Monday, May 16, 2005
Now-ra
This weekend, I went down the coast to Nowra, for a St Michaels Night Church weekend away. Sandy, the new minister at St Michaels spoke on evangalism, particularly on the 4 principles of Pray, Love, Share, Invite.
The entire weekend was great, getting to know a bunch of people from my new church, having some good conversations, some fun, and then their was the bible talks (which were great, sandy has an incredible gift for preaching, and we should be very thankfull to god for it)
I'm going to attempt to sumarise some of the things he said which really struck me here, feel free to chip in with comments, questions, discussion etc.
The diocesan mission talks about numbers 10% in bible based churchs. This concept makes a lot of people uncomfortable (myself included at the start of this weekend.) But the bible does talk about numbers.. its just the way it handels these numbers. (Referenced to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin) These numbers are important because they are made up of individuals, ones. The diosen mission is not about 10%, its about the howevermany thousand who make up that 10% individuals.
Pray for phyiscal and spiritual wellbeing of non-christian friends.
Make a habit of it, structure it, It will never be easy.
Sandy raised a question at the start of this talk, through a story. Think about this when you attempt to invite someone to a christian event... the last time you talked to this person, was it to similarly invite them to such an event?
The BarBQ first principle, which basically states that you should be inviting them to other non-evengalistic things before we try to evangalise them. Sandys point here was rather similar to the point I was trying to make in this post earlier. Evangalism is far more effective when done from a relationship. This talk helped me to clarify a few of the things I wasnt so sure on previously.
Not everyone can be a big evangalist, like billy grayham or chapo. Not everyone can get up and just talk like that to people who they dont have a relationship with. And these people are not as effective as everyone believes in converting non-believers. We did a show of hand as to what was the most important thing in us becoming a christian, and for 80% it was through a christian friend/relationship. This is typical of most christians.
Yes there is something to be said for doorknocking, for walk up evangalism, for leathlets, and the like. But the majority of evangalism happened on an individual level with a christian friend. We dont need to be a gifted preacher, or a talented author. If we are... great! But if not, we still have a responsibility to do our share, amongst our friends. Not people we befriended in order to evangalise, but people who are our friends, and thus we care about enough that we want to evangalise them.
Jesus was frequent criticised for having sinners as friends. (Luke 19)
Sandy started again with a story, which I shall attempt to re-tell here.
George was a christian. He lived a good, godly life, prayed regularly, read his bible. But he didnt believe in thrusting the bible down people throats. He tried to evangalise by living his life as godly as he could, but never even told his workmates or non christian friends that he was a christian. One day, many years into his life, a long time friend of his, Mike came up to him all excited, saying “Ive just learnt something amazing.. Ive become a christian, and I was really hopeing I could talk with you about christianity.
George was happy for Mike, “That great news, I'm a christian too!”
Mikes face fell. “Why did you neve tell me? Ive put off thinking about it for so long, because you live such a moral life, and you wernt a christian, so I didnt think I needed to worry about it.
The rest of this talk was giving us examples, pointers, and hints as to how we can evangalise, through both Life (The way we live, the example we are) and Lip (The things we say)
As it has been put.. Dont worry the first 60 years are the hardest. Its never going to get easy, but we need to push ourselves to work at it anyway.
Whats the best advertisement for something? If you see an add telling you to go to something, about how wounderfull it is, For myself the immediate reaction is scepticism. There trying to promote the product, so you cant trust them. But if a close friend recomends it to me, I'm far more comfortable. My friends arent trying to manipulate me, to trick me into going to or doing things. Word of mouth is the best advertiser.
Obviously this short summary cant replace an entire weekend of teaching, but hopefully this has given you some idea of what we learnt and been helpful for you.
The entire weekend was great, getting to know a bunch of people from my new church, having some good conversations, some fun, and then their was the bible talks (which were great, sandy has an incredible gift for preaching, and we should be very thankfull to god for it)
I'm going to attempt to sumarise some of the things he said which really struck me here, feel free to chip in with comments, questions, discussion etc.
Intro.
The diocesan mission talks about numbers 10% in bible based churchs. This concept makes a lot of people uncomfortable (myself included at the start of this weekend.) But the bible does talk about numbers.. its just the way it handels these numbers. (Referenced to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin) These numbers are important because they are made up of individuals, ones. The diosen mission is not about 10%, its about the howevermany thousand who make up that 10% individuals.
Pray.
Pray for phyiscal and spiritual wellbeing of non-christian friends.
Make a habit of it, structure it, It will never be easy.
Love
Sandy raised a question at the start of this talk, through a story. Think about this when you attempt to invite someone to a christian event... the last time you talked to this person, was it to similarly invite them to such an event?
The BarBQ first principle, which basically states that you should be inviting them to other non-evengalistic things before we try to evangalise them. Sandys point here was rather similar to the point I was trying to make in this post earlier. Evangalism is far more effective when done from a relationship. This talk helped me to clarify a few of the things I wasnt so sure on previously.
Not everyone can be a big evangalist, like billy grayham or chapo. Not everyone can get up and just talk like that to people who they dont have a relationship with. And these people are not as effective as everyone believes in converting non-believers. We did a show of hand as to what was the most important thing in us becoming a christian, and for 80% it was through a christian friend/relationship. This is typical of most christians.
Yes there is something to be said for doorknocking, for walk up evangalism, for leathlets, and the like. But the majority of evangalism happened on an individual level with a christian friend. We dont need to be a gifted preacher, or a talented author. If we are... great! But if not, we still have a responsibility to do our share, amongst our friends. Not people we befriended in order to evangalise, but people who are our friends, and thus we care about enough that we want to evangalise them.
Jesus was frequent criticised for having sinners as friends. (Luke 19)
Share.
Sandy started again with a story, which I shall attempt to re-tell here.
George was a christian. He lived a good, godly life, prayed regularly, read his bible. But he didnt believe in thrusting the bible down people throats. He tried to evangalise by living his life as godly as he could, but never even told his workmates or non christian friends that he was a christian. One day, many years into his life, a long time friend of his, Mike came up to him all excited, saying “Ive just learnt something amazing.. Ive become a christian, and I was really hopeing I could talk with you about christianity.
George was happy for Mike, “That great news, I'm a christian too!”
Mikes face fell. “Why did you neve tell me? Ive put off thinking about it for so long, because you live such a moral life, and you wernt a christian, so I didnt think I needed to worry about it.
The rest of this talk was giving us examples, pointers, and hints as to how we can evangalise, through both Life (The way we live, the example we are) and Lip (The things we say)
As it has been put.. Dont worry the first 60 years are the hardest. Its never going to get easy, but we need to push ourselves to work at it anyway.
Invite.
Whats the best advertisement for something? If you see an add telling you to go to something, about how wounderfull it is, For myself the immediate reaction is scepticism. There trying to promote the product, so you cant trust them. But if a close friend recomends it to me, I'm far more comfortable. My friends arent trying to manipulate me, to trick me into going to or doing things. Word of mouth is the best advertiser.
Obviously this short summary cant replace an entire weekend of teaching, but hopefully this has given you some idea of what we learnt and been helpful for you.
# posted by ChinDoGu @ 19:45 
