Category — Life in General

When people see us out on the streets open-air preaching and passing out tracts… When they see the reaction of the people as they reach or ask for a tract… When they see the folks gather around to hear the preaching of the Gospel… When they see a one-on-one encounter with a lost person that actually listens to and understands the Gospel… You know what the most common words are that I hear?

“That just doesn’t work in the States.”

Well, I beg to differ. I think it “doesn’t work in the States” because many Christians simply don’t witness — they don’t evangelize, they don’t pass out tracts, and they don’t preach open-air. And the reason given is this:

“That just doesn’t work in the States.”

Yes it does. It “works” in any culture, any society, at any time, and with any people group. It “works” because God said it does:

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God… For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.  [1Cor 1.18-21]

Here are some examples that, yes, it does “work” in the States — biblical evangelism (purposeful, intentional witnessing to people we do not know) “works” in the United States of America.

Trish Ramos took advantage of a TV program filming a segment near her hometown and passed out tracts. Click the image of Trish (using the “Curved Illusion” tract); right around the 2:30 to the 3:00 minute mark you can see her passing out million dollar bill tracts and the people receive them just like they do here (with a smile and an outstretched hand!).

Here’s Ray Comfort passing out a ton of the “Giant Money” tracts in record time at a convention (who couldn’t do this?!):

Darrell Rundus makes it look easy (because it is! …once you get over your fear and intimidation):

How about open-air preaching in the USA? Here are some pics and links to guys that preach open-air on a regular basis. Check out the crowds they have, and if you watch the videos you can see that they crowds stay, they listen, and they interact.

Here’s Ray Comfort at Huntington Beach (hang with it if you watch the video… it’s a great example of how to use a heckler to preach the Gospel to those who are listening):

Here’s Tony Miano in Glendale:

Here are four of Leon Brown (he’s very good at interacting with the crowd — very articulate and interesting):

So, why would anyone say that biblical evangelism doesn’t work in the States? I still say the main reason is fear — people fear because they have not been trained. Here’s a quote from a great tool for getting trained up (Todd Friel’s “Terrified“):

Nobody expects a soldier to go into battle without training and proper equipment. Yet we are frequently encouraged to witness and share our faith without training and without weapons.

So get trained up! And get some good “weapons”! Ray has a great DVD on how to open-air preach (and not just “street holler”). I think a lot of us don’t like to give out tracts because the tracts we’ve seen make us ashamed of the Gospel when we give them out. Get good tracts! Get tracts you like so you will like to give them out. Spurgeon said that!

When preaching and private talk are not available, you have a tract ready, and this is often an effectual method. Some tracts would not convert a beetle: there is not enough in them to interest a fly. Get good striking tracts, or none at all. But a telling, touching gospel tract may often be the seed of eternal life; therefore, do not go out without your tracts.

You know… even if it didn’t “work in the States,” we should do it because God told us to. But, if you just take a look at the videos above, you’ll see it does work. Folks, the needs is great, the message is urgent, and there’s so few that labor in the harvest. Let’s be different.

Penn Jillette is an atheist and he had some comments out on YouTube about a Christian witnessing to him (five minutes long). I find it amazing that he (an atheist) gets it, but we (Christians) often don’t. Here’s a quote:

I’ve always said that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize… If you believe that there’s a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life… and you think that… well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward… How much do you have to hate somebody to NOT proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and NOT tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming to hit you and you didn’t believe it… and that truck is bearing down on you… there’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is MORE IMPORTANT than that.

Folks, an atheist understands what’s at stake and what a true believer will do. If we really believe the Gospel, how can we keep silent?

One of my biggest obstacles to witnessing has been fear (fear of man, fear of rejection, fear of… evangelizing). But one of the greatest ways to get over your fear is to get training. We would never consider sending a man to battle without proper training and weapons, but that’s exactly what happens to so many Christians today. They want to evangelize and they are exhorted to do so from the pulpit, but they don’t know how — they have no training and no weapons.

So, get trained up. Learn to use the “weapons” of our warfare: The Law of God. And then let’s get out in the battle because people are perishing in their sins…

• The School of Biblical Evangelism
• The Basic Training Course
• Training video for Open-Air Preaching
• Cahill’s Material (or better yet: Invite Cahill to speak at your church or ministry!)
• Tracts from Living Waters
• Tracts from Custom Tract Source

If we really believe the Gospel… If we really believe the Bible… If we really believe there is an eternal heaven and an eternal hell… How can we keep silent? Folks, even an atheist understands that much. ~Greg

One of the key goals for this year is “leadership development.” As Paul instructs Timothy in 2Timothy 2.2, I want to replace myself by investing in faithful men the things that I’ve been taught, so that they can continue the work investing in others.

Much of leadership development seems to hinge on personal character and diligence (being a “self-starter” and disciplined in finishing things well). Those kinds of things can’t be taught; character is a result of spiritual growth and maturity (the work of the Holy Spirit) and diligence is a matter of personal choice.

There are, however, certain skills and a certain knowledge base that a leader in the ministry should have. I’ve always struggled with defining just what those skills are, and just what that knowledge should be. This last year, God has put two key tools into my hands that seem to be just what we need in order to get our leadership development where it needs to be: [1] Adsit’s Personal Discipleship and [2] Sam Mile’s “SOT.” I’ll be talking about “SOT” in a separate post soon, but I’d like to share with you the tool that’s coming out of some material Christopher Adsit put together under the title “Personal Discplemaking.” Here are the links:

• Adsit’s ministry web site: DiscipleMakers International
• Adsit’s book and “kit” (I got them both, and I’m glad I did — you need the charts and stuff).

Here’s what the whole thing is about (in a nutshell):

Adsit’s premise is that we shouldn’t rely on a “materials-based” discipleship, but rather learn to focus on the disciple and his personal needs in seven specific areas of growth: Prayer, Word, Witnessing, Fellowship, Personal Growth, Ministry, and Family. I found two major problems with his approach (in the context of personal discipleship):

1. The average Christian that wants to participate in discipleship almost always needs a material-based discipleship “program” because he works a full-time job, has a family, etc. etc. and cannot put in the time required to do all that Adsit suggests (which leads me to my second point).
2. Adsit’s book is thorough and quite complete. That means it’s complicated. I had to read the book through twice to get a handle on it, and then a third time to start breaking it down into practical steps… and I’m still chewing on some of it to get it worked out in a way I can easily teach it to others. I had to hang his “Disciplemaking Growth Grid” beside my computer and look at it every day just so I could make my brain figure it all out. The average Christian isn’t going to have the time to digest it all (or maybe I’m just not the sharpest knife in the drawer).

However, he really did his homework and his stuff is very, very good. I just don’t see it fitting into our “basic discipleship” area of ministry. I see it fitting in very well on the other end — the last stages of discipleship (”advanced discipleship”), or what we call “leadership development.”

One of Adsit’s strong points is his focus on evaluation and planning. He has a really good series of questionnaires that, if answered honestly, will give you a fairly good idea of where your disciple (or future leader) is at in the process of growth through his seven areas (mentioned above). You “plot” that growth and evaluation on the big “Growth Grid” (like the one I hung by my computer).

Basically what it does is show you where you have “holes” in the development of your men.

I needed that! So, here’s what I’ve done with this stuff so far:

• I translated all his questionnaires and his Growth Grid.
• I put each one of the seven areas of the Growth Grid on a separate sheet of paper, while maintaining the large Growth Grid with short descriptions of each element evaluated.
• This way I have a tool to put in the hands of others who want to do the same kind of evaluation. They don’t have to wade through all the “how-to” stuff that’s buried in Adsit’s book. They grab the questionnaires, give them to their guys, and then when they get them back, they just have to go through the one-sheet summaries of each growth area checking off what’s “done” and what needs to be “shored up.” If they want, they can also check off the same things on the big Growth Grid to get an “at-a-glance” snapshot of a leader’s spiritual growth and development.

Nice! I love it! And like I said, it was something I definitely needed because I was constantly looking out at my men wondering, “What does this guy still need…? What does the fellow over here need…?” Now at least I have a tool to help me define needs. It’s not an end-all-be-all, but it’s shaping up to be a good leadership develpment tool in that it’s showing me the holes in the develpment of my men as mature disciples of our Lord.

Of course, along with all that, I’m combining Adsits “philosophy of discipleship” (four levels of growth) with my stuff from KCBT (seven stages of discipleship and five primary goals in spiritual growth). I’m hoping to have a good, solid discipleship course I could give in a week at a conference, and then I’d leave our Biblical Discipleship material with the people to begin to put it all into practice. This type of “philosophy” or “how-to” teaching has been something that’s always been lacking in our discipleship. With Adsit’s help, I think we’re going to get this shored up nicely.