Tag: Sharing the gospel

4 Thoughts About Everyday Evangelism

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 24, 2016

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At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry on earth, when Christ asked Peter and Andrew to follow Him, he told them that as they did so, He would make them “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Later on, near the end of Jesus’ time on earth, Jesus told his disciples that “just as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21) He would also pray to His Father that “as you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).

I think we understand what Jesus was telling His disciples about what it means to follow Him. We know that we are a sent people into the world who are to be “fishers of men.” We can quote the “Great Commission.” We get this stuff! Knowledge is not our problem (or at least it’s not mine). Ed Stetzer, commenting about the Transformational Discipleship study he helped to conduct, writes:

We asked 3,000 protestant churchgoers how many times they had personally shared with another person how to become a Christian. Sixty-one percent said that they had never shared their faith. Zero times. Forty-eight percent said they hadn’t invited anyone to church during that period of time.

Again, it’s not a knowledge problem, it’s a problem of praxis. Somehow we need to move what we know to do and become to the area of daily living. The key is that we just have to start doing it. We have to develop the practice of sharing the gospel with others (more could be written about this in regards to developing habits and virtue). So where do we start? I believe it needs to begin in your ordinary everyday life. Therefore, consider these four things…

Prayer

I hope you realize the importance of prayer. Consider the following quotes by N.T. Wright in his book Simply Good News:

Prayer is standing between the one true God and his world, becoming a place where the love of this God and the life of this world (and especially the pain of this world) are somehow held together.

Prayer is part of the larger vocation in which we humans are supposed to be bringing God’s love to bear on his world.

Do we see prayer as a part of our “vocation?” Do we really understand that prayer is where we battle for the souls of those around us to connect them to the love of God?

So who are you praying for? Are you praying for those around you? Do you have a list? Do you write down names daily of people you encounter? If not, start today. Buy a small notebook or start plugging in names into your phone. Regardless of how you do it, begin praying specifically for those around you. And pray that God will awaken them to His love and grace!

Presence

Wherever you are, be all there. Practice the presence of people. Turn off technology and realize who is around you. Don’t be in such a rush everywhere you go. The reality is that you probably come into contact with many people each day that you might not even be aware of. As I’ve written before, we see people as either scenery, machinery, or ministry. So how do you see those around you?

Being present is being incarnational. In our hurried up world, can you imagine how refreshing we could be to others if we slowed down to be present among them? Can you imagine how life-giving we could be if we slowed down enough to listen to people? I believe people are starving to be heard.

Proclamation

You have to speak! Now I’m not talking about preaching at others. What I mean is that you have to converse about the gospel. But if you are praying for others and if you are present among them with a listening ear, you might find more open doors to begin talking about God than you thought imaginable. But you do have to be willing to speak.

The key is to be who you are. Talking with others about Christ is not about having a certain type of personality. Don’t turn into your pastor when you start sharing the gospel. I’m sure there is nothing wrong with your pastor, but you are not him. Be yourself. Be honest. Be caring.

Perseverance

Keep going. Be faithful. Don’t stop praying for those around you. Don’t stop caring for someone. Don’t give up. It might be years before you see something happen in a particular person’s life, but keep trusting that God is working. Stay committed. I think this is especially hard for us in our world of having everything “on demand.” But stay the course!!!

Begin today! Don’t put it off. Start praying now. Make a list. Pay attention to who is around you. And be open to where God is working. Start a conversation. Take a risk. And keep going.

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Jesus Hung Out With The Wrong People

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 12, 2016

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Jesus “hung out” with the wrong people! And it is Luke that seems to have noticed this more than any of the other gospel writers. In Luke 5, after Jesus had called Levi, the tax collector, to leave everything and follow him, Levi prepared an incredible feast and asked Jesus to attend. Many other tax collectors were at the party which disturbed the Pharisees so they asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

In Luke 7, Jesus is invited to a dinner at the home of a Pharisee. As Jesus took his place at the table, a woman who did not have the best reputation in town, stood behind Jesus at his feet and “wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.” When the Pharisee saw this he was aghast that Jesus would allow such a sinful woman near him. If Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known this woman was an outcast. Jesus should have sent her away.

As Jesus was leaving Jericho in Luke 19, he encountered a man by the name of Zacchaeus, a tax collector. Though it looked as though Jesus was going to leave Jericho without taking time to enjoy a meal, his encounter with Zacchaeus led to dinner at his home that evening. When the news got around that Jesus was going to eat with Zacchaeus, some grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.”

In Jesus’s day, there was much hostility between the religious and the people of the land. The religious were those who took the law seriously. They were trained in religious law and stuck to a religious code. This caused them to not associate with those who did not take the law as serious. Specifically, there were food laws which meant Pharisees had to be careful as to what they ate and to whom they ate with. Table fellowship was a critical symbol of identity. And yet there was Jesus, eating with all those “tax collectors and sinners.”

But not only was Jesus going to the “religious outsiders,” they were also coming to him. Luke points this out when he writes that tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him (Luke 15:1). And as to be expected, this disturbed the Pharisees. And it is this hard-heartedness of the religious leaders that prompted Jesus to tell the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. He came to rescue and restore. But the Pharisees didn’t get it.

I write all this above to ask ourselves this question: If we follow Jesus, who will we be drawn to and who will be drawn to us? Consider what Tim Keller writes:

Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.

Did not Jesus ask Simon and Andrew to follow Him and as they did, he would make them “fishers of men?” (Mt. 4:19). Did not Jesus also tell all His disciples that “as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (Jn 20:21). So let’s ask ourselves once again, if we follow Jesus, who will we be drawn to and who will be drawn to us?

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What Do We Show The World?

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 10, 2016

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As followers of Christ, we know what we should tell the world. Or at least I hope we do. We must proclaim the gospel. We must speak of the grace and mercy of God. Others need to know that with Christ, there is now hope in this life and the next. Paul reminds us of “how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” (Rom 10:15). The news of what Christ has done is too good to keep hidden. It must be known.

But I wonder what we show the world? We tell others of their need for Christ, but I wonder if they see in us how much we need Him as well? In his book Get Real: Sharing Your Everyday Faith Every Day, Justin Leonard writes, “we want people to see Jesus in us when it would be so much better if they instead saw someone in need of Jesus.”

I don’t take Leonard’s words to mean that we should abandon Christlikeness. After all, Scripture is clear that we should be conformed to His image (see Rom. 8:29; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; 1 Jn 2:6). However, if we are not careful, we can appear as though we have no problems, no worries, or no hassles. And who can live up to that? Could it be that we sometimes try to become “too Christian?”

There is a lot of talk today about authenticity. “You gotta keep it real!” So maybe the world needs to see how human and needy we really are. Do your neighbors know that you struggle sometimes in your marriage? Do those you work with know that you, like that rest of the world, struggle with identity?

In Get Real, Leonard tells a story about a lady who is wanting her sister to become a believer in Christ. Though she continues to witness to her, it appears she never listens. So Leonards asks: “Have you ever considered that the way you present yourself as a Christian might be part of the reason your sister doesn’t believe?” In other words, he writes, “Instead of being a help to your sister, you may be her biggest obstacle to belief because she can never imagine herself believing like the person you want her to believe you are.”

Let’s not stop telling others about Jesus. But let’s also show them our need for Him as well. In humility, let’s be real. And let’s point people to the one in whom we trust to save us from the mess we have made of ourselves.

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The Gospel: A Wonderful Announcement!

Published by Jeff Kennon on March 17, 2015

A good reminder from Douglas John Hall to those who proclaim, preach or share the gospel that it is, in fact, good news!!!

The words preach and sermon have moralistic connotations for most people because, alas, that is how preaching has been used—as a form of exhortation, cojolement, pep-talk. If you listen carefully to the linguistic mood of most sermons, you almost invariably find that they are full of shoulds and oughts and musts: laying down the law, sometimes bombastically, more often today nicely, with gentle persuasion—but still, the law. It is not accidental that preaching, for most people, connotes admonition: “Don’t preach at me! Don’t sermonize!” we tell those who would have us alter our ways.

But for the New Testament the proclamation of gospel in the biblical sense is a completely different matter—in fact it’s almost the antithesis of laying down the law—as we can see in the Isaiah passage Jesus quoted:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good tidings to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives…recovery of the sight to the blind…liberation of the oppressed…the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19).

It’s more nearly a matter of releasing people from the law—social laws, penal systems, economic laws, moral laws, gender and sexual laws, dehumanizing ideologies, conventions and man-made injunctions by which human beings have been falsely bound.

As George Buttrick, the unforgettable twentieth-century preacher of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, used to tell us in his homiletics classes, the whole mood of the sermon should be “The most wonderful thing has happened!” – not “You had better get to work, you underachievers, and make something wonderful happen!” Gospel is always in the indicative, not the imperative mood.

Waiting For The Gospel, Douglas John Hall (p. 5-6)

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Can’t Keep Quiet

Published by Jeff Kennon on July 1, 2014

There were told to quit talking about Jesus. Peter and John had caused enough trouble and the religious leaders were annoyed at them “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.” So they wanted them quiet!

But Peter and John could not be hushed that easily. When they were ordered to speak no more to anyone about Jesus, they answered:

Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard (Acts 4:19-20).

Why couldn’t they be quiet? Rolland Allen in his book The Spontaneous Expansion of The Church: And The Causes That Hinder It, writes…

If we seek the cause which produces rapid expansion when a new faith seized hold of men who fell able and free to propagate it spontaneously of their own initiative, we find its roots in a certain natural instinct.

This instinct is admirably expressed in a saying of Archytas of Tarentum quoted by Cicero, “If a man ascended to Heaven and saw the beautiful nature of the world and of the stars, his feeling of wonder, in itself most delightful, would lose its sweetness if he had not someone to whom he could tell it.”

This is the instinctive force which drives me even at the risk of life itself to impart to others a new-found joy: that is why it is proverbially difficult to keep a secret.

It is not surprising then that when Christians are scattered and feel solitary this craving for fellowship should demand an outlet, especially when the hope of the Gospel and the experience of its power is something new and wonderful.

But in Christians there is more than this natural instinct. The Spirit of Christ is a Spirit who longs for, and strives after, the salvation of the woulds of men, and that spirit dwells in them.

The Spirit converts the natural instinct into a longing for the conversion of others which is indeed divine in its source and character.

Some things are so good that we just can’t keep quiet. Do we understand the gospel as one of those things? Do we see gospel as something so glorious that even angels long to look (1 Peter 1:12)?

May our eyes be opened today to see what we have in Christ and as a result, be compelled by the Spirit of God to make such incredible news known!

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