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Archive for the ‘Christian Missions’ Category

For Those Who Have Fire In Their Bones

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

You are not the preacher. You are not the head of anything at church. But you have a great ministry just started, or a great ministry idea that you would like to see get traction and grow.  What do you do now? Here are a few tips from our experience of trying to get Let’s Start Talking established in lots of churches. This is what we have learned from watching people enthusiastic about short-term missions try to work with their home congregation.

  1. Don’t even start unless you are committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed yourself! Lots of people want to start things for other people to do. Just forget it! You should be able to accomplish the ministry yourself—at some level—or you will never get others to buy into it. For LST, this means that if you are not willing to go, you will not be successful in getting other people to go.
  2. Try to get the blessing of church leadership from the very beginning. If the preacher and/or church leaders are opposed to your ministry idea, it is not likely to survive. It might possibly survive if they are indifferent, but the chances are much better if you have their blessing.  Notice, I said blessing, not commitment. See below!
  3. Do not expect to get leadership commitment to your ministry until you have proven that it will be successful! LST actually made this mistake in our Centurion project which launched about three years ago. We asked churches to commit to a goal of sending 100 workers with LST over a five-year period—with no financial commitment whatsoever.  Although a few churches committed, we were absolutely shocked at how resistant most churches were to making any kind of a commitment at all.  We have since modified our approach, so that we only ask for permission to test run LST in their congregation to see if their members have a good experience with it.  Church leaders are much more open to us with this approach.
  4. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Join with established ministries who have proven track records and who can help jumpstart your ministry. So you think your teens should do mission trips to learn to share their faith! Rather than asking your youth minister or some parents to plan and organize such a trip, why not ask a ministry like LST YoungFriends to help you, since we have been planning short-term missions, including special ones for teen groups, for thirty years! If you want to start something for the poor, why not contact existing ministries and partner with them–or after-school programs, or abused women, or English As A Second Language outreach??
  5. Be spiritually prepared to be ignored. If I were a church leader and if I knew what kind of transformation happens to every person who spends two weeks on an LST project, I would do everything in my power to make it possible for every person in the church I was leading to participate—there, I said it as boldly and honestly as I can.  However, the fact is that a very small percentage of Christians really want to engage their faith as actively as most ministries require. If you, as the promoter of your ministry, let the massive indifference discourage you, then you are defeated! You must be willing to do your work without recognition, without popularity, and without any other reward than the smile of the Father!  If you need more than this, you will give up!
  6. God has His own schedule for growth! I love flowers—Sherrylee calls them annuals and perennials and I have a vague idea what that means. But I really love flowering trees. I love the blooms on our fruit trees, I love the beautiful white flowers of the Bradford pear trees, and I really love the Oklahoma redbuds!! The time from seed to bloom is very different for these plants. In reality, only God knows the proper time and season for your ministry to bloom. You can choose to acknowledge God’s sovereignty here—or you can try to set your own schedule. Occasionally, we may be able to hothouse something into rapid growth—but these efforts are rarely long-lived. I recommend you let God be in control.
  7. If you are called by God to a ministry, you will never be truly happy until you are answering the call—so get on with it!  I love the story of Jeremiah, called by God to be a prophet to the nations, who yells at God and says, “You deceived me! I did what you called me to do and I’m having a terrible time! In fact, I’ve tried to quit several times . . . but I couldn’t because your word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones–and I can’t keep it in.” (Jer. 20:7-9)

One of the biggest problems ministries have is surviving the exhilarating start-up phase.  I’ll give you some suggestions about that in the next post.

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What Does God Think About Fund Raising?

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on September 28, 2010| 4 Comments »

Consider the lilies of the field!

Just one month ago, Let’s Start Talking began our annual general fundraising drive.  We had approximately five weeks left in our fiscal year and were $135,000 short of our 2010 budget projections for fund raising—a very serious amount for LST.

We had a multi-pronged approach for reaching our fundraising goals: We all committed to prayerfully ask God; Sherrylee committed to calling all general donors (not worker donors) from the last two years; the staff committed to calling all our former LST workers who had been out of college at least five years, and we would ask the guests attending our Harvest Call Benefit Dinner on September 25th in Fort Worth to give. Our need/goal  was much greater than we had every even dreamed of attempting before.

By God’s grace and mercy, I’m happy to say that we received enough donations to cover the entire ministry shortfall!  I’d like to share with you, not how-to’s, but lessons remembered and learned in this month of intense fund raising!

  • God is rich! He has all the money in the world. If we look at money has something that belongs to us, then we should worry about the hard economic times many of our supporters are facing! If we understand that God is the Creator and Donor of everything we receive, then we and the people we ask for funds are just caretakers/managers/temporary users of His things!  And He is not short of funds!
  • God is grace-full! The core idea in the word grace is that of a gift!  When we ask people for gifts, we are asking for grace. If they give us a gift, they extend grace to us. If God is the First Donor of every good gift (James 1:17), then His generosity is the same as His graciousness—and He is rich in grace (Ephesians 2:7), full of grace (John 1:14), there is no end to His generosity!
  • Asking is part of God’s plan. I know we hate to ask, but this must be our problem because over and over, God has told us to ask!  Listen to these explicit instructions from God:

“If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Matthew 21:22

“Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” John 16:24

“We have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him”. 1 John 3:21-22.

Maybe our problem is that we have gotten into the habit of asking for ourselves.

“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:3)

  • Offering others an opportunity to be blessed is a wonderful act of Christian love! Donating is a special opportunity to receive God’s blessing, if we really believe  Jesus’ words, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)

A Choice Between Fear and Confidence!

The economy is poor, everyone’s budget is tight, our home church just launched a huge capital campaign, the economic future is unpredictable—these are all good reasons to fear asking Christians for special gifts to meet big goals.

God is rich, God is generous, and God is good—these are all better reasons for not being afraid to ask Christians for special gifts to meet big goals.

The last month of asking for LST and the astounding goodness of God in fulfilling all of His generous promises has confirmed for me again that fear is a sin, not a choice.

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Can You Always Tell A Flower From A Weed?

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Culture, Christian Missions, Other on September 8, 2010| 5 Comments »

How would Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who organized the International Quran Burning Day, respond if a local imam in Chicago organized an International Bible Burning Day?  I never ceased to be amazed at what people will say and do in the name of Jesus!

Before anyone begins to think that I am a typical post-modern religious relativist, let me just put that idea to bed. I believe that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus (John 14:6), that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved (Acts 4:12).  I do not believe that Mohammed was a prophet of God. Is that said clearly enough?

I bet this pastor has no Muslim friends. Having friends you love who differ from you changes the tone of your conversations, even when you cannot change the core truths of those conversations.

And knowing Jesus changes the tone of your conversations.  What do you do with these words even if you consider Islam of the Enemy:  “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27)?

I’m sure this pastor has said that they don’t hate the people, just the Sin that the people represent. I’ve said those kinds of things myself, but why does it always feel like a very, very impoverished expression of love?  What parts of Sin can we hate before we can’t tell the difference any more between the Sin and the Sinner?  This is a legitimate question.

Isn’t the problem that in our frailty, we  do not control our “hate” well—such a strong and terrible word—so we have difficulty avoiding the slippery slope that starts with the SIN, but finds its way too quickly to the sinner.  Maybe it is more God’s role to hate Sin?  Since God is perfect Love, He doesn’t slip at all where we too often slide.

Perhaps this is why Jesus told the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13:

24Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

27“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28” ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29” ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ “

We Christians apparently are not adept at telling wheat from weeds—at least that’s what Jesus said.  The day will come when He will judge with righteous judgment—and it will be a terrible day for those who do not love the truth!  But until then, God “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9).

I don’t think Paul would lead a church to burn the Torah. He didn’t take a baseball bat to the idols in Athens! He didn’t melt the silver Artemis icons in Ephesus. I don’t think he would have burned Qurans either.  Paul’s words that I keep hearing are “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some (2 Corinthians 9:22).

My wife and I have a lovely back yard with lots of flowers and shrubs and beautiful growing things that we inherited from the previous homeowners. We are this week, for at least the third or fourth time, changing our yard service. They keep pulling up flowers because they can’t tell them apart from the weeds! And they are professionals!!

I gave up weeding our yard long ago! I’m gradually learning to give it up in the world as well!

What about you?

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Let the Children On the Plane!

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2010| 7 Comments »

Are you waiting until your children are teenagers before you think about going on a short-term mission trip with them?  DON’T!

I know what the popular wisdom is here:

  • Young children won’t understand or appreciate the experience, so wait until they will get more out of it.
  • Young children are a pain to travel with.
  • Young children are not really useful, so it is hard to justify the expense.
  • Young children are impossible to fund raise for, so you can’t afford to take them.

EVERYTHING ABOVE, I BELIEVE TO BE TOTALLY WRONG!

  • The best time for children to experience missions first is when their young minds and hearts are still soft and impressionable–not after their hormones create havoc in them for a few years.  We have 8 grandkids under the age of 8. Only the two born this year and the 3 yr old have not been on a foreign LST project, and most of them have been multiple times. They have friends in Japan. They are not afraid of foreign languages. They know what the grown-ups are talking about when they tell of teaching others about Jesus. They are very disappointed in the years they can’t go.
  • There are challenges to traveling with young kids–but they make little kids suitcases and backpacks.  They will sleep in the airplane seats. Travel is quite a fun game if the parents will invest just a little time to make it so!
  • Children are magnets on the mission field. No matter whether it is Germany or Africa or China or Turkey, adults accompanied by small children find it much more common to get into conversations with people.  I know of 6-8 year olds who have “helped” other children with their English, while their parents read the Bible in English with LST workers.  Children may be the best missionaries ever!!
  • Unfortunately, the previously mentioned misconceptions do make it difficult sometimes to raise money for children to go. We faced this even more strongly back in the 80s, when the Woodwards were starting LST, towing 3 small children behind them. I just dug in my heels and said, we don’t go without them–and tried to educate people on the good a whole family does who goes together. God provided.

Many, many mission churches do not have whole families. Often only the mother and children come, or only the father, or only the children.  To see a whole family–parents and kids–being Christians together is inspiring to onlookers, no matter what country you are in.

Your decision to take your children on a short-term mission trip will be one of the best decisions you have ever made!  And when you do it the second time, you will thank God for removing the doubts that you had.

And your children, when they are young adults,  will put their arms around you and thank you for doing something wonderful that dramatically changed their lives and helped them know God!

And is there anything in this world you want more than that?

Don’t wait!

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What If Our Kids Can’t Tell The Story!

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

Several years ago, Sherrylee and I were at the Tulsa Soul-Winning Workshop and heard Harold Shank quote a statistic in his keynote address that said that the number one correlating factor with continued faith in God and a relationship to His church after high school is a summer mission experience.

Sherrylee and I turned to each other literally and said that is what Let’s Start Talking has been offering college students!  But if what he said is true, we can’t ignore high school kids any more. So we put together a mission package for high schoolers called YoungFriends that LST now offers to churches as part of our comprehensive church transformation ministry (Centurion Project).

Several challenges surfaced in presenting this opportunity to youth ministers. One of them concerns me more than the others.  Here is the general list. Can you guess which one concerns me most?

  • Youth ministers are sometimes organized and sometimes not—not any different from anyone else, except it takes a lot of organization and planning to pull off a good summer mission project.
  • Youth ministers are often trumped in money decisions by senior ministers or elders who may or may not share their vision.
  • Youth ministers are also at the mercy of parents, so only to the degree that parents trust their youth minister are they willing to let him step very far out in faith.
  • Youth ministers generally tend towards service projects over evangelistic missions.

Of course, this last point is the one that concerns me most.  In our presentation to Youth Ministers, we have tried to present an evangelistic mission option—one where kids learn to tell the story of Jesus and share their own faith in a natural and non-confrontational way– as one that makes sense in a stair step approach to mission experiences.

Young people start by learning to have a heart for people, but perhaps don’t have the social skills or cross cultural experience yet to really share their faith, but by the time they get to be juniors or seniors in high school, why isn’t it time to help them verbalize their own faith story and show them natural ways for them to share their faith in Jesus with others?

Although this idea seemed to resonant with lots of people in theory, when it got to decision time, most youth ministers opted for the service project over anything evangelistic.  I think they go this way for any or all of the following reasons:

  • Service projects are tangible. Your goal is to paint a house. You buy paint and brushes, you go to the house, you paint, you clean up, and then you go home, knowing that you have accomplished your goal. You have painted a house and done good for the sake of Christ.
  • Service projects are more predictable. Things can go wrong, of course. You can run out of paint, but then you can usually buy more pretty easily. You might not finish, but it looks better than it did. Things that do go wrong are fairly easily remedied.
  • Service projects are generally low risk.  They often can be done relatively close to home. A large group can all do the same thing in the same place for mutual protection. Not much interaction with strangers. Easily supervised.  No risk of rejection.
  • Service projects are familiar to both the youth minister and other adult sponsors, as well as parents and church leaders.

Faith-sharing mission projects are a harder sell for the following reasons:

  • Faith-sharing missions are harder to describe to parents, elders, and kids.  What “strategy” or “method” are you going to use to talk to people? How are you going to meet the people you want to talk to? What if they don’t want to talk to you?
  • Faith-sharing takes most people way out of their comfort zone, so it is a harder sell. (Of course, I’m pretty sure if we did it more, we would be a lot more comfortable doing it.)
  • Faith-sharing has greater risks. Again, what if someone rejects you? What if you mess up and don’t say the right things?  What if they ask you a question and you don’t know the answer?  Isn’t this why most adults don’t share their faith?
  • Faith-sharing mission trips are much less predictable. What if the local church doesn’t prepare well? What if no one responds to advertising? Why if local Christian teens don’t warm up to the visiting group quickly? What if it rains all week, so no visitors come? Because a faith-sharing mission is totally dependent on people, LOTS of things are unpredictable!!
  • Faith-sharing mission trips are not familiar experiences for most Christians.

And they never will be familiar unless we find a way–starting with our young people—to learn to share faith as one of the most natural activities of the Christian lifestyle.

A professor of youth ministry at one of our Christian colleges, when asked why youth ministers do not tend to choose evangelistic mission opportunities, told us that he had queried all of his youth majors about this and that NONE OF THEM had ever had a personal faith-sharing experience. They themselves had only experienced service project missions, so, of course, they tend to do with their youth what their own youth ministers had done with them.  If our ministry leaders have never shared their faith personally . . . .?

If we don’t teach our kids to tell the story of Jesus, who will do it?

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What Is The Real Pain of Missions?

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on August 28, 2010| 1 Comment »

I am more. I have . . . been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. 27I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?  (2 Corinthians 11:23-29)

I am less—much less. Yes, once our car was hit by a bus in Germany, but I only had a sore neck from it. I’m pretty sure I was followed by a KGB-type guy in Russia once—at least he showed up in three different places when I was in one of the former “hidden” cities of Russia. I got food poisoning once at a nice restaurant in China, which led to my first and only experience with acupuncture at a local doctor’s office. I have slept on many couches that were too small, in Japan we even slept on floor palettes—but, of course, almost everyone does there—oh, and there was a small earthquake—but no damage.

I have flown on some pretty scary planes, one with instructions for emergency landings which said, “Throw rope out of window and climb out carefully!” We once rode a Romanian train that was so dark and the windows were so dirty that we actually arrived in Sibiu about 2am and none of us knew that we were there. When we did get off the train, it was so dark that we could not tell which direction to walk on the platform to exit the train station.

Well, enough of this silliness! I’m always moved by Paul’s suffering as a missionary for Christ. But as we were reading this in our LST staff devotional on Friday, the thought that struck me as even more amazing than the physical sufferings he endured was in the sentence: “Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches (v. 28).

Paul is saying, “Sure, I face the possibility of death—violent death—almost every day, but what really bothers me is the stress I have, the stress I feel over the spiritual survival of the churches I have served and the people whom I have taught.”

I do know the sadness of watching a church I have helped to plant struggle and die. I do know the pain of sitting with your children in the faith and listen to them justify their immorality by altering their view of God. But I hear in Paul’s final words in this list of sufferings an intensity of daily concern that far surpasses his fear of floggings, shipwrecks, and bandits.

Paul has the heart of a real parent who would rather die themselves than see their children lost. Paul has the heart of Christ who weeps over Jerusalem.

Who am I weeping over? Daily?

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Follow-up: Take this Quick Poll

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , , on August 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Following up my post on “I Just Have To Ask . . . ” I thought I would give you a chance to express your own opinion about being asked for donations.  If you didn’t read the blog, go ahead and take the poll, then click on this link (http://wp.me/pO3kT-6S) to go back to it.  Feel free to use the new share buttons and get some of your friends to take the poll. The more, the merrier.  (And you will not get a fund raising request by answering the poll–I know what you were thinking!)

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“I Just Have To Ask . . . .”

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , on August 26, 2010| 3 Comments »

I was caught off guard the other day in a conversation about fund-raising. We are just beginning our month-long annual fund-raising drive for the Let’s Start Talking Ministry, and I was talking to the staff about who we were going to be calling. Leslee spoke up and said, “Well don’t call Charlie Marshall (name changed) because he hates to be asked to give!”

Now I know Charlie pretty well. He does mission trips with LST every year and is a strong advocate at his church for this ministry, so I was a bit shocked to hear that he doesn’t like to be asked to give to the ministry. Here are the reasons that I came up with—and I wonder if they are generally applicable to more people than just Charlie??

  • He spends lots of his own money financing his own LST mission trips, so that should be enough.
  • He does his charitable giving for missions through his home church and thinks everybody should.
  • He doesn’t have any more money to give and is embarrassed to say no.
  • He has more money to give, but doesn’t want to and doesn’t want to have to say so.

Maybe you can think of other possibilities?

Then I was having  another conversation with missionary friends of ours who work in Africa. I was asking about a situation where some African brothers were asking LST to finance their church building project and a car—which is totally outside of LST’s mission.  He was reminding me that in many parts of Africa, asking for things from those who appear to have them is just like breathing. It is a survival technique that is not at all considered “begging,” or anything else that we westerners might find demeaning.

He then told me that just as it is natural for them to ask for what they feel they need, it is perfectly ok with them for you to say No as well.  He was telling me about how African preachers sometimes come to him and ask why the Americans get so upset when they are asked for something!!  Interesting, isn’t it!

I think a lot of us are Charlies who don’t like to be asked for money—maybe other stuff as well, but especially money, but here is a point I need you to think about

What if God were just like us—and didn’t want to be asked for anything, especially something that was His?

Our prayers would be a lot shorter, wouldn’t they!  In fact, as I think about asking and giving, several biblical texts come to mind that make me think that God is much different from us.

  • Matthew 5:42 – Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
  • Matthew 7:7 – Ask and it will be given to you. . . .
  • Matthew 7:11 – . . . how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
  • John 14:14 – You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it
  • James 4:2 – You want something but don’t get it.  . . . . You do not have, because you do not ask God.

Doesn’t this sound like it is OK with God to be an asker—in fact, He desires it!  I believe that means for me that if I am trying to be godly that it is OK , not only for me to ask others, but to be asked by others!

So my conclusion is that I am going to choose not to be offended when asked for something. And I am not going to be embarrassed if I cannot fulfill the request and must say no.  It’s a very liberating decision actually.

And where I would really like to get to is to be as God is described in Ephesians 3:20: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask. . . .” If we love others like God loves us, then it will give us great pleasure to be asked for something we can give—and we will give more than we were even asked for!

I have a great illustration of a personal experience with someone already like this: Byron Nelson, one of the greatest golfers ever and a generous Christian. It’s longer, so I’ll post it next.

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Part Two: Turning Pain Into Pleasure

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2010| 1 Comment »

I dreaded Tuesday night! It was the night the LST staff committed to start telephoning our alumni to ask them to donate during our annual Harvest Call drive. I don’t really like talking on phones, I don’t like calling people I don’t really know, and I don’t like talking about money with people I didn’t want to call in the first place!  Most of you know how I feel!

I dialed 22 numbers in about an hour: nine were bad, six were not at home, and I had seven WONDERFUL conversations with people who had done Let’s Start Talking Projects as long as ten years ago. I had to be pried away from my phone at the end of the session.

I’m telling you this because I believe it bears on our conversation about the distress many Christians feel because they can’t bring themselves to share their faith actively as they really want to.  Personal evangelism and fund-raising belong to the same group of bad words.

In the last blog, I listed a number of rationalizations for not personally sharing your faith, so now I’d like to offer you some practical suggestions about how to avoid those excuses and allow yourself to do what you really want to do!

  1. You must make a decision about Jesus. If you don’t really feel like other people need to hear the Gospel story and that they must decide to put on Christ in order to participate in His redemption of the world, then consider yourself off the hook—you don’t have anything to say to anyone that will make a difference.  If, however, you do believe that Jesus is the resurrected Son of God and that only through Him does anyone have the promise of eternal salvation, then you are back on the hook—but you are more highly motivated.  So decide!  You will feel better instantly.
  2. Overcome your fears by focusing on others. No one wants to be embarrassed or rejected or belittled or even awkward.  Think about the times when you were willing to take big personal risks, however, for someone you love. If your child needs help, what door would you not knock on regardless of awkwardness or possibility of rejection? If your spouse had an emergency, what personal risk would you not take to ensure his/her safety? Love conquers fear—it’s a cliché, I know, but it is true.
  3. Don’t assume you know what others think or feel. If you assume that because someone does not go to church on Sunday that they are not a believer, you could be very wrong. If someone told you three years ago that they weren’t interested in knowing about your faith, things could have happened to open them up.  If people know that you love them, they will not be offended or react badly to almost anything you might say to them in love—even if they disagree.
  4. Start with people you are around! A friend of mine just decided to start speaking to the people she met each morning during her walk around her neighborhood. Then she started praying for the people she met. Next she decided to invite them to join her in a conversational Bible study in her home.   Another friend just decided to invite her colleagues at the surgery center where she works to join her in a conversational Bible study during their lunch hour.
  5. Make a plan for moving from casual conversation to spiritual. This is very important—and where many starting efforts fail! Starting a small group Bible study is an easy way because the purpose for your invitation is specific.  One can learn, however, how to listen for opportunities to open faith conversations, even in the most informal settings.  Asking someone who has shared a problem or concern with you if they would mind if you included them in your prayers. This is a good, honest way to start. You can offer to pray for almost anyone, including people of non-Christian faiths. I have never heard of anyone refusing such a gracious offer. And it might lead to a faith conversation. 
  6. Just start. That’s what I decided to do on Tuesday during the fund-raising call out! Even just dialing the first number made me antsy. Just like you in your first attempt at a faith conversation, I was glad when it turned out to be a bad number.  But I know that after the first genuine conversation you experience with someone who is glad that you talked with them about Jesus, you will be exhilarated and will experience the joy of sharing Jesus.

Of the seven phone conversations I had on Tuesday night, six promised to make a donation and only one said they could not! Almost no one becomes a Christian without someone they know (a family member or friend) telling them their story.  Talk to the people in your class at church who became followers as adults and my guess is that virtually ALL of them will say that they came to Christ because someone who loved them took the time to talk to them.

If you have the fire in your bones (Jeremiah 20:9), then give up trying to hold it in; you can’t. God is too good and you love Him too much!

P.S. The conversational Bible study material published by Let’s Start Talking in its Sycamore Series would be a great tool for you to use as you begin. (www.sycamoreseries.org)

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Are You Looking For Pain Relief?

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , on August 17, 2010| 3 Comments »

Many Christians feel the painful tension between knowing in their hearts that other people in their circles need Jesus, and recognizing in themselves the overwhelming reluctance to do anything actively about it.

Motivational sermons make us feel even guiltier, instructional sermons don’t speak to our fears. Most of what is offered in our churches just makes us feel worse.  Typical churches today, probably concerned mostly with retaining their members, no longer talk about personal evangelism because it just makes people feel bad.

(Even as I write this, I find myself hesitating to use words like evangelism or personal work because they are not only outmoded, but also out of favor! Even the word mission hangs on a similar cliff of unpopularity.)

The Gospel story is so much about sharing, however, that this pain is still there, so we look for relief through less painful means.  For instance, tell me that you haven’t heard—perhaps even used—the following to relieve the pain:

  • Invite people to church, better to a social event at the building, and best, to something for their children.  That’s all you have to do.
  • Just live a Christian life in front of people, that’s enough.
  • Contribute to—at least pray for–someone else going somewhere else to share your faith.
  • Just do some good service in the community.

Don’t hear me wrong. These are all excellent activities for Christians, but if you are burdened with the passionate desire to share the story of Jesus with those who don’t know Him, these good deeds can all be unsatisfactory replacements.

What then would be required for you to find true relief from the painful tension of your heartfelt desire to share Jesus and the overwhelming reluctance to do so? What really keeps you from doing what you know to do and want to do?

Of course, I don’t know about you personally, but here are some ideas that I have thought myself and/or have heard from others attempting to describe what would free them to tell the Story:

  • I would be eager to share if I thought they really wanted to hear the story. I really don’t think they want to hear it, so I feel like my initiative is not welcome.
  • I would be eager to share if I thought I could share in a meaningful way. My fear is that I don’t know enough, or that they will ask me something that I can’t answer.
  • If they would just come to me and ask me, I would tell them. I just don’t know how to find out if they are even interested.
  • If I knew how to get from our daily conversation to a spiritual topic, I could probably do it, but I don’t know how to jump from one to the other in a way that doesn’t feel artificial.
  • I wish I had time to talk to people, but with all my (kids, activities, work, school), I never have a block of time to devote to it.  And doesn’t it take a long time to convert someone??
  • Isn’t this really the job of the ministers? I’m not really trained for it.
  • Isn’t everyone kinda already a Christian?
  • I know I should, but do you really think God is going to send anyone to Hell?  I don’t know if I believe in a God like that.
  • Politics and religion you don’t talk about with your friends or in polite company. That’s what I was taught.
  • I don’t want anyone telling me what to think, so how can I tell other people what to think?

Well, I’ve used all my allotted words listing our rationalizations—and probably could have used more. Search your own heart and add your words to this list, if you want.

With the next posting, I’ll offer you some better words, better options, and what, I believe, are true pain relievers for Christians who want to talk—but can’t.

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