Former OPC church planter and recently installed Regional Home Missionary for Southern CA, Chris Hartshorn leads a conference on evangelism for the churches of SoCal. If you don’t know Chris, please take our word that this will be worth your time. Watch on your own, or together as a family, or as a church. For each of the three parts, we will supply some questions for thought or discussion.
Questions for Thought or Discussion:
1. Chris tells the story of the woman who would go out and “unload” the gospel on people to relieve her sense of guilt and she saw a woman’s countenance change. Uncharacteristically the Christian woman just stopped and was honest and apologized and confessed she’s not good at sharing her faith and does it out of guilt. And it completely changed and opened up the conversation. Question: How would being more honest about the challenges and shortcomings in your evangelism change your evangelism? Could your own weakness and fear or uncomfortableness be incorporated into your evangelistic efforts for good? How?
2. How do the grace of the gospel, your identity in Christ, and God’s love for you affect your weakness in evangelism or your guilt and shame in not evangelizing? Think about it for a while. Talk about it with others.
3. Chris talks about the idea that the Bible shows us that one strategy is that “we need to go to people.” We tend to often think in terms of talking to people already in our circles, and that’s a good thing. But if we expand our thinking to people “we need to go to,” who would that be? In the next week, pay attention in your life and note 2 or 3 people you should “go to” that you likely would have walked past without a thought previously. Maybe take one of the opportunities that you are prompted about and talk to the person. Share something about the grace of God in the gospel, even if you stumble through it. Be honest with them about your struggles in it.
