Weekly Recap: Evangelism

All right, another Happy Wednesday. I mean hopefully this drops on Wednesday,

so we can say Happy Wednesday, Happy Hopday. Church family and extended family,

distanced family, whomever is listening. It's another episode of the FBC.

Oh, I shouldn't do that, should I? Ryan on the Counter another

episode of the FBC Woodland Weekly. Hi Brian, Hello Corey. It's great

to you, which he wants again see thank you. It was a great

weekend at First Baptist Church will on a crazy busy weekend at summertime. You

never really know who is going to be around, and vacations and all these

kind of things that are going on, and so we really try to not

make a whole lot of plans over the summer and kind of focus on a

couple of things such as VBS and whatnot. But this past weekend, as

part of the Summer to Remember at FBC Woodlawn, we had evangelist Daniel Nally

bring the Word on Sunday morning and it was a great word. It was

encouraging, but it was also very challenging, and we want to talk about

that some today. I love a challenging word. I love a challenging word

when it is given to me. And I love it when people say to

me, thank you for challenging me today. And so when an evangelist comes

and speaks to you, I love it when an evangelist comes and gives a

word because it's very challenging, exhorting, and it causes you to take inventory

of your life as a fallow of Jesus. And and that's what happened Sunday

morning when Daniel was at church. And on Sunday night we had our community

Night of Worship, just a wonderful time of gathering with the brothers and sisters

in Christ from all different churches throughout throughout the region. And it was a

wonderful, powerful night of worship and ministry and unity. And then Monday night

Daniel came back and he taught or gave some teaching on lifestyle evangelism and it

was just it's just great. I mean, it's it's these kinds of things

that we need in our life. And how do I say this, I'll

just say it. I guess I'm not sure how to say it. Just

we need we need evangelism training, and we don't need more programs. We

need to learn how to make evangelism a part of our every day life,

just part of our conversation with everyone, and and not not have the mentality

well, now let's go evangelize, right, you know, But just as

Paul encourages us to pray as we go, that we should also evangelize as

we go. Yeah, and so that's missing from most of our lives,

it really is. And so it was great to hear Daniel do some training

lifestyle evangelism on Monday night as well. So a very full weekend of ministry

and celebration and unity and life life in the Body of Christ. It was,

it was. It was sadly I wasn't here Monday night, so I

missed all all of that. So hopefully I get caught up a little bit

today on what I missed on Monday. But let's go back to Sunday morning

and we'll kind of quickly recap her way because there was a lot to go

through, so we're not going to be able to hit all the points.

Sunday Wow, fantastic, great service. Sunday morning started off wonderful. The

testimonies of Church Camp fantastic. That's always and that hits me, that's like,

you know, that hits my heart because I was a church camp kid.

You know, I was the young kid that trying to figure things out

as a young teenager. I have ever told the story of about the time

I almost got kicked out a camp. Okay, I don't know that I

could tell it all the at all. It was Yeah, another time,

it wasn't bad. It just wasn't good. It's not Okay. That's the

the most oxymoerotic thing I'm gonna say this whole show. And it is.

It is very cool when you see the enthusiasm yes on teenagers when their life

has been changed through an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and they make new

friendships with other kids who are figuring things out, and yeah, powerful,

and we need to do some baptisms here in a couple of weeks, and

so it's going to be very cool. That's always cool. Yeah, And

it is. You make lifetime, lifetime, lifetime friendships at church camp.

You know, I have friends in churches now pastors that we met church camp,

and that's where those relationships started. So it's really cool to see them

going through those places we've been. You know, that's exciting to see.

Yeah, And I shared Sunday morning after they did that. You know,

I grew up going to church camp as well, and that was over forty

years ago now, and really nothing has changed with church camp. I mean

it's you're surrounded by You're surrounded by the Gospel, and you're surrounded by great

leaders, surrounded by peers that are in the same situation you are. And

so over forty years later, I can hear these stories and I can still

relate, you know, because right you know, I remember my dad telling

me stories of camp. I'm like, well, never changes. I mean

the society changes, and some dynamics evolve and change, but camp experiences stayed

pretty consistent. Yeah, they do. So after that, Daniel now he

preached, and I will say, as long as I've known Daniel might have

been the first time I've actually heard him bring a message. I don't know

how that's possible. And he's preached for me in my absence while I was

pastoring to the churches, but I've never actually got to hear him preach fantastic

sermon. I mean, brought it two Timothy three. You know, in

the last days, perilous times will come. How many times have we both

preached that added together? You know, at least fifty for me, probably

that I preach that text and probably one of the best explanations of that text

I've ever heard. Really, Yeah, he brought it home. You know

that the world in which we live is is all those things that that scripture

explains, and we're living in the midst of it, and we have some

adjustments to make on our on our on our own right because we can be

judgmental. It's very easy for us to be judgmental. And one of the

things that Daniel talked about that as followers of Christ, we have to we

have to use the word because of the word it was given to to teach

and to exhort and to correct. Right, So with each other, we

we are encouraged to do that, but when it comes to the world,

we have to be patient and we have to use the truth of Scripture in

kindness. Yet with the authority of the Scripture gives to to refute the the

spirit of the world. Right. Yeah, And it's one of those points,

you know, I think even he made the point, you know,

how many people they were come to Christ because God, you know, someone

stood outside with the sign is that God hates insert word zero. And that's

so true. You know, how many people if we led to Christ because

we yelled at them and told them you need to start acting like a Christian

even though you're not. And there was a really good line there about exhortation

and how you know, we have to exhort people, we have to rebuke

people. But the gospel has to be the heart of it, not behavior

modification. Yeah, that's right. And we can't be soft with it.

Yeah, you know, we can be gentle, we can be kind,

we can consider it, but we can't we can't preach a soft gospel when

it comes to evangelism. I mean the apostle Paul was not soft with it.

Peter and John, they were not soft with it. Jesus was not

soft with it, you know. So we really really have to be firm

with the sort of the spirits in preaching, not not lovey dovey soft stuff,

but the tough stuff of the gospel, you know, the repentance and

aspect of the gospel. Jesus called people to repentance. The apostles, they

called people to repentance, and so that has to be our that has to

be our message. Yeah, and there's a difference in telling the truth and

telling the truth like a jerk for Jesus. You know, there's a big

difference. Yeah, yeah, And there's too many of those in the church.

You know, there's too many people that think they can they can yell

and you know, be harsh enough. And if what we do is we

expect lost people to pretend to be saved people, when we have to realize

losts people are going to act like lost people because they're lost people. Save

people should act like save people, be called as we are saved people.

Therefore, we should be the image and bearers of Christs. Right. People

should see Jesus in us, and that alone should attract them to Jesus by

seeing Christ in us, not by us shouting. You know, God hates

your sin. Well, God hates my sin too. That I'm no different

than the lost man in that respect. God hates my sin as equally as

he does the sin of the unregenerate man. But God wants to redeem your

sin. He's already redeemed all of mine. He wants to redeem yours.

I'm not going to convince someone of that truth by throwing hateful rhetoric at them,

you know. So it's that balance of yes, it's there's a firmness

of repentance, but there's also a sternness of you know, the message of

John repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Yeah. And that's

why I love the idea of life lifestyle evangelism that Daniel, because if it's

anything but lifestyle evangelism, then it will have these imbalances. So to speak,

we will put on an evangelism face because it's time to evangelize, folks.

We've had our training, we've been through the program. So put on

your evangelism face and get out your evangelism words and we're gonna go evangelize,

right, load up the church best and you entered chick tracks and let's go.

Yeah. And so it can become unbalanced. And again, I really

do thank God for evangelism programs. If they work right, you know,

if it compels followers of Jesus to tell the lost of the good news of

the Gospel and repent, then then I have nothing but praise for it and

thanksgiving for it. So many times the programs don't stick, and so evangelism

has to be part of our everyday lifestyle. It really does. And I'm

the first one to stand up and say I fail miserably. I really do,

because I get fearful just like other people do, fearful love of rejection,

or I'm going to stumble over the words and I'm going to really mess

up the gospel, you know, And so that causes me to hesitate as

well. So we all generally fall into that category. Thank God for guys

like Daniel Nally and his team who that is their their lifestyle, and they

go all around the world now and they preach the gospel of salunvation and see

thousands and thousands come to Christ. Oh if we were more like that,

even a little bit exactly. Yeah, well, and that's the thing,

you know, I said the term and Daniel said this, I actually wrote

this in my Bible, was you know, we're looking for behavior modification from

people to pacify the Christian And truly the behavior modification needs to come at the

part of the believer. We're the ones that need to modify our behavior to

not treat you know, evangelism like you know, the day that we go

out and load up the church bus and we go knock on doors, but

where you know, we live, as he preached on Sunday morning. We

live the life of an evangelist. We we are, you know, quote

on Mission and he mentioned something Monday Monday Nights that a couple of things.

One of them was as a is to have a green light mentality because so

often we have a red light mentality when it comes to evangelism. We we

have we always have excuses to not do it. Rarely do we do.

We make excuses to to to do it or to not do whichever the case

may. Excusees myself, we always have excuses, you know, to not

go out and evangelize, you know, the a red light mentality. Well

I can't today because you know, my my life is complicated and busy.

But u uh, and that's a red light mentality as far as evangelism goes.

But we always need to have a green light, a go mentality when

it comes to sharing the gospel. That's good, that's good. That that's

a very simple example of how to think about it. And he also he

also said, get a bigger table for your life. You know, don't

be content with with just you and and a couple others around your table,

your safe place, your family or your close friends who are believers, and

and to not have room at your table for lost people, so get yourself

a bigger table. Yeah, it's like these are very practical, understandable concepts

that we as Christians need to take to heart and and to actively pray to

the Lord of the Harvest to send workers to the fields and say then say

Lord here am I. Yeah? Absolutely, yeah. You know a comparison,

I've I was listening to a podcast today and they were talking about how,

you know, and especially twenty twenty did something to people. Twenty twenty

did something to the brain of our country and culture changed. You know,

I think it started to change before that, but twenty twenty really some stuff

just broke. And one of the things that broke was our complete inability to

find ourselves in community with people that aren't identical to us in every way.

And you know, you can look at that at a political spectrum and say,

you know, if you're on the right, how many people on the

left do you communicate with on a regular basis? Probably not very many.

If we were all honest, we tend to hang out, right, Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, even to go so far as some people, I've

heard people say, you know, oh well, I don't talk to people

like that. I just block all the lefties or the right e's or what

really your cooning yourself? And we've done that in the church. We we

only hang out with people that look like we do. They only they only

sing the kind of music we sing. They only listen to the preachers we

listen to. They only do everything that we do. And it's got to

be identical. And if it's not, then I can't hang out with you.

And then we look at lost people like there's some sub sect of humanity

and we say, well, I'm a Christian. And if we were to

scroll through our phones and look at our contact list, what percentage of those

contacts are lost people? Yeah? How many lost how many lost friends?

Can we say that our friends? Yeah, you know, interact with on

a regular basis exactly. You know, it needs to be it needs to

be more. Yeah, Iron Sharman's Iron. It's important to have brothers and

sisters in your life so that you're sharpening each other, you're growing each other.

You're you're being the church, you know, you're being in community.

But if there's no evangelism going on in your personal life, and it's only

the first Tuesday, have the month, we have all the church bus up

when we get our chick tracks on our by and we go knock onvers.

If that's all evangelism is, you're not you're not doing it right. We

isolate ourselves from from the world to an extent that it's it's not healthy,

right, you know, spiritually not healthy. And I'll take it a step

further and say we we do it. We do it also with our denominationalism,

if I can use that that word you know we, you know,

we are many of us are a part of UH a denomination. We obviously

are Southern Baptists, and there are other denominations. And I thank God for

a group of pastors that I'm a part of in the region that come together

on a monthly basis and we we work together, arm in arm for the

for the Kingdom of God. And it's such a wonderful thing. And a

night of worship on a Sunday night, many many of those denominations were were

present, and what a great show of unity and powerful ministry it was that

I am I'm gonna come out and say it. I'm sad to say that

our own denomination was not present and I don't think that was intentional. It

just it just happened that they were they were absent and so uh. But

but but that's the way we tend to be. We get inside our denominational

bubble as well, and we isolate ourselves from brothers and sisters that might might

think and believe just a little bit differently than we do, you know,

and Lord forbid we have church with those people, right yeah, yeah,

So so anyway, but you were right in that we we should not be

isolating ourselves so much from the world that that we have no effect on that

the flavor of Christ that is in us is not is not salting the rest

of the earth. You know, I've heard people say the power of Christ

in you. I've heard people say, you know, be salt. And

I've never heard someone say be the flavor of Christ. I like that.

Well, that's a different usage. I've never heard someone say that before till

right now. Really yeah, And I like that because if people if we

are the flavor of Christ to people, what does that taste like? Are

we coming off as sweet, passionate something that is desirable, or are we

coming off as bitter kind of gross? Yeah, there are certain things I

will put on the murder because I don't like the flavor of that. Right,

then it gives it, you know, hold the blue cheese please.

Yeah, So exactly right, we are. We are as salt. Salt

gives some flavor, and so that's who we are. We are we are

to be the flavoring of Christ to those who are around us. That that's

good, all right, Well, good discussion today, good stuff. Yeah,

it's very good. And I love when again, I love when I

can hear somebody share a strong word from the gospel that that just is a

challenge, that that mobile that mobilizes me and I and Corey. I'll tell

you I I'm going to share this because this is deeply personal. What I'm

going to say to me that this weekend, when you hear an evangelistic,

strongly evangelistic calling, calling a sermon, and then when you go through some

evangelism training, you are you are caused to take inventory. Right, Like

you work a job where you have to take inventory. You have to know

what's on your truck. You know, you have to know what you're what

you're putting in a store and those to have that accurate inventory is important.

So you know how to do your job right right. Everything hinges on my

inventory. It does. And I spent many many years in retail and inventory

is such an important part of what I did, So taking inventory as a

Christian is important as well. We have to take inventory of our life.

Are we aligning ourselves with Scripture? Are we doing the things that Scripture teaches

us? Are we being effective? Are we being the flavor of Christ to

our family and to our to our circle. Are we doing those things?

And I had to come to a realization. It did come to a realization

after this weekend, and mainly because of the training on Monday nights. Without

question, I love my church family. I love my church family. I

would put my life on the line from my church family for all of them.

Their well being is of utmost importance to me. That's what a shepherd

does, that's a pastor. But I had to come to the realization that

that my heart was not broken for the lost. And that's pretty powerful realization,

you know. And I think that if more of us were we're honest

with ourselves, we would say that others would say the same thing. We

love our church, we love the circle of friends that we have in church.

We love the fellowship, but we're not too keen on getting our hands

dirty. We're not too on the inconvenience of helping someone else and seeing their

life turn around. And so I had to come to that realization. As

much as I love God, as much as I love the Body of Christ,

my heart is not broken for the lost, and so is that is

my heart. Cry, Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours.

And I think if each of us did that and allowed the Holy spirits to

break our hearts for what breaks his, then we will see we will see

many, many more come to Christ in these last days. It's amazing that

this is one of the most complicated and uncomfortable conversations that Christians have, is

going out and evangelizing the world. And it's one of the things we have

the most programs for. We have the most curriculum, oh yeah, written,

we have the most books. Ten ways to lead this, you know,

yeah, fifteen ideas. But it's it's the most important thing save salvation.

It's the most important thing we have. After you're saved, it should

be your heart's desire to see that salvation given to other people that need it.

That's it. Yet we get in our as you said, we get

in our bubble. And I think even as pastors we end up in that

bubble where we love our church family. We would, like you said,

we would die for our church family. I mean there have you know,

I've been in that place. But those people are saved. They need our

shepherding, they need our leadership as their pastor. But two questions come out

of that. Are we leading by example and loving the lost world to Jesus?

And are we equipping the sheep to go breed more sheep? If the

sheep aren't breeding sheep, then we are not doing our job as a shepherd.

Yeah, absolutely right. And that's that the question that you know you

have to ask. It's like, Okay, you want to do an evangelism

training thing, Okay, great, how many people have you led to Christ

since the last evangelism training you've done? So that was one of the questions

that was asked, Bye Bye Daniel Monday night. How many people in the

last three months have you shared the Gospel with? And then out of those,

out of that number, how many came to Christ as the result of

you sharing the Gospel with them? You know? And then what is your

greatest what's your biggest fear? What is what makes you hesitate to share your

faith, to share the gospel with others? You know, so real questions

that that cause us to take inventory. And that's that's my that's probably my

servant title for this is taking inventory, because when you do, you realize

what you realize what you do need and what you don't need. Right you

take inventory. This is and so very enlightening and stir and it's it's time

for us to be stirred. We need to stir in another right to good

works and so wonderful things, wonderful things that are happening at First Baptist Church

would long. I'm so thankful of the new people, the hunger, the

stirring that's going on. But we need to continue. We need to go

from where we are in the fellowship and in the discipleship and the teaching to

winning the lost. Yes, that's how the church needs to grow. That's

the only way church. Yeah, and so let's let's be about seeing the

lost saved and then bringing them into the church, seeing God clean them up

and disciple them to where they have a heart for God and that they're they're

doing the same thing, and so it's too it's too hard. It's a

lot easier to play church. The way we've been playing church for years,

and the way we've been playing church is we bring all of our lost friends

to church. We let them meet Pastor, and then we let him lead

them to Christ. The truth of the matter is the church was never established

to be the place for your lost friends to go meet Jesus. The church

was established as the place for the believer to be equipped to do the work

the gospels. The work of the Gospel is done in its best, in

its best way on Thursday afternoon, in whatever setting you're in in your life.

That's when the Gospel has preached the most. Sunday mornings is the training

seminar for the believer. Yeah, yeah, to go back out and do

it again. And that's exactly the way the church grows is people leading people

to Jesus, bringing them into the church and saying, now that you're in

this infancy place of faith, now let's go get built up and equipped together.

And there's all kinds of ways to initiate conversations with people. You know,

you don't have to beat people over the head with a Bible and we

take hands with it. You know, it's about his lifestyle evangelism. Lifestyle

evangelism. As you go your way, you're always ready to share the Gospel,

the hope of Christ that is that is in us, and that's what

people they want to hear it, and they they need to hear it.

People are ready for a message of hope, and we need to be the

ones that are already. Absolutely, you're right. The proverbial trigger not the

actual trigger, the trigger of the gospel. I don't know. Maybe be

ready to share. They had swords back then, and maybe it would have

been the gun of the Bible if it was modern day. Anyway, I'm

getting off and I'm getting off track now, Okay, this is what happens.

But good stuff though, and we're very thankful for the work of God

in our church, and not only in our church, but in other churches

in our community. One of the things that I mentioned at the night of

worship was if you don't have church to go to, the message was not

to come to our church, but to find one church in your community to

go to church. And if you are a part of a church, be

faithful week in and week out, supporting your pastor and praying for him,

because our pastors need our supports and absolutely we the people need need to be

in church, need to be in church. Christ commanded the whole idea of

well I'll just say at church and have church by myself. No, you

won't because you can't do that. That's not scriptural. Let me just go

ahead and burst the bubbles. That's not biblical at all that people have been

using that as an excuse. Twenty twenty really gave people a good excuse.

Yeah, and it's been going on since before that, but that gave people

a and we out of them. We gave them permission to stay home.

We did, we did. We gave them permission to stay home. And

then when we said okay, it's time to come back, it's safe.

Well, I kind of like this watching church couch and you can watch,

but you can't have church. You can't be a part of the church.

And that's the thing. And we stopped live streaming just because of that.

I don't want people to give people an excuse to stay home to watch the

service live, you know exactly. So anyway, yeah, you can't.

You really can't experience church, nor you can't be the Body of Christ by

yourself being the body of Christ is not a it's not a single player sport.

It's a it's a team sport. And we need all of the members

that we can get on our team and in our church. Look at that.

If a baseball team was all first basement, that wouldn't not be a

successful team. No, that'd be an Abbot and Costello episode Who's on First?

So so yeah, being in church is so import and and you're if

you're listening to this this program, you probably know that. And so we

don't need to we don't need to beat that horse. So well, thank

you for listening. Uh, hope to see you guys next week. Try

to meet her again next week. Until next time, goodbye, goodbye,