “You have a freedom that I do not have and that is what I want.” I explained that trusting in Jesus and asking Him to forgive our sins would set him free. He prayed and said afterwards, “I feel different”. I know that faith in not a feeling but from my own experience and from the testimonies of many others salvation does make you feel like changed. I explained it was the weighted of our sins taken off of us and put on Jesus.

Three weeks after trusting in Jesus, he was struggling with being worthy to be baptized. He had to be taught that a Christian is only worthy because of what God has done and not due to anything we have done. We explained that he was now a child of the King, and a child of God. He had been born again by God’s Spirit. He got it and is going to be baptized soon. You can see that a change has taken place in this man.  I think of 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature…”

We had to work hard to teach and disciple these two new brothers to help them understand what God had done in their lives and what was the next step. They did not have the history nor the association with a local church or body of believers to know the next step. I believe many new believers who come from hard backgrounds are in the same situation. This is the lesson that God has taught me in recent days. As I wrote in the last article, even Jesus had many leave Him. He even had to question His disciples if they too were going to leave as well.

Evangelism is hard work and so is discipleship, do not let anyone tell that it is not. If you do not believer me then stop and examine all the churches that have membership roles filled with delinquent members who have not attended worship nor Bible study in months and years. We must go out and intentionally follow-up with people. Just like Jesus had to do, especially with a new believer. There is a battle going on between the flesh and spirit within each one of us. Anyone who says he has conquered this battle is either lying, or they are in heaven with Jesus.

Stop Telling Me that I can not Witness

Okay, I have had it with all the surveys, all the research, all the books, the blogs, the articles, the sermons, the speeches, all the emergent ideas, the postmodern thought, and whatever and whoever else is aiding the devil in trying to quench the evangelistic mandate Jesus Christ gave  us over 2,000 years ago. I believe that the Bible and Jesus words are still relevant today, tomorrow and forever. If Jesus said it, that means it counts today, tomorrow, and forever.

I am tired of all the nay-sayers who are doing nothing but discouraging the church, the followers of Jesus Christ by telling us that evangelism does not work.  I have found that those who say that evangelism does not work, is because they are not doing it the correct way. They either need to prayerwalk the field more or they need to allow the Holy Spirit lead them in the witnessing encounter. They need to stop trusting in a method or in themselves and allow the true evangelist, the Holy Spirit work through them. He will instruct you what to say (John 14:26: 16:13).

So what if 60 percent of people polled months ago wouldn’t let you even conduct a spiritual survey. Let’s stop looking at the 60 percent who are not willing and instead let’s keep knocking until we find the 40 percent who might. And what if 50 percent of that group does allow you to conduct a spiritual survey that leads to the gospel? What if 10 percent of that group trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior? If you were in a town of 100,000 people and 40,000 people were open to hearing the gospel and 4,000 got saved, praise God.

By the way, my research has shown as well as research by the Billy Graham Association that between 10 and 11 percent of decision makers will get plugged into the local church. How many pastors, church planters would be overwhelmed and excited to have an additional 400 people join their church. Talk about a church growth and expansion.  When you study the gospels, even Jesus had thousands leave Him in John 6 after He preached that they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood. I wonder how many today would also leave Him if He challenged us. He even asked His own disciples if they too were going to leave Him.

I am for motivating the church to witness rather than trying to discourage the church from not sharing their faith. The only person I know that gets any glory when the church is not witnessing is the devil. Based upon Matthew 28:19-20 not to witness is a sin. Jesus already gave us a command to go and make disciples of all nations. Being a Greek Scholar that I am “all” means all.

The greatest need of the world today is for Jesus followers to commit and carry out the service of soul winning. Evangelism is the hope for every lost person of the world. Jesus is the hope for a better social order and for a better world.

If Jesus is the best thing that has ever happened to you then why are you keeping Him to yourself? Jesus never intended for the church to go into the closet. The church is not a covert group. We have been called out by Jesus, our author of the faith to go and make disciples. We are not being a New Testament church unless we are functioning evangelistically and making disciples in the image of Jesus.

I challenge every Christian to begin to obey Jesus and let’s go out and tell lost people about Jesus. Let’s give them hope, the only real hope that will last for eternity. Let’s be the church that Jesus had envisioned before the beginning of time. Let’s go tell someone about Jesus. Amen?

Principles for a Harvest

During a strategy meeting for evangelism and church planting God gave me a concept. I sure this is not new, so I am sure that I must have read it somewhere or heard it. Here are the principles, “without sowing there is no harvest, without a harvest there is no gathering, without a gathering, there is no church.”

Wow! how simple a concept. You mean all I have to do to have a harvest of souls is to sow the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why yes! Gathered souls equals a church. That is souls who gather to worship God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But souls must be first won to Christ by sharing the Good News with lost people.

The gospel is the divine seed of God which when it falls upon the hearts of men filled with evil and corrupt thoughts will give root to the gospel. Lost people’s lives are filled with manure and this is nothing more that fertilizer. Farmers use this smelly substance to see their seed produce crops. God knew this when He made  mankind and when mankind fell into sin.

God knew that Jesus His only Son would take lives filled with the waste of sinful lives and turn it into a glorious percious fruit. God takes broken and worn down lives and creates them into new lives with so much promise. So we broad cast the gospel seed.

Sow and you will see a harvest. Harvest and you will gather. Gather and you will see a church. How simple is sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus yoke is light. He would not ask us to do something He could not accomplish in us. If we go and share He will take care of the seed and the harvest. We just need to join Him in the sowing, harvesting and the gathering.

Evangelism and Crisis

Recently, I was part of a training for churches in an area that had been hit by hurricane Katrina. It has been three years now and the churches and the community are still recovering from the impact of the effects of Katrina. What we found was that in a crisis the churches struggle with the same phases of emotions as the people do, of shock, denial, anger and survival.

We found that most churches in this gulf coast community have stayed in the survival mode. They are not focusing on reaching out to the community with the gospel. Instead the churches are almost frozen in time and are complacent  and do not have a passion.  The churches had become co-dependent on the disaster relief teams to do the work of evangelism and meet their needs. But three years later, they are still seating and waitng almost in a coma or semi-sleep. Now this is not to criticize them but to making an observation about the state of the churches in post crisis situations. This is not true about all the churches but a percentage of churches.

A 2-day training for churches was conducted for the churhces in the gulf coast region. The components consisted of prayerwalking, several methods of evangelism, using the evangecube, how to use a gospel tract, and writing out their personal testimony. The results were amazing. The churches that participated went out for 1 1/2 hours of community evangelism and six people trusted in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Wow! They had a wake up call. One of the key leaders among the churches said that the training was exactly what the churches needed. He even suggested that more trainings of similar type be conducted for other churches in the area.

I recently heard the president of a theological seminary whose school had been hit by Katrina that he had been working so hard on getting their school up to normal operations that last three years. Now he was ready to refocus on the what was happening around him. He revealed that a his denomination’s churches were on plateaued and declining.

A study had been conducted of churches who had baptized one person in January and one in December of the same year. Fourty percent of the churches surveyed in this study were in the fourty percent. He then made a statement that made my heart stink from my stomach to my feet. He said that God revealed to him that it was happening on his watch. I felt sick to my stomach. I was sick because it was happening on my watch too!

I have made a re-commitment to God that I am going to be more intentional than I have ever been. I will do all that God allows me to do to help turn the ship around before it is too late. I do not want someone to say that our denomination became a has been denomination, like others who had once been strong and evangelical. I need to do what Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all peoples, teaching to obey what Jesus has taught us.

I get another opportuntiy in 2009, another year to live for Jesus and be His witness. I get 365 days, 12 months 4  weeks per month, 7 days a week, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in one hour, 60 seconds in one minute to tell someone about Jesus Christ. Praise God for the salvation He has given me. I do not want to waste it. Join me in telling as many people about Jesus as you can in 09. Pray that I will be bold in sharing Jesus with lost people. I am praying for you that you will have the blessing of sharing Christ.

Breaking the Evangelism Code and the Declining and Dying Church

Have you noticed that churches all across the country are plateauing, declining, dying and closing their doors? As a follower of Jesus Christ, I hate to hear about a church that use to reach its community with the gospel dwindling down to nothing.  Some of these churches are down to just a handful of people and have to cease functioning as an extension of Jesus Christ. Maybe that is the problem that the churches stopped functioning as an extension of Jesus Christ ministry which He began when He was on earth doing evangelism.

The other day my son found a Christian church about 5 minutes from his home that is for sale. I thought it was funny that the community has not gone low income, maybe a little middle income. Also just around the corner from his home is a subdivision of “Mac Mansions”, homes in the 700,000 price range and this church is for sale. What could have gone wrong?

I have discovered since I have been in ministry for the last 18 years that when a church, when believers stop reaching out with the gospel of Jesus Christ they will eventually die out. (Victor’s quote). A church’s mission is to evangelize the community it is “planted in.” Then it is to seek to grow by putting out a root system into the lives of the people around its church with the gospel seed. When the church plants the gospel seed the church will see a harvest. Sounds too easy? Will that is exactly what Jesus came to teach His followers and then He showed them by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. Unless a seed dies, it cannot reproduce. It must be planted in the ground in order to see a harvest.

According to the 2007 Annual Church Profile/ACP put out by Southern Baptist Convention, their baptisms were down for a third year.  Although the SBC added 473 new churches and gave more than $1.3 billion to support mission activities around the world, there’s no escaping the disappointing fact that Southern Baptists are not reaching as many people for Christ as they once did. The numbers show that baptisms were down again 5.5 percent, 345,941, compared to 364,826 in 2006. (Lifeway. com)

Their goal for the last three years and soundly promoted and sounded by the denomination has been to see one milion baptisms in a year. Praise God for godly leaders who accept God’s call to lead a denomination to return to its roots of evangelism and making disciples of Christ. If Jesus came back today, would He scoll us for forgetting out first love? I think He would. We seem to talk about everything else except the One who loved us unconditionally.  

According to Lifeway Christian Research findings “Unchurched adults interested in finding a congregation aren’t nearly as likely to visit one in person as a church member who is shopping for a new congregation. That means effective evangelism must begin outside the sanctuary in relationships between Christians and unbelievers.” 

 Jesus commanded us to go and tell. Churches all over the country for years have had an attitude that the go and tell approach did not work as well, some even alluded to that it was counter productive. Jesus never makes mistakes. He is God and we are not. I guess it all boils to just plain obedience. We just need to go and do it.

In my book Breaking the Evangelism Code, I deal with methods of evangelism, approaches that I have used since  the days of being discipled to witness. The very approaches that some believers mocked because they were used to see hundreds of people come to faith in Jesus, I discuss in my book. 

The book Breaking the Evangelism Code reveals that evangelism is not in some type of code that we must first decode and solve before we can go tell someone about Jesus Christ. We just need to read the Bible, believe what it says and then go do it. Imagine that, believing the Bible like a child and just obeying our heavenly Father’s words.

Could it be that the church today is in the state it is in, decline, and dying because of a simple thing like obedience. We do not need any more evangelism tools, methods or strategies, we have enough to go and tell  the entire world about Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, I have written my own witnessing approach that I hope to get out soon. We just need to pick one, two for three and then just go and tell.

Will you have resistance to the gospel? Sure you will, I have been reading through the book of Acts and then are many instances where the discisples were met with resistance. LIike said in my book, Breaking the Evangelism Code, the main thing is that they did not quit proclaiming the Good News. The problem with today’s church is we encounter some elderly lady or some young business who resists us and we tuck our tail between our legs and we want to go home and quit. I praise God that Jesus did not quit half way up Calvary’s hill and go home. I am glad that He went all the way to the cross and then rose from the dead.

Let’s follow in Jesus’ footsteps and let’s go all the way and go and tell as many people as we can about Jesus. That is how we can impact our community, our city, and our country and the world with the gospel. let’s stop the hymerging, the declining and dying churches. We can turn it around in Jesus name! Amen!  

To order a copy of the “Breaking the Evangelism Code” email Dr. Victor Benavides at evangeman@comcast.net. $25.00 plus Shipping and Handling.

Denver: Politics, Jesus and New Age Beliefs

I was a part of an evangelism team that was asked by the Colorado General Baptist Convention and Mile High Baptist Association to do mass tracting with the thousands of Democratic National Conventioneers August 24-27. We got to see a slice of American culture that most people outside of this area see.

On Sunday I was invited to preach at East Boulder Baptist Church, man did I see a lot of people going to worship, the trees, mountains, and creation instead of the Creator. I saw more tide dyed t-shirts, leather braided head bands, and sandals in one town since growing up in the sixties. I felt like I had gone back in time.

Sadly, many of the Baptists in these two towns had gotten to the point of viewing their culture and the people as not reachable with the gospel. This is a common mistake many evangelicals make as they are continually bombarded by the liberal news media that God and Jesus are not relevant anymore by our society.

The 20 plus witnesses found that the people where ”different” in the sense that they were at a higher level of being Bible illiterate, but who is the blame for that? Is has to be the church because it is not doing what Jesus commanded us to do, to impact the world with the gospel. By mid week we saw about 50 people who had trusted in Jesus Christ and by the Saturday 146 had trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

We heard some usual remarks from people when we tried to engage them in a witnessing conversation. When we offered people gospel tracts some iof comments we heard were such as, “a tree had to die for so you could make that booklet.” Another man began to ridicule us for “wearing plastic shoes” which were made out of oil from the middle east.

One of my acquaintinces from another state asked me if we had Democratics get saved, that was not the heart of the matter. The issue was lost people coming to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and 146 did exactly that. 

We were blessed that many of the local churches were involved in serving the over 4,000 law enforcement officers brought in to help keep the peace. We also had several church members who came out to join us in the witnessing efforts during the week. I read email from one church member who participated with the evangelism team, a lady say, that she wished many of the churhces could have seen the impact and the openness of the people we encountered during the week.

Another minister who helped lead the efforts is encouraging the pastors and churches to be open to what God wants to continue in Denver and in Colorado. God is up to something bigger than us and we just need to get involved where God is working.

We are scheduling a debriefing meeting in the next couple of weeks so we can discuss and discover what is it God wants to do next and how can the churches take the evangelism efforts and emphasis to a new level.

Wow, just imagine Jesus Christ does changes lives today, even in Denver, Colorado. The Gospel still works if the churches will pray for the communities and then go into the communities and engage the residents like Jesus did tell them the Good News.

Jesus is still in the life changing business and I believe in that Jesus is not done with saving lost people yet. I want to see thousands of lost people on the road to heaven with Jesus. Will you join me in telling someone about Jesus this week? Hey, Jesus still saves lost souls.

Understanding Follow-up and the New Believer

Recently, I spent six days in the urban streets of Indianapolis,  Indiana starting witnessing conversations with people. In spite of heavy rains, lighting, and tornado warnings, the team of witnesses that i was working with saw over 650 people come to trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

One church that had had three baptisms in ten years had sixteen baptisms in seven days. We saw people give their lives to Jesus and saw them changed for eternity. One man who shared with us about all his problems, his wife was in hospice care, his van was not running, he was out of work. He broke into tears after he had given his life to Jesus. 

Sixteen peopel immediately were connected into the local church. One individual, addicted to herion was ready for a change of life, he also gave his  life to Jesus as Lawerance led him in a sinner’s prayer.  Does a simpel gospel presentation still work today? of course it does. Since 2001, through the urban ministry that God has allowed me to give leadership to I have seen over 17,000 souls make decisions to follow Jesus and be rescued from the flames of hell. 

I have seen declining and dying churches reclaimed for God and complacent and backslidden Christians get on fire for God again. Some for the first time shared their faith with a lost person and saw them come to trust in Jesus. I have seen new churches started in hard areas because of a few faithful witnesses going into high risk areas and reaching hard core lost people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I have seen young men and elderly men cry because they shared how for the first time as a believer, they led somebody to faith in Jesus. I have heard men of all ages share how they were broken becaue they desired to see somebody come to faith in Christ.

One writer who is  promoting  a style  of  evangelism similar to our approach and as the way Jesus witnessed, quoted me in his 2006 publicaton. He put  a negative spin on what I said about the real work for the churches we helped over a weekend of intentional community evangelism.  A great number of people that we have witnessing conversations with have a lot of baggage when they trust Christ. The writer obviously was not with us in the  urban community we were witnessing in. Everyone who chooses to become a follower of Christ is at a different journey. The harder the life a person lives sometimes results in a more intentional pursuit of God. Jesus said that it is easy for a camel to go through a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  

For example, take Nicodemus, he came to Jesus at night to learn about Him. But we do not read about him again until after the death of Jesus. We read about him when he goes to help take down Jesus body from the cross to be buried.

Then we read about Jesus hard core disciple Peter who was willing to die with Jesus and at the most critical time he rejects Jesus. How do we explain his decision? Peter was a sinner saved by grace. Even in his zeal to follow Jesus his faith was still growing. Following Jesus is a spiritual journey and we are all transitioning at different speeds. I pursued God with a passion after I trusted in Jesus. I know others who it took a while for them to get to where I was spiritually.

January 1, 1984 I trusted in Jesus as my Lord Savior. I immediately was baptized that same night. I know of other individuals who were not as quickly to join the church.  It took them awhile. What is the difference between a new believer who immediately joins the church and those who it takes weeks and sometimes months. Everyone is at a different point in their life.

Why are some Christians more committed than others. Doesn’t everyone get the same amount of  the Holy Spirit? Of  course  we do, but I believe that your personally type also affects how you respond to being a witness. And for a new believer, some people like the apostle Peter, they are ready to jump out of the boat and others are like Nicodemus and are slow to come to a point of laying it all on the line.

The main thing to remember in being a witness is to listen to the Holy Spirit as he leads you in the witness experience. God knows better than you do what to say and who to approach. We do notchange anyone. We cannot convince anyone as my critic said in one of his videos. Convicting and convincing is the work of the Holy Spirit. Our role is to be be tellers or communicators of the Good News about Jesus and leave the rest up ot God.

Understanding Revival and Evangelism

This past weekend in a small town of almost 8,000 in Northwest Georgia I participated in an evangelistic emphasis by the Baptist Association and several churches. The effort began last year with the implementation of an evangelism strategy developed by the North American Mission Board for inner city churches. In the past three years, churches in rural and suburban settings have adopted this strategy to equip their church members to see hundreds of lost people saved.

Three churches were the benefactors of the ICE strategy. One church particularly saw revival during a revival. Harbor Lights church last November 2007 had a for sale sign on its property and was down to 9 members. During the preparation for the April ICE, this church used the ICE principles of evangelism training, community ministry and prayerwalking training to prepare itself for the revival. Evangelist and ICE Consultant Mark Yoho was scheduled to lead the revival for 4 nights. As a result of people getting saved the pastor asked Rev. Yoho to come back one more night. He preached a message on the church being broken over its sin and for lost people. That night church wept over their sin of disobedience toward a lack of evangelism. The pastor asked Mark to come back again and this continued for a total of 12 nights. Revival had broken out, the church got right with God and and lost people were saved.

 The ICE weekend resulted in 70 people openly admitting they needed God’s forgiveness and to trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Twenty more people had been born again during the preparatory phase of the ICE implementation. Seven people were baptized Sunday evening at the three churches and over 20 men young and mature men saw God move in their little town resulting changed lives. Not only did they see people lives changed but they wept as they shared how they had led a person to faith in Jesus for the first time or how they had developed a passion for telling others about God the Son, Jesus Christ.

Some many of the witnessing teams who covered most of the small town in La Fayette, GA, gave testimony how people were ready to trust in Jesus. “I have been thinking a lot about that lately” being saved, the new believers said. “I have been trying to figure out how I would get to heaven,” one twenty-three year old said when asked if he knew for sure if he was going to heaven when he died.

The receptivity of lost people in heavily prayerwalked areas resulted in positive encounters and many people ready to trust in Jesus Christ. Then there were those areas that we ventured into that had not been prayerwalked, where we encountered much resistance and opposition. One witness team leader testified how God revealed to him that there was a spirit of procrastination. People were not willing to trust in Jesus. This was confirmed by one man whom this team had just shared the gospel with when he stated, “I know that I have been procrasting about giving my life to Jesus.

Understanding revival is about realizing that it does not take a whole church to see people saved, or spiritual awakening. As I was pondering the events of this past weekend, I thought about the first and second awakenings. It was one man who believed and loved Jesus enough to go out and tell others about Christ. It takes just one man to man to make an impact for the kindgom of God. How, one man did just that, Jesus of Nazareth.

You too can be that one man or woman, if you truly love Jesus, and go out and tell lost people about the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus Christ. You too can see many people trust Jesus if you will be a witness for Jesus. Will you do it? Do you love Jesus enough to tell others about Him? Then go and tell someone about Him and see their lives change. You will see your life change  as well.