Happy Reformation Day!

Happy Reformation Day everyone. I pray that your day is full of boldness for Christ as we proclaim to our neighbors the justification of sinners by faith in Christ. If you are wondering why I am not saying Happy Halloween instead of Reformation Day, take a few minutes to read this article for a reminder of what happened on this day 491 years ago.


And just to quickly remind you; what other day of the year do you have dozens of people come to your door asking for you to give them something? For the most timid of Christians, this day is perfect to be faithful in sharing the gospel. Get yourself a bunch of large candy bars and attach a good gospel tract; then pray like crazy that the little seed you planted will have an eternal impact in your neighbor's life. Evangelism has never been so easy!



UPDATE:
Congratulations to Brad and Stephanie for their new addition to the family this morning! Ben was born at 10:29 after they decided to head to the hospital at 10:15! He is a 7.5 pound, 20 inch Reformation baby. Thank God for such wonderful little miracles.

Junk Mail Evangelism

I often hear from Christians that they just are too introverted to share the gospel. In their minds they have a fear of knocking on doors or standing on a street corner preaching the gospel to the masses and think, “I can’t do that so I can’t do evangelism.” There are so many easy ways for us in this country to get the good news out that we have no legitimate reason to be disobedient.

I hope to be able to provide here many fun and simple ways to get the gospel out so we can all be faithful evangelists. Keep checking back here for more and let us know if you tried any or if you came up with one of your own.

If you own a mailbox, you no doubt receive more mail that you throw away than mail that is important. As frustrating as it can be, some of this unsolicited mail can be used for evangelism. If you hate that you have to fill your garbage can (which you pay to empty) so quickly with all of that junk mail you could do this.

Or you could eat the cost trash removal and take advantage of the free postage to get the gospel out. A couple months ago we purchased a bunch of gospel tracts and spent a day giving them out around town. We still have many tracts left over and if you think silently handing a piece of paper to someone is still to scary, junk mail evangelism provides the easiest evangelism opportunity for the shyest person of all.

From now on, instead of throwing away all of that junk mail, keep that postage-paid return envelope, put a couple of tracts in there and send it on back. It’s not that often that people give you such and easy opportunity to get the gospel into their hands.

What a great chance this is to get your children excited about the sharing the gospel too. Get excited about junk mail and get a collection of postage-paid envelopes awaiting their gospel proclaiming destiny. Next time you are at church, stop into the office and pick up your own collection of tracts and get stuffing envelopes.

Get on Tract!

I just returned home from spending the morning with a faithful few at Emmanuel giving out tracts around town. What an amazing time it was! It seems like the best times doing evangelism are the small events where we just get together and go out and meet people. We try to set up large events, fun events, at church events, and all kinds of things to create opportunities for members to share the gospel with the lost. But it seems the most successful (read: faithful) times are when we keep it simple and just get the gospel to people with little extra fanfare. Today was definitely one of those.

We started this morning meeting together to discuss some places we could go and share ideas on how to hand out tracts. Excitement spread around the room as people thought of great ways to get the gospel into the hands of the people. With a table full of tracts, everyone was armed with an entire arsenal of gospel ammunition.

After some time in prayer for courage and faithfulness from our team and soft hearts readied for the gospel, our team parted ways throughout town to plant gospel seeds. Rev Kev spent the morning visiting contacts he had previously made in shopping for tractors. He was able to give away small booklets on heaven while getting the chance to share the gospel with a broken hearted acquaintance. Kevin also found out by sharing tracts that one person already professed to be a Christian and even had the privilege of leading his son to Christ the previous night. Kevin was able to rejoice with him in that.

Jeremy and Jake went downtown to start some conversation at the international food store. They tried to mingle with the locals a bit, but found some difficulty when they didn't understand the language they were using. The left some tracts anyway. The two of them also went to the library to leave some tracts and got the opportunity to share a little with the piano teacher when they returned to church.

Molly and I scoured the Galleria downtown and also the Apache Mall. We placed a few dozen tracts around the area and even thought of a few more clever places (ATMs, books, newspapers, public chairs). We hit up a local bookstore and placed a few gospel tracts in the religion books.






The Murrays went to some stores to do some shopping this morning and they loaded up on over 50 tracts. The boys put tracts in boxes and handed out tracts while their parents did the shopping. As they checked out of the stores, the cashiers were invited to church and given the gospel on a tract. The boys were so excited about telling people about Jesus that they had to be told to slow down a bit. But they just had to keep going. They put some 10 Commandment coins in and under vending machines where kids just love to look for spare change.

David also had a fruitful morning as he was able to have conversations with 4 different people at the mall food court. He did a survey asking some questions of people to get some information for his dissertation and was able to share some gospel tracts during the conversations. He was extremely excited about being able to walk through the gospel so easily with these people. Everyone was so friendly and not even close to antagonistic to the message. David said the time flew by so fast because the conversations went so well.

At noon, we all met back at the fellowship hall for a fantastic taco lunch prepared by Julie and Lexi. We shared our battle stories and rejoiced together for God's power in working through us. The Murray boys filled their pockets with more tracts and begged to be able to go back out and share more about Jesus so others could go to heaven too. Praise God for the faith of children!

Please pray for those who heard the gospel today. Pray that God's Word convicts and brings repentance to softened hearts. Pray also for the gospel tracts that are still out there. Many people have given testimonies of being saved by stumbling across gospel tracts. And finally pray for faithfulness in all of our lives to be more obedient to God's Great Commission. Praise God for using such simple things and broken people to bring glory to Himself!