Supporting Your Evangelism

I’ve been enjoying helping out at Bures Holiday Club this week. It is a joint venture between the 2 churches, but it is largely run by the Anglican Church in the village. They are doing a really brilliant job, the children are having a ball as well as learning more about Jesus!

It’s Olympic themed this year and the teaching so far has been about being on Jesus’ ‘team’, like the disciples were. Since some of the disciples were fishermen, they were probably quite used to working as a team. I was reading this week about net fishing and how it is a team effort, taking several men to haul nets back into the boat after a catch.

Even though we are meant to be "fishers of men" I don’t think we think of evangelism as a team effort very much. We put pressure on ourselves to draw people to Christ, because we want them to share the happiness we have in our relationship with God, but perhaps we don't realise we would be more effective if we worked together.

I am really keen for people in our house groups to support one another in their evangelism, as a team. Having a little group of people around you, discussing it and praying about it regularly can keep your outreach on the straight and narrow.

Often evangelism can suffer from being either too aggressive (trying to push or manipulate people into new beliefs) or too passive (just getting to know people and hoping your faith will impact them somehow). With a team you can help each other to find that proactive middle ground - evangelism characterised by regular prayer, listening to God, respect and genuine love for those we evangelise to, and both patience and courage.

It’s a tall order – wouldn’t it be useful to have some people around you to share the challenge with?

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Interested in more?

Check out some of our Sunday sermons (recently updated!) at: http://www.buresbaptistchurch.org/sermon_catchup.php