This week, John Leonard is shaking the tree on how we view “our testimony” in regard to evangelism. In the Reformed world, it’s pretty common to make the point that “our testimony isn’t the gospel.” That’s not new. But that’s not where Leonard is going with this one… “Testimonies are powerful. They are so powerful […]
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Church Life & Reaching Younger Folks in A Reformed Church in Michigan
We interviewed Jonathan Landry Cruse, pastor of Community Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Kalamazoo, MI. Some of you will also know Jonathan’s wife Kerri Ann who works for the OPC in social media, websites, and communication. Jonathan shares about the dynamics of church life in Michigan and we talk about the fact that their church is […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #8 – The Inconvenience of Sowing Widely
Last week, John Leonard painted two pictures of evangelism, one an interesting and perhaps more natural way of “sowing widely.” Here he continues to expand and gives an example: “We sow widely by intentional interaction with the people around us. That is hard in a world where personal interaction is being eliminated. I’m a person […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #7 – Sow Widely
Jumping back into our “Get Real” series, John Leonard likes to give us new images of things—squashing stereotypes. This week it’s a common view of evangelism and whether you have “the gift:” “Many of us don’t even want to evangelize because of the stereotypes surrounding the traditional evangelist. We don’t see ourselves standing on a […]
Top 3 of 2022
We do this summary every year because we think what the readers determine is valuable is, well, valuable. So when our committed audience says these are the top posts, we want to highlight that for you. So here are the most viewed, shared, and forwarded posts of 2022: 1. Podcast with Dale Van Dyke & […]
Stories From the Field: Evangelism Where You Are Planted – Part 3
The last snippet from Allison Hill’s article about a youth evangelism conference in Dayton, Ohio. Pastor Tyler Detrick’s reflections on the event are worth a few minutes of consideration: According to Detrick, the kids were surprisingly eager to speak with people, even asking to move to new locations when they weren’t seeing much foot traffic. […]
Stories From the Field: Evangelism Where You Are Planted – Part 2
We are breaking down Allison Hill’s great article about Outreach in Dayton, Ohio. Pastor Tyler Detrick was interviewed about a Youth Evangelism Conference they held. You can read the first post here (Part 1) for context and the “why” of the conference. This week, we look at the “what” of the conference and take a […]
Stories From the Field: Evangelism Where You Are Planted – Part 1
Light of the Nations OPC in Dayton, Ohio is consistently doing evangelism. Recently, Allison Hill (Home Missions Staff) wrote a great article interviewing Pastor Tyler Detrick about one of their efforts with a youth evangelism conference. We are going to break the article up into a couple of short segments with some questions for thought […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #6 – Listen More Than You Speak
We continue taking lessons from John Leonard’s book, “Get Real.” In the past couple posts, he has intentionally startled us with his opening thesis. Today, it seems like maybe he’s been with us on several occasions in our lives, maybe even hanging out with us at work or a group lunch! “It has happened to […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #5 – Who Gets Evangelized & Who Gets Discipled?
If you’ve been following along with our series on lessons from former Westminster seminary prof and current PCA pastor John Leonard’s book, “Get Real,” then you know he likes to throw some cold water in our faces to start an idea. This week is no different in his chapter, “Evangelize Christians and Disciple Non-Christians”: “Conventional […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #4 – An End to Friendship Evangelism???
We return to our series looking at lessons from John Leonard’s book, “Get Real.” This week Leonard opens with a jarring and pointed statement: “Friendship evangelism is not biblical! OK, that’s an overstatement. And yet, the conventional wisdom today is that friendship evangelism is the only form of evangelism.” Now, stick with him as he […]
Midwestern OPC Church Planting & Evangelistic Tradition: Jim Hoekstra – Part 2
This is part 2 with Jim Hoekstra of Immaneul Church (OPC) in Anoka, MI. Jim is a long-time OPC pastor in the Midwest and has been involved in multiple church plants. We continued to talk about church planting with Jim and he also shared some of the long tradition of church planting and evangelistic efforts […]
Hidden Gems – Part 2
We introduced this series last time that we are calling “Hidden Gems.” After almost 5 years and 250 posts, we have detected several that had a distinct influence on people but maybe didn’t get the attention or circulation warranted. So we are sharing those on occasion over the next few months. This one had a […]
Hidden Gems – Part 1
Outward OPC will soon be 5 years old and we have published almost 250 articles, videos, and podcasts. Because we have a committed audience, we are able to get a good idea of what posts hit a particular chord with people. We can see the analytics (reads, shares, social media posts, etc) but we also […]
Developing Church Plants In The Midwest: Jim Hoekstra – Part 1
We interviewed Jim Hoekstra of Immaneul Church (OPC) in Anoka, MI. Jim is a long-time OPC pastor in the Midwest and has been involved in multiple church plants. We talked to Jim about his experience, what he has learned about church planting, and how they are growing a church plant in Minnesota. You can listen […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #3 – Party Evangelism
In “Get Real,” author John Leonard has an interesting chapter called “Party Evangelism.” There are two sections to the chapter. The first is establishing that the western mindset has distorted the focus of Christianity to overly individualistic at the expense of the community aspect. This distortion has a significant impact on the role of the […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #2 – Be Normal!
We are looking at lessons from John Leonard’s book evangelism called, “Get Real.” In his opening chapter, he poses the following story and commentary as the over-arching principle: “I have a problem,” began the young lady as she took a seat in my office. “My sister is coming to live with me and her life […]
Evangelism Reader’s Digest: Get Real #1 – Two Pictures of Evangelism
We are going to start a new series that will be interspersed with other topics and posts in the coming months. We are calling it “Evangelism Reader’s Digest.” We will take select chapters from good books on evangelism and share snippets from the chapter with our commentary and application for Reformed churches. Some of these […]
What’s Next?
Well, summer is winding down and while it’s not a new calendar year it’s that time where it feels like we start a new year. It’s funny how summer ending and the school year starting is so deeply rooted in us as a new year–even in the life of a church. As we head into […]
Getting Down To Business (Evangelism Conf.): Chris Hartshorn – Part 3
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, as a family, or as a church. For each of […]