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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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
OPC Talk Outreach: The Best of The Best – Part 2
This has been an extended series and we are grateful to all the OPC Pastors who participated in the interview. They provided great insights and examples. But we know that your lives are saturated with information–even great information. So, our final two posts will be some of the great quotes from the series. If you […]
OPC Pastors Talk Outreach – The Best of Best Part 1
This has been an extended series and we are grateful to all the OPC Pastors who participated in the interview. They provided great insights and examples. But we know that your lives are saturated with information–even great information. So, our final two posts will be some of the great quotes from the series. If you […]
OPC Pastors Talk Outreach: Do Something – Part 2 (Did Something!)
Last week, we shared the recurring theme in this series that pastors shared that one of the best ways to improve our evangelism is to do something….get going…stop planning and get out there in some way. We shared several examples that were also shared. This week we want to share the remaining examples that were […]
OPC Pastors Talk Outreach: Do Something
One thing we’ve noticed in the pastors’ responses to our questions is that a couple of times there was a resounding chorus hitting the same note. Rather than treat that as something repetitive that could be compressed, we think that’s an area to pause and listen to the chorus hitting the same note. This week, […]
OPC Pastors Talk Outreach: Jeff De Boer – Part 2
This is week 2 with Jeff. If you didn’t read last week, here is more about Jeff or skip down to the final portion of the interview. Jeff De Boer is the pastor of Redeemer OPC in Ada, Michigan. Prior to this pastorate, Jeff pastored in the RCUS, PCA, and URCNA varying across rural, suburban, […]
OPC Pastors Talk Outreach: Jeff De Boer – Part 1
Jeff De Boer is the pastor of Redeemer OPC in Ada, Michigan. Prior to this pastorate, Jeff pastored in the RCUS, PCA, and URCNA varying across rural, suburban, and metro areas. He is a graduate of Mid America Reformed Seminary and studied law at the University of Iowa. He and his wife, Karen, have 5 […]