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Mission Update

bring Jesus

Mission Update 13-10-2

I just read an article which quoted Barna Research as saying that “of unchurched adults invited to church by a friend [in the US], only 18% accepted that invitation and attended.” Wow! “Only” 18%. If only it worked that well in Australia and New Zealand, or in Europe for that matter. If one in five who were invited to a church event actually came, what an effective evangelism strategy that would be.

They could be invited to worship and other events where they heard the gospel in a winsome way from a trained professional like a pastor. If only they would come! But mostly they won’t.

The article by Brent Dolfo on exploring new paradigms for effective evangelism describes how large US churches that have relied on training its people to invite others and have a ‘we do church better’ approach are now finding that their effectiveness is declining. He concludes, “The reality is a significant percentage of the population will never be impacted if we only use the ‘invite your friends to church‘ approach.” [You can read the article at http://leadnet.org/blog/post/exploring_new_paradigms_for_effective_evangelism]

If “come” doesn’t work, then how do we “go”? We live out our vocations in the world. We are parents, children, neighbours, friends, workers, students, and more. We also play sport, go to gyms, hang around in cafés, and engage in other leisure activities. Everywhere we go and in everything we do, we bring Jesus. That is the nature of things. We can’t do anything else. Jesus lives in us and we are in him, so everywhere we go Jesus comes along. It is an ordinary, everyday reality.

Jesus comes along with me when I do the routine things, not just on special occasions. We are not just Christians when we are worshipping or praying. We live out our faith in our vocations, that is, in the things God calls us to do in the world. That doesn’t mean we need to cram Jesus down everyone’s throat at every opportunity. In fact, in the first place it is more about who – and whose – we are, than about what we do. It is about our identity. It is part of our story.

Friends are real with friends about what makes them tick. Personally I enjoy carpentry and caravanning. My friends know this. But I try not to be a bore about it. Sometimes they ask for help with fixing something. That’s good. Friends help one another. My friends also know I am a disciple of Jesus. They may think of it as a hobby of mine. I wouldn’t put it that way, but that is ok. Once they get to know me as a friend and discover that I don’t appear to be a complete nut-job  but that I have problems like everyone else then we can be friends. Everyone needs friends. Every neighbourhood or network needs authentic community. We can work together on making that happen and on service projects that makes it a better place. And because we bring Jesus everywhere we go, Jesus naturally finds his way into conversations and his blessing on us becomes a blessing for others.

In the article the acrostic BLESS is used to help us understand how we live out our vocations as those who bring Jesus. It goes like this
Begin with prayer for neighbours, co-workers and friends
Listen to your neighbours, co-workers and friends
Eat with them, share meals and invite them into your home
Serve them and serve with them
Share your story in bits and pieces when the time is right

I plan to change the name of this e-news list to “bring Jesus” in order to better reflect the reality that for us Christians that is what we do. Naturally.

Steen



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