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Summary

In this engaging Q&A session, speakers discuss the importance of commitment to Christ and the church, emphasizing that baptism is not the end of the journey but the beginning of a lifelong walk in faith. They explore how to effectively teach new converts about the expectations of discipleship, stressing the need for ongoing education and support within the church community. The conversation highlights the challenges of ensuring that new members remain engaged and committed, addressing common pitfalls such as treating baptism as a mere ritual rather than a transformative step in a believer’s life.

The speakers share practical strategies for fostering a culture of discipleship, including the importance of building relationships, providing mentorship, and creating opportunities for new members to learn and grow in their faith. They also discuss the significance of evangelism as a communal effort, encouraging church members to actively participate in outreach and support one another in their spiritual journeys. Overall, the session serves as a call to action for churches to prioritize discipleship and evangelism, ensuring that new believers are nurtured and integrated into the faith community.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Initial Questions
01:48 The Commitment to Christ and His Church
06:34 Challenges in Discipleship
11:48 Understanding the Role of Baptism
18:22 Key Strategies for Supporting New Converts
23:46 The Importance of Community and Fellowship
30:31 Practical Approaches to Nurturing Faith
31:01 Building Relationships for Effective Evangelism
35:41 Overcoming Introversion in Faith Conversations
40:03 The Importance of Comfort Zones in Evangelism
42:42 Creative Approaches to Sparking Interest
46:10 Leveraging Strengths in Evangelism
54:48 Real-Life Evangelism Success Stories

Transcript *This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.*

Open Forum (00:00)
but I’ll just start out with the questions that I had before that we got the box situation there. Let me have that one right there.

What I’ll do is I’ll read the question up here and then of course if Zachary Williams is in here he can feel free to answer a question but any of the speakers today but especially these three right here. And I will start out with this one. Okay, it’s got a bunch of statements here but ⁓ everyone wants forgiveness of sins but few understand the commitment to Christ and his body.

How can we get people to realize they must be committed to the Christ in His body, the church, to remain saved? And as James was, and this was submitted before his lesson, but ⁓ as he was speaking, I thought about, you know, because the jailer, when was he baptized? Same hour of the night. The eunuch, as he’s on that chariot,

right then and there, here’s water. And so I guess we could put along with this question, is the same hour of the night, here’s water, what does hinder me, ⁓ is that still possible in today’s culture and still have them grounded in discipleship? mean, you know, and so anyway, but here’s the main question right here and it’s toward the end.

particularly addresses James’s ⁓ lessons of James could up and begin, but Carrie and Rico can pitch in.

I appreciate the question and I think we need to remember as we talked about that being a Christian is a commitment. We’re a follower of Christ. I know we’ve talked about the plan of salvation and the steps of salvation so that we make it easier for people to understand, but I think we need to understand that someone obeying the gospel is a process. They must believe that Jesus is the Christ, that

Belief must be so strong to where they’re willing to repent of their sins, confess that he is their king, they’re going to live for him. We didn’t talk about Matthew 10, 32, and 33, but we know that that’s a lifestyle. Whoever confesses me before men, him I will confess before my father which is in heaven. Whoever denies me before men, him I will deny before my father which is in heaven. Whoever continues to confess me, whoever continues to deny me. So we need to understand that

We want to teach people to be disciples of Christ. When we teach them to be disciples of Christ and to leave the world and serve Jesus, ⁓ the mind gets ahead of me sometimes, but anyway, then that becomes a lot easier, would be my answer. But we need to continue to remember that unto death. Be faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life.

This is exactly what we’re dealing with. If you can imagine going to do an evangelistic campaign somewhere and then you come back maybe the next year and none of them who were baptized the previous year are there. And you ask the question, why? Okay, so it’s easy. It can be very easy to sit down with someone and convince them if you’re not baptized, you go to hell. I mean, that’s actually pretty easy. And I’ve actually, I’ve witnessed when people are having Bible studies, a lot of times they don’t even realize what they’re doing.

but they are going through passages that show them what’s true, but what happens is they’re teaching those people to make baptism their idol. And so then they think, well, I did the thing that you told me to do and the Bible says to do it and I did the thing, right? And so their confidence becomes, I’m confident in that thing. And so what we’re trying to do in these campaigns is sort of a work in progress kind of a thing. ⁓

where we’re emphasizing, you might say, front-loading from this sense that we’re making first things first, that we need to front-load it with, okay, who’s Jesus, what has he done, and what does that have to do with you? So you look at the nature of Jesus, you look at the work of Jesus, and you say, well, what are the implications? That the implications of his work are that we’re supposed to follow after his work, and that, so then after you do a character study of who Jesus is, then you…

you’re teaching them to put your confidence in him and not an idol. And a natural outflow of that is baptism. And another thing that we’ve done to keep really good records on the campaigns is we have contact cards. Some of you have been on the American Mission campaigns. ⁓ Rob Whitaker, sent me his contact card, said, hey, can you translate these? And so I’m trying, whatever he uses in Spanish is from us. And I took that and then I kind of streamlined it for our campaigns. And one of the things that we put on the back are evangelism sort of tips.

and we have a model for a growing church. But then what we just added this year to the contact cards is prompts for about five or six questions when someone wants to be baptized to just kind of, these are prompts to go through just to, you know, five, 10 minutes of conversation about things that Christians are expected to do. You talk about maybe attendance or offering or things like that, and you can make your own list.

But just to have an idea, don’t have to do an extensive this is all the ins and outs of the church, the expectations, you if you come the next year and then you talk to them and then they say, well, no one ever told me about that. Well, there are certain things that you can kind of get in front of and at least they kind of know what they’re getting into. But we’ve done ourself a disservice when we front load with, do this thing and then you’re okay. And then after a while, they’re wondering why something’s wrong.

And it’s because they put their confidence in the wrong thing and ⁓ because they weren’t really shown what the kingdom was and the expectations of following Christ were. So that’s something I’m working on. you have any questions we can add to that, let me know. Because we’re really trying to get in front of this so that those who are truly disciples are truly disciples, if you will.

I’ll just add and brief, know, when Christ told Peter, when thou art converted, you’ll be able to strengthen your brethren. Was Peter a member of the Lord’s church? Yes. So why did he use that word convert? We all are learning throughout life. And I don’t think any of my brethren are saying you can’t teach someone and baptize them then. I’m thinking what the problem is, and I think I’ve seen it a lot, is we baptize people and let them go.

You can’t do that when you baptize someone, you continue to teach them. That’s the purpose of Sunday school, not for new people, for us. That’s the purpose of Bible study, not for new people, but for us. We constantly are learning God’s word. We want to make sure they understand the urgency of them giving their lives to Christ and getting to the point, you know, it’s almost, well, I want to teach them everything so that by the time they become a Christian, they will know everything.

Well, there’s not enough time for you to do that. You want to teach them the urgency of giving their life to the Lord and help them understand the importance of staying committed to the Lord and learning along the way. I think a lot of times we get people wet and we let them go. We can’t do that. That creates a revolving door policy. We have to get people to the point of understanding that they need Christ. You need Christ, you need to obey him and still learn.

more about what he wants us to do. And I pray that none of us ever get comfortable. Well, I led such and such in Christ and then I turned them over. No, lead them and continue to hold them by the hand. You know, how many parents let their kids go at 18? No, that’s always my baby until the day they die. So we need to treat each other the same way, especially.

new babes in Christ continue to stay by them and making sure that they are learning what thus says the word of God throughout the entirety of their life. Never give up because the Lord didn’t give up on us.

As mentioned, don’t think Zachary was in the room at the time, but if you want to chime in on any of these, feel free, my brother. And you can even bring little Peter up with you if you need to. But something, go back to what Gary, or Carrie said, is like, man, wow, yeah, that’s pretty cool. Sometimes, here’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t, if you’re not baptized, if you don’t do this, if you don’t do that, we maybe come out first with the consequences.

of if you don’t obey rather than building up Jesus, talking about him so that they want to obey. And that’s good way. Whatever you said, I just paraphrased it, but whatever you said, that was it. yeah, because some of the personal evangelism, the programs and all that kind of stuff, they don’t really build up Jesus sometimes. It’s all about the church. And I used to emphasize because…

When we study with especially denominational people, as I looked at it, the main difference is the church. That’s where we differ. But it’s really not. It’s really not if you go back. on the outward, that seems like that’s what it is. It’s the church. So I’m gonna start out with the church. But no, it’s gotta start with Jesus. And I heard a young fellow preaching in a sermon one time. He mentioned that. It’s kinda like, whoa, that’s right. Build up Jesus.

And so of course, one of the texts I use, know, cold turkey Bible study on an airplane or whatever is, you know, Matthew 16, you who do men say that I am, you know, some say you’re John the Baptist, some Elijah, Jeremiah one of the prophets, but who do you say I am? then, you know, Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of living God. And so there’s your end right there. Camp out there and talk about Christ first.

before you get to, and upon this rock I’ll build my church in the case of heaven when I prevail against it. Because once they know Christ, then that other stuff hopefully will come across. But it is a challenge, it is a challenge, because everybody, they love that idea of having my sins forgiven. But too many times they think it’s just a one time thing. I’m in the water, they’re forgiven, go about my way, and you don’t even see them again. And you don’t even have to go overseas the next year, it’s like the next month you don’t even see them, they’re over here.

And so we got to do something. I got to do something to change that, which of course I know we it’s up to that person. Ultimately it’s up to that person being him and God. But is there some stuff that I can do to help get that across that they need to be committed to Jesus? know, a fellow says, yeah, I want to get back. He called me on the phone. I want to get baptized. But after I’m baptized, can I still go go to my church? No. ⁓

preparing it to marriage. No, you can’t. It’s like saying, I’m gonna get married over here and I’m still shacking up over here even though I married this woman over here. You can’t do it. But ⁓ we gotta teach that and we gotta understand that. And that’s challenging. Go ahead, Steve, come on up here.

And Steve is one of our instructors. He preaches at the Black Creek Church of Christ. Since 19, of your business forever. 80s, I think the 1980s, I think, and he’s a good brother in Christ. A mere 41 years. Let me just say, I think sometimes we bring to our Bible study assumptions that should not be taken to our Bible study. You’ll notice in Acts chapter 8, you are talking about a man who is a eunuch.

He has gone all the way to Jerusalem and yet still can’t go into the temple because he’s a eunuch. Yet he has gone because he loves the Lord. Now you say, how does that help me any? Well, when he’s writing back, once he reading, he’s reading Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah 53 is a passage that the Jews studied as you can never imagine.

They wanted to know who that was. Dead sea scrolls, even during that time period, bring that up. Who is this person? Who is this person? That would be of a special importance to a eunuch. Because the next chapters that follow that, Isaiah chapter 56 verses 3 and 4, both talk about the eunuchs who will finally, when this person comes, they will finally…

have an opportunity to take part in Messiah’s kingdom, what this man’s bringing in. So he has studied a whole lot before he got there. He, like all the Jews, had one question, who is this person when I can come and enjoy the benefits that I see that follow this person coming? So let’s get the idea that he knows nothing beforehand, has nothing at all.

The Bible says he opened the Scriptures there after he had talked to him about that. Now here’s something interesting. Notice how that phraseology goes. And he opened the Scriptures and taught him Jesus. What did he say to him? Who is this man? Jesus. We all done? To teach him Jesus is far beyond saying, here’s his name. It would be the totality of the teaching about Jesus.

He’s the Lamb of God you’ve been waiting for. He’s the one who sets up the Messianic kingdom. And in the Messianic kingdom, he would be reigning at the right hand of God on high. Two coronation Psalms followed every Israelite’s thoughts, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. They studied that like you cannot imagine. Still do today. But all of those pointed to the coming Messiah and his kingdom.

So let us not think that when the eunuch’s riding along, he might be like somebody else I might meet in this day and time, having no understanding of what’s behind. This man is saturated, and this man has been there, and he knows enough to know I can’t have anything now.

But I know that there’s something good coming for me. And if you don’t think he studied that, like you studied the back and front of your hand, think again. He showed where the word had led him by having gone to a place and he could not even enter in as the rest could. Number two, I’m not trying to get on the bandwagon here, but I want you to at the second part of this. Who told you that no one else went to Ethiopia? That passage.

in Acts 8 is prophetic fulfillment of what was promised in Isaiah 56. But the Scriptures do not tell us everything that went into Ethiopia. Even today they talk about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which has been around for centuries and centuries and centuries. Now I recognize that there are portions of the things that they accept in Scripture that are

are not the same and I’m not telling you that they’re right before God but I’m telling you somebody else was there long before. And then if you look at Rome, Paul goes in Romans chapter 16 to the church at Rome and he mentions two people. And we’re not told any of this in the book of Acts. Show me where it ever says in the book of Acts that the people from Rome on the day of Pentecost went back to Rome.

Show me that. I may surmise that, but you know where I know for sure it did happen? Romans chapter 16 where it speaks of two people concerning whom Paul says, and they were in the Lord before me.

My point in bringing that out to you is you can’t settle on one verse without the other passages surrounding it telling you…

everything about that one verse of scripture. You must contextually read that. I don’t believe for a moment that there was nothing else that ever went down to Ethiopia. I know historically something did.

I also know biblically that there was a pattern set that those who left coming from different places went back and I don’t know how many others from Ethiopia. only know that this one eunuch is a fulfillment of a prophecy made long ago. Let’s don’t extrapolate from that that all I have is a man riding in a chariot who reads Isaiah 53 for the first time in his life, gets up and says, Jesus,

Here, baptize me. How ridiculous. We need to think beyond.

All right, that brings up another good point about meeting people where they are. Now, Lance Moser is going to have a whole lesson on that later on in week, and some of the speakers mentioned that already, you know, everybody’s at a different level of Bible knowledge, et cetera, and so we always have to meet them where they are and go from there, and so that’s a good point about the eunuch. All right, next question here is, after bringing someone to Christ, kind of relates to this.

⁓ What would be some key things to do in order to make sure they continue with Christ firmly after they’re baptized into Christ? What are some key things that we can do? Here you go,

Remember they’re a new babe.

A couple of ideas that I might share with this. So ⁓ pertaining to the last question as well, ⁓ sometimes our approach to conversion may induce the issue that these questions are addressing. And what I mean by that is sometimes we approach conversion as if baptism is the end goal and heaven is the end goal, not just baptism. And so when someone obeys the gospel and they get in the water and they come out and they attend services once or twice and they disappear,

Well, maybe we’ve induced that a little bit by treating baptism like it’s the end of the process. And so one thing that would be good to be done as soon as someone obeys the gospel is to make sure that they know that baptism is a step that begins a walk. That that is the beginning of their Christian life and not the end of the process. And along those lines, something that ⁓ an idea that was given to me that I’ve done ever since and I think there’s a lot of wisdom to it.

I’m not going to ask for a show of hands, but if I did, I’m sure that many of us in here could say at some point in your preaching career, you have had an adult, likely an older adult come to you and say something along these lines. Have you heard this? I was baptized when I was a little child, or I was baptized when I was much younger, or I was baptized so many years ago that I don’t even remember it. And I’m not sure if it was done correctly, and I’m not sure if I need to do it again. And I have all of this doubt.

and all this tension and confusion and I can’t sleep at night. Has anyone ever heard something along those lines? So maybe when someone obeys the gospel, it would be a good idea to encourage that new convert to open up their Bible to the front cover and that day write down why was I baptized? So that right there in their Bible they can reference for many years to come right there that’s what I was thinking on that day when I obeyed the gospel. That day that I took the step that began a wall.

Yep, and I was thinking about that just as he began speaking, I know brothers that do that. They say, okay, if you were to go, and that would even also add to that, if you become unfaithful, what would you expect me to do? And write that in there too, and then that way they have it all there. But some good points on that. All right, ⁓ anybody else have something on that?

think ultimately what the question is talking about is continuing to walk in Christ. And we haven’t really addressed that yet, but we arise from baptism to walk in newness of life. We have a responsibility to live in Christ. And when you look at Acts chapter 2, after about 3,000 souls were believed and were baptized, verse 41, verse 42 says, and they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship and the breaking of bread and in prayers.

They need to continue to learn. They need to continue to grow. I hope I didn’t give anyone the impression that ⁓ baptism is the end. the exact opposite. It’s the beginning. And so when we think about baptism into Christ, then we have a commitment, a responsibility to rise to walk in newness of life, to live for Christ. Well, how did the first century church put that into practice? Verse 42 says,

they continued in the Apostles’ doctrine. Remember Acts 1, 2, and 3, the Apostles were given the message from Jesus via the Holy Spirit. The Apostles knew what Jesus’ instructions were. We don’t need to shy away from apostolic authority. We need to teach apostolic authority and the fact that people need to continue in the Apostles’ doctrine. We have the Apostles’ doctrine recorded now from the book of ⁓

Romans to the book of Jude. That’s the Apostles doctrine. We have the practices, the actions of the Apostles and Acts, and we have a symbolic message that we need to continue to live for Christ and Revelation, but in between we have those instructions that are taught of how we’re to live in Christ. They continue the Apostles doctrine. They continue to learn. When you go back to the Great Commission, notice that they said,

teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. These things you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same that I’ll commit to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also, Paul told Timothy. So this process is, okay, we’ve made the commitment to serve Christ. He’s our King. Now I’m going to live for him. I’m going to learn what I need to learn to live for him. Real quickly, when I obeyed the gospel 37 years ago,

I didn’t know why we didn’t use instrumental music. I know we didn’t. I didn’t understand it. Do you think I understand it now? Do you think I can tell somebody why we don’t use instruments in worship today and be confident in doing so and remind them that when Noah was told to build the ark, he was told to use gopher wood?

God didn’t say don’t use chateam. He didn’t say don’t use pecan or acacia or whatever other wood you want to use. But he did when he said use gopher wood. And so when we have the command to sing, that’s the command that we have. That’s the authorization we have. Other types of music are excluded. I get it. I’ve heard all the arguments on the other side. Show me it’s authorized. You want to show me that instrumental music’s authorized, then we got something. Until you can do that, don’t waste my time. Singing is authorized.

And so as we think about this idea of teaching people to continue, it’s all about continuing the Apostles’ doctrine and in breaking of bread and worship and honoring, or in that instance, yeah, in breaking of bread and in worship. And then as we think about the last part, fellowship. You know, we sometimes don’t emphasize fellowship enough.

But when we’re in the world, we’re lost, but we’re also oftentimes lonely. And so when we’re in Christ, now we have communion with one another. And you remember that when people erred, they were told to deliver them to Satan. Why? That their soul might be saved. If we have that fellowship, that bond that the first century church often had, then we want to be in Christ.

And if we don’t have that fellowship, if we don’t love one another, and you know what the Bible says about that, if you don’t love your brother, you can’t love God. If we don’t love one another, then why does somebody care that they’ve left? But if we have that communion, we have that ⁓ relationship, then they should want to continue to serve Christ. Because ultimately, as has been said more than once, our goal should be to go to heaven,

and to take as many souls as we can with us. Sorry for being long.

Real real quick here. Romans 10 17, faith comes by hearing, but the word builds faith over time. If we let it, plant the seed and it grows. I heard this, I’m really an evangelistic pragmatist. Whatever really works for someone, I’m interested in that thing. One of the best evangelists I know, he said whenever they baptize someone, right then, they’re still wet. And right then he says, okay, Thursdays or Tuesdays where we have our regular Bible study.

Because right then you strike when the iron’s hot. Look, someone who’s just become a Christian, they don’t have any idea what it’s like to be a Christian. Which means we get to set the tone for what’s the expectation of being a Christian. And so we put these expectations in front of them right then. And then what do we do? We’re setting up what our culture is. And we get to decide what our culture is for our church. And one of the things I would add to it too is build into it. You can build things into your culture.

you, the church leaders get to decide what your church culture is. Build into it some type of a structure in which a new convert is just going to be handed off to a mentor. And they’re going to be buddies. Maybe it’s a couple and maybe you switch them around and you decide whatever you want to do. What I’m saying is that you can get a little bit creative to introduce them to not only examples, but even routines that they just don’t even know about.

and we can decide those ahead of time. We can know we have going into it. These are the things that I’m going to to expect of them and just treat it like it’s normal even if I just came up with it, all right? And so be creative when you’re, you might say, evolving for practical reasons, evolving your culture of your church. Just use your imagination, be practical, use what works.

Something that goes along, I think, with what my brother just said. Something we do at West Connett is we have not just one adult Bible class, we have a new converts class, but we don’t just stop at a new converts class, we also have a spiritual growth class. And that is for people that are kind of, because there are a lot of our members that won’t go to the new converts class because like I’ve been a Christian for 20 years.

but they are going to the spiritual growth class so that they can continually learn how to grow and to develop. And so I encourage your congregations that if all possible, it’s very difficult in one Bible class to teach all those aspects and to help someone grow. So if you have the ability, I’d encourage you to have, and this is not something that we have and, you know, well.

If we don’t have any baptisms, then we’ll just cancel it. With this, the new converts class, I’ve been there seven years now and it has never stopped. And we started about a year ago, this spiritual growth class and it’s really helping a lot.

just want to add to that. ⁓ In my research, I came across this kind of an idea where, hey, good, look, you get to do what you want to do in your church, all right? Elders, just do what you need to do. If you need to tell your members, you know, every five years, we really want every member, at least once every five years, to go through the new conference class. You just think about some of that’s been there for 30 years, but they don’t have a clue about authority because they kind of been checked out.

And so what I’m saying is utilize this and say, hey, this is all right. I mean, you can’t really force them to go, but give them an expectation. Or like what you did, where’d he go? you have a shift gears, sort of, you’ve gone to second gear. And so that’s a creative thing too. So get creative like that.

Yes, scripture gives us all kinds of leeway so far as how to do it. Now, what we have to do is sit, preach the gospel, but there are all kinds of ways. I think somebody mentioned that in their sermon. Go, that’s just transportation. I we can go by car, we can go by foot, however you go, go. And so I like that. All right, here’s a couple things that are more practical type stuff. And so I’ll just read a couple of these at a time and then deal with them. And then one at the end that involves all the speakers.

All right, well here’s one here. an introvert, I struggle inviting friends to worship. Would it be easier to ask them to study or hang out first to get to know them better? Well, I’ll just let that one stand by itself. ⁓ Someone who struggles inviting people to worship services, ⁓ what would you suggest they do instead? Or maybe beforehand? Of course, lot of this has to do with comfort zones. Some of you guys mentioned that comfort zone stuff there.

And that, well, actually, I’ll just start off on this. What I think, well, I think as I read that, what I think a good answer that is, is build relationships with people. And that’s a key in any endeavor, build relationships. Instead of first meeting somebody, hey, why you go to Bible study with me, or whatever. I mean, you know, that might not work. ⁓ Doorknocking in some cultures is less effective than others. You know, especially in our day and age. You know, if my kids…

my teenage girls at home, I don’t know if I want her opening the door to anybody, you know, and other people might think the same way, you know, so. But if you build relationships with people, get to know them, and then they’re open to that. fact, Wallace Maxwell used to talk about that. In fact, we use his book here sometimes, Helping the Church Grow or something like that, which you never knew that book when you were there because it was all a bunch of series of little pamphlets that he had put together.

But as I was reading through that book, I could hear Brother Maxwell talking. I could hear his voice, you know, all that. But he talked about that too, just building relationships. I remember, yeah, he was using that term friendship evangelism before it was an official, you know, an official thing. And he would emphasize that, and of course, we live in a different culture for sure, but you know, so the checkout lady at Publix is not the same lady all the time like it used to be, okay? But now you have all the time, but people like that that know you.

that may not even know you very well, but they know you time and time again, they trust you, you you’re not some stranger to them. You know, have a lot more pull with a person like that when you invite them to service. I remember back when they used to have the regular lady working at Publix, she would see me coming in and I usually have a song on my mind and I’m singing a song out loud or whatever, or don’t realize it, you know, or whatever. And so she asked me, you know, why are you so happy all the time?

I said, I’d love to tell you. It’s got to do with Jesus Christ, I used to, I don’t think I walked there, but I may have, but it’s just right there. I said, you know, just go right down the street right here and meet me on Sunday and you’ll see why. And ⁓ she did come, she did come. ⁓ But then she says, you guys aren’t presby. I said, no, no. But she came and, you know, she came for a few times, but it didn’t last much after that, but at least she knew, you know, what we’re all about.

Why I’m so happy? And I’m telling you, I’m happy. But anyway, but yeah, and so relationship I think is it. Build relationships with people first and then go from there. Now I have some other questions here. In fact, I’ll leave that on the board and this kind of goes along with this. What are some short phrases that spark interest for conversation? And this probably has to do with strangers.

or maybe with people. ⁓ I know for example if you’re like an airplane, flying an airplane right, and you have that person sitting next to you and that person can’t go anywhere, okay, so it’s kind of like a captive audience. Well how do you kind of lead into a discussion about Jesus? you know we all have, ⁓ hopefully we have a Bible right here on our phone and so we don’t need to get up in the overhang or any of that stuff. And we might have a paper Bible with us but we can study. And so that I’ll put right here.

And then another one that relates to that, ⁓ well, let’s see. Here’s kind of one here, but this kind of, well, I guess it goes along. This could be more in depth. I always get stumped explaining that miracles have ceased. ⁓ May you guide, may you guide, or how do you guide somebody through this? And so we’ll kind of put that to the side.

But here’s two right here. What are some things we can do to spark interest for conversation? And then as an introvert struggling to invite friends to worship, would it be easier to ask them to study or hang out first to get to know them better?

So believe it or not, although I might have some energy, I’m probably an introvert. And I have to sometimes just kick myself in the rear and say, go do it. You have that responsibility. I say this to myself. And I ride on buses. And sometimes I don’t talk to the person next to me, even though I know Spanish or could speak on an 11th 12th grade level. I will say this.

And this is something I really think we need to think about. Do you have any problem telling somebody about who your favorite baseball team is? Any problem at all? Are you a Braves fan or a Marlins fan or, you know, Rays? You have any problem telling them about your team? Or, you know, who won, you know, could you believe the officiating the game last night? I didn’t see the game last night, okay? But I heard all about it.

You have any problem talking with people about things like that? Sometimes we just have to put our own inhibitions aside and just say, Jesus is that important. Jesus is that important and we need to let others know about Christ. And I get it, know, I mean, I’m an introvert, but I have to be willing to tell others about Christ. I have to put that above how I feel.

and back to the Bible study versus inviting. To me, inviting is easier. In the Church of Christ, we only teach the truth. Or, do you study the Bible? Yeah, I study the Bible. Okay, great. Do you believe you must follow what the Scriptures teach? Yes, well in the Church of Christ, we only teach the Scriptures. Why don’t you come visit us one Sunday morning? That’s a lot easier to me than saying, can we sit down and study the Bible? Well, now that’s a commitment.

You’re asking that person to sit down and take time out of their schedule. know, now if you can transition into a Bible study, great. But inviting somebody to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you and talk about Jesus or inviting the services, to me is a lot easier.

think ultimately it goes down to our comfort zones. All of us have a comfort zone and we have to be willing to break our comfort zone for those things that are important. You know, I don’t care who you are, if you lost $10 you’re going to be mad and you’re going to ask people around you, have you seen my $10? I don’t care if you don’t talk to people, if you lost $10 you’re going to ask everyone around you, have you seen my $10? The same way you feel about that $10 bill you need to feel about other souls.

You know, and as has been said, no, you may not necessarily feel comfortable doing a full-fledged Bible study, but would you like to be my guest? Would you like to be my guest? Seven words. That’s it. And then I guarantee you, you know, I tell them at Chester, you get them through the door, we’ll take it from there. But get them through the door. And all of us, again, yes, I can understand you may not be an outgoing person, not as loud-mouthed as Rico. I can understand that.

but get them through the door and let folk know. One of the best tools we have in Chester is Our Ladies. Our Ladies make care bears. Our care bears go to area hospitals. Area hospitals get crying children in there. Those crying children walk out of there with the care bear on the back of that care bear. says, courtesy of the Virginia Avenue Church of Christ, 304-387-1030. And that’s just an avenue for someone to call to church. I was in the hospital and I got this bear.

What are your services like? Boom, there’s an opportunity. But I think we got to get out of our comfort zones. You know, when people say, you know, I don’t like talking to people, I bet you I know what I can find you like talking about, lose that $10. You won’t have a problem talking with anybody. let’s necessarily, I can understand we have comfort zones, but let’s break those comfort zones for our Lord. He gave his life for us. So let’s move self out of the way and let him be glorified.

I was with a VBS group in Panama and it was lunchtime and I got a text from someone who said, we gotta go to lunch and we need the bus, but you have it. And I said, we’re not gonna be there in time, so put all 35 of your people on the 26 passenger bus. And a few minutes later, I got a picture of a selfie where the one who texted me takes the selfie and it’s, mean, full is not the word for it.

She’s at the front and she takes a selfie of this bus and you can zoom into the picture. There’s more and more people the more you zoom in and everybody has a big smile on their face. They’re hot, they’re in the jungle, they don’t have any personal space, they’re all on top of each other, but they’re happy. Why? They’re not comfortable.

One of the things that I love about the mission trips that I do, and there are a lot of things that you can say yes to that will, by the nature of whatever it is, it’ll put you out of your comfort zone, but for something that is worth it, and after that, if you subject yourself to that enough, then over time,

the things that you used to say no to, you’ll start saying yes to and you won’t even realize it. Your comfort zone would be totally a different place. I mean, I’m like 100 % an introvert. Like when I talk to a bunch of people, I just wanna go crawl under the pew and die afterwards. I’m just exhausted and some people are energized by it, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love it. It doesn’t mean that it’s not something I need to do, but the more that I’ve done it, the more it’s easy. And it’s something that if someone says, hey, will you do this? Then it’s easy for me to say yes because

It’s not really about my comfort anymore. Now it’s about what’s right or it’s about duty. And we can train ourselves to be more than what we are right now. It’s a shame that for some reason other Christians have bought into some idea that however I am right now is how I just have to be. You can continue to grow and stretch yourself, continue to say yes to things. We just had a graduate from our preaching school in Panama who went on a campaign with me as a translator and

and he was not as great of a translator as he made out to be, but by the end of that week, he said, you know what, I’m not where I need to be spiritually, and he went to the preaching school, and he just graduated. He said yes to an opportunity that he needed more than we needed him. And at the end of it, it prompted him to step into something that would equip him. And so say yes to things that will equip you, or say yes to opportunities that will stretch you. We casually say no to so many things.

Go on a mission trip, go to America mission campaign, just go to things like polishing the pulpit. You’ll go and you’ll be, you’ll hear things. It’s like going to graduate school for a week and it will stretch you. ⁓ As far as I’m one on one with a person, ask questions, just start asking, just ask personal questions about them. Hey, what you, you go to, like I said, in my lesson, you go to church anywhere every week or, you know, how were you raised? Do your parents have a tradition somewhere? Where are you from? ⁓ What kind of churches do they have? And just start, just start asking them questions.

And over time, what you’ll do is you’ll endear yourself to them and then you can begin to earn talking about other things. And it depends on the culture you’re in really. Some cultures you can just straight to it. I mean, you get a Bible study on the street corner and you’re like, oh, I didn’t know we were gonna have a Bible study right now. But some cultures like our culture, people are really defensive. And so I gotta understand every single time, nobody at all owes me a Bible study, I gotta earn it.

And sometimes it’s just a matter of showing interest in them and just asking random questions that are very personal to them. After a while, they’ll think, hey, this person’s interested in me. because it’s just human nature, they’ll kind of want to give you a chance to talk about the things that are important to you. And so earn that. Earn that. I was reminded earlier, and you get creative about this, depending on who you are and what you’re good at. I was in Ghana.

Africa and a guy named Moses was sort of our guide. He was our driver and imagine that he was leading us around and ⁓ And man I was amazed I would watch him I would watch him we were at this school and there’s this teenage girl walked up and this was how he this is how he introduced us He said he said hey, are you a sister in Christ?

Well, that’s kind of a loaded, well, what’s she gonna answer? Well, yes, no, I don’t know what that means. Okay, well, he’s about opening doors, right? And I remember we were at a market and there was a guy selling baskets. I’ll never forget this. This was 22 years ago. His name was Solomon. And he said, are you a brother in Christ? And he said, I’m Catholic. And Moses, man, without skipping a beat, he said, oh, Catholicism. Oh, that is a kingdom of men.

I want to teach you about the kingdom of God.” And he just, he was ready for it. And so part of that is just getting better over time, just by kind of putting yourself out there. Cause sometimes you want to stick your foot in your mouth and that’s okay. That’s part of growing and stretching and be okay with failing. So get out there. I’d say get out there and fall on your face a few times. And man, that’ll make it a lot, a lot, you’ll be a lot more courageous the next time. So that would be my…

I said the last thing about being courageous because we need to have confidence. I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation. What we have they need to hear. And so we need to have that confidence and we might be introverted and we might not feel comfortable and okay, but what I have allows me to be comfortable, to be confident. And so I can share that with others and I don’t need to be timid and I don’t need to back down.

I can, and if they say no, okay, no problem. Have a nice day, you know. But if they don’t want to hear about Jesus. But you know, I think sometimes we make it too complicated. And if we know the people and we care about the people, let’s invite them to church, you know. What are you doing this Sunday? I’m not doing anything. I’m going to be sleeping. Well, great, we’ve got this great speaker or whatever, you know, whatever way you want to do it.

but let’s give them an opportunity.

I just wanted to add something here because one of the things that people often struggle with is they have a feeling they know their talents and then they have a feeling that this isn’t one of them. And while it is important to realize that we can grow in things that are our weaknesses, we should, in addition to that, be advancing and moving full throttle.

in our strengths. So I encourage the person who says, talking to people in public is not my thing. Okay, what is your strength? How can you take your strength and advance it? The story is told of an individual who was a preacher. He had gone to school, he had prepared himself to preach, he had gotten into his first work, and it was not going well.

And the members could tell it was not going well. And he was nearing the point of giving up on preaching because standing in front of people and talking to them was not going well. So a brother took him aside and said, let’s see if we can find something that will be a little bit better for you. That man ended up being Mack Lyon who through the work that he did on television where he had no one in front of him except for

camera did incredible work for decades because he found what was his strength and is in everybody’s. So one of the things that I love about technology is sometimes what is not your strength in person with someone means that you’re exceptionally good communicating through written technology or through audio video technology or through

supporting the work of someone who is doing that work. The reality is Paul was only able to do what Paul was able to do because of the people who went with Paul. One of the times that you see Paul being the least effective is when Paul is alone in Athens. And you’ll notice in that text, Paul doesn’t stay in Athens very long.

He goes to where his companions are because that was the effectiveness of Paul. The young men who went with him, the others who went with him, the laborers who labored so that he could do the preaching, all of that was part of Paul’s strength. And Paul wanted to maximize doing what was his strength.

In response to the first question, when the church understands that evangelism is everything she does, and everything she does is evangelism, then that opens up a world of opportunity outside of the church building for events to which we can invite prospects. If you feel like it’s a big leap and a difficult thing to invite someone to worship on a Sunday morning, then maybe start smaller than that. Does your church ever go bowling on a Friday night? It’s a lot easier for someone to spend time with the church outside of the church building.

And once they do that and they grow to love the church and they see the way the church exhorts one another, Hebrews 10.25, then don’t be surprised when they show up on a Sunday morning. And then the second question, some short questions that we can ask. I think one great thing that we can do is we can set up a good context for that. When we invite prospects over to our home for meals for the purpose of getting Bible studies, something I’m always sure to do is I take every Bible I own and I put it on every surface in the house.

Every coffee table, every side table, the kitchen bar, everything gets a Bible. And every single time somebody’s gonna say something about, look at all these Bibles out here. And that’s a very natural and easy way to bring up that conversation. And here’s three very quick questions. Question number one, when they say, look at all these Bibles, do you have a Bible that you like to read? And the way these questions work, whether they say yes or no, you can get a study. If they say yes,

would you like to go get it? And look here, now we both have our Bibles open. I just so happen to have this Bible study. If they say no, guess what? I’ve got one ready. I’d like to give this to you. Do you want to open that up? Look here, we both got our Bibles open. Would you like… Do you see how this works? Another question that we can ask along with that one is, do you study the Bible very much? You’ve noticed all these Bibles here. Do you study the Bible very much? And if they say yes, fantastic. I have this Bible study. I think you’re really going to enjoy it.

And if they say no, that’s still a great answer for you because you can then say, you know, one reason I find that many people don’t study the Bible as much as they’d like to is that it can be overwhelming and complicated. I just so happen to have this very simple study and I’d to go through it with you. What do you think about that? Are you down? And then a third simple question, when they notice all of these Bibles and it comes up in conversation naturally anyway, have you ever completed an organized study of the Bible?

And again, if they say yes, that’s fantastic. I have one that I know you’ll enjoy. And if they say no, you can say the same thing. I just so happen to have one.

I did, but I don’t know we’ll have time to that. But I’ll hold that for next time, tomorrow. I have one quick one. None of us are young enough to answer that. Maybe Zachary is. I don’t know. Can I use video games as an evangelistic tool? I would say yes, you can. But there. And then this final one, I guess we’ll have about all we have time for. And I’m not sure, here it is. To all speakers.

Give one example of your personal evangelism. One example of your personal evangelism.

I guess I’ll start with me. don’t know. Yeah, I guess. don’t know. That says to all speakers, one example of your personal evangelism. And so I’ll just give myself first. There’s a coffee shop right down here. I have a Bible study every Thursday. You’re welcome to come if you’re locally. We’ll have anywhere from three to seven or eight. We’ve had one baptism out of it so far. every Thursday, 10 AM, Hillcrest Coffee Shop, right there. All right.

With the city of Chester being as big as it is, and I’m being the official representation of the African American population wherever I go, I make sure I seize an opportunity. If I see someone that’s not from there, since everybody there knows me, I hand them a business card and invite them to the Church of Christ. Does it work? Yes. We were at Connie’s last week and there was a gentleman there and he says, you know what? You’re just friendly. You knew everyone in the restaurant. And I said, I tell you what, why don’t you come by the church and see how friendly we are.

They were in town visiting him and his wife met in their church band. So he had an opportunity. He’s gonna have an opportunity to come to church and realize there ain’t no band. But you can come to church and learn what thus says the word of God. Make yourself available and don’t make it complicated.

Before I left Costa Rica, were conducting 10 to 15 Bible studies a week. We go out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We also have new converts that we study with that were, two were baptized, one was baptized in the campaign, two others were baptized this year in the work where we worked. we continue to work ⁓ in evangelism. Also, when I see people on the bus or in the community, I will talk to them about, you know, where do they go to church and.

Do they love God and love Jesus and those kinds of things? And we set up Bible studies from that. So I don’t just, you know, tell everybody to study the Bible or to contact others. I actually participate in that. And I’m sure we all do in some way.

One of the things that I regret about what I presently do is I’m just constantly on the road. And one of the things that ⁓ I do is go to congregations and help get them prepared with an evangelism plan, which is a lot of it, like what I did where I preached a few years ago, which was just door knocking. Now, it’s different cultures, but I found a lot of success, actually, when going to someone’s door and not really having a script or anything.

I would just go to the door and they would come to the door and I would just tell them who I was. And I would just tell them I’m a Christian and I was telling them I care about them. I’d say, hey, we’re just meeting people in our neighborhood. I live right down here and I just want to see how you’re doing. We’re a group of Christians here and we just want to be a blessing to our community. Is there anything we can do for you? And the looks on the people’s faces would just totally change because they’re like, wait, hold on a second. You’re not a…

door-to-door salesman type of evangelist. You know, that’s what they’re kind of used to. And what I found is that, man, within just 10 or 15, 20 seconds, the disposition of someone just totally shifts because I wasn’t there with an agenda. I was there to give them something. And actually, there are ⁓ strategies that you can use. Sometimes just ask them if you can pray for them, that kind of a thing. ⁓ They’re different.

different strategies that you can actually kind of pivot to if the ones that aren’t working aren’t working. But what I’ve found is that, at least in our culture, that’s what helps the most, I think, is when someone can see pretty quickly, this person doesn’t want anything from me. They actually just want to be a blessing to me. And so one of the things I tell the congregations where we’re gonna do campaigns, is I tell them, the goal that we’re…

that we’re trying to accomplish is to project the knowledge or the existence of this congregation so that everybody in this community at least knows that it’s here and that somebody showed interest in them in some way. Someone actually cared about them just a little bit. And that’s planting a seed for someone who may be five years from them, somebody in their family dies, and then they think, you I don’t have anybody. then, you know what, where’s that little flyer they gave me? And they pull.

Five years ago, someone actually showed that they cared about me. And so plant those little seeds everywhere that you go and you just let the Lord bring the increase on those things. Just show people that you love them. And that’s what I would say, as you’re planting, plant them with love, plant them with authenticity. If you come across as a used car salesman, then you will plant that seed with poison, essentially. Okay, so just be careful and show that you love them.

had four things happen one week. I got a phone call while I was in my office. So one of our members said, there’s a new mover on my road and I’d like to get one of the new movers basket and deliver it. And I said, that’s fantastic. And then I had another member call me and said, I just sold hay to a guy and we sat down and had a Bible study. He’s very receptive and I’m excited about it. That’s fantastic. And then that same week I had another member that called me and said, can you print out some more flyers for the youth event that’s coming up this weekend because I want to invite my neighbor’s kids. And I said, of course I can. That’s fantastic.

And then that weekend I locked my keys in my truck. This is going somewhere. A stranger stopped and said, would you like to borrow my tools? And he stayed with me for 20 minutes while the preacher broke into his truck in the Walmart parking lot. And of course in that time I got his name and his phone number and invited him into my home for a Bible study. And when he arrives, guess what we discovered? All four of us have been prospecting the same guy. That’s Congregational Evangelism.

said I’m gonna be real quick so someone can time me. One of the things that my family does is we go to the same restaurant every Sunday, every single week, and they know us. In fact, if we miss a Sunday, they’ll ask us how, you know, was there something wrong? Were you out of town? ⁓ But we’ve been able to talk to them. They will come and give us prayer requests and we’ve been trying to get them to come to worship and to set up a Bible study. But as of yet, they’re

they’re Catholics and so they go to early mass so they can start working. And so I’m trying to figure out a way to do something. One of the, if you know anything about Mexican restaurants, there is ⁓ Cinco de Mayo, which is a big celebration. I think it was last year Cinco de Mayo came on a Sunday. And this is how well they knew us and how, ⁓ and that was that we, the Sunday before they came to us,

the owner of the restaurant and the waitress said, don’t come next Sunday because we know it’s going to get kind of crazy in here with all the drinking and the partying and stuff. And we just want to warn you about that. That told me that we made an impression on them. And something just real quick also, my daughter’s in veterinarian school. That’s kind of a, know, yay me. ⁓

But she’s in a public school and one of the things that she did is she sent an email out to all the veterinarian students that she was gonna have a host a Bible study in her apartment. And 12 girls came and they’ve been coming every single week to the Bible study. One of them is actually Muslim. so I’m very, know, everywhere you go, can study the Bible.

what a lot of people have been saying, speakers have said already. mean, the opportunities are everywhere if we just open our eyes to them, you know. All right, that’s all we have time for today. We appreciate your attendance and being with us. We’re gonna break here. The alumni thing upstairs is going on. Reserve your spot for tomorrow. And then tonight, as we do every night of the lectureship at 6.30, 6.30, we will have ⁓ congregational singing.

And so if you’re a male member of the church, faithful member, we’re to sit on the front pews and you can have a chance to lead a song. We’ll start out with the young ones to warm us up and then we’ll get to the other ones and that’ll be from 630 to seven and then our first speaker will be at seven o’clock tonight. And so tonight we’ll have two lessons, teaching belief and evangelism. And at seven p.m. we have, our tradition is we always have a graduate of school at the seven p.m.

We have graduates of the school at the other times too on the lectureship, but always at 7 p.m. And the track on that is teaching, is basically the plan of salvation, ⁓ teaching that, emphasizing that in evangelism each night. And so tonight, C.J. Grimes will be teaching, ⁓ the topic teaching belief in evangelism. And then at 7.40 p.m., Sydney Moore, one of our graduates also.

We’ll have a lesson on spiritual renewal from Psalm 51. so I pray that you can be here tonight for that. And then have a great day tomorrow, but we’ll have more to say about that later. If you haven’t picked up the brochure, please do so. They’re on the tables over here. And we are glad that you are here. Let us go to God in prayer as we dismiss this session. Gracious God and loving Father, we are so thankful for this day, so thankful for the many lessons that we have heard today and the

material contained in them, the challenges contained in them, and we pray that this lectureship will be more than just accumulating information, but it will help us, motivate us, and give us ideas and strengths to go out and to evangelize. We love you so much, and we thank you for the opportunities that you give us, especially the opportunity to be saved and to glorify your name. Be with us now as we break. Help us, Father, as we enjoy each other and enjoy you in fellowship.

And it’s in Jesus’ name that we pray, amen.