Living out Evangelism | Prayer, Barriers & Developing Intentional Relationships

Hey everybody, this is Pastor John Ewart from Englewood

Baptist Church in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.

Thank you so much for tuning into our podcast.

You're going to hear from God today as we share from his word

about important issues facing your life that can guide you

according to the Bible. And so I do welcome you who are

here in the session with me live.

I also want to thank those who are listening online.

One of the things that we're always doing is we're recording

this and putting these out as podcasts for folks who are in

our choir and for folks who are serving all over the building

right now. For those of you who may not

know, maybe our guests, we have a whole bunch of students in

another place and a whole bunch of children in another place and

a whole bunch of choir people in another place.

So we're just thankful that you are in here.

And so we want to make sure they have the opportunity to hear

this, and they do. And then others are also

listening to this and some of you may want to replay this

later, but for those who missed the last session, I hope that

you'll go back and listen to that.

You can listen to that online and to and to just get the

theological and biblical foundations that we were talking

about in evangelism. Because remember, our goal here

is not necessarily to teach you how to do evangelism.

Our goal is to help us all to become evangelistic.

We want this to be a state of being.

This is a discipleship essential that we're talking about as we

walk through engaging and living out evangelism with boldness and

love. So we're so thankful that you're

here. So as we talk about that, one of

the seven essentials of discipleship, Please note that

that that's what we're trying to do here.

The other thing we're getting ready to do just this so you'll

know is where we're going to be recording several podcasts on

the 7 essentials. Dr. Danny Aikens going to be

joining us for some of those. Other special guests will be

joining us for some of those. And so be watching for those

things online as well as we talked through several of those

pieces down the road. So just so you'll know, and

tonight we're going to talk about prayer.

We're going to talk about barriers, which is something

that you may not have talked about specifically or not.

There are barriers as to why people don't share their faith.

We need to talk about that. Help you identify.

Here's probably my greatest barrier.

Here's the one I see in other people.

But we're also going to talk about how to develop intentional

relationships. And what we're trying to do is

stair step this conversation. So we start off with some

biblical and theological foundation, but now we're going

to stair step. We're kind of in pre evangelism,

so to speak. This is these are things that

we'll do before we actually share the gospel with somebody.

And then we're going to eventually, you know, quickly

get to sharing the gospel. And then we'll even talk a

little bit about post evangelism.

But but to talk about what are some of the ways for me to

actually develop intentional relationships with lost people

in my life? And you may say, well, I don't

know any lost people. Well, you do.

You just don't know whether they are or not.

And, and, and also some of you know, you know, lost people, but

you're not really sure. How do I steer this relationship

into a place to where the opportunity to actually talk

about the gospel or talk about Jesus will happen?

So next session is kind of the big turning point for a lot of

people. Not tonight, but don't leave yet

and don't turn this off. You need this part first.

These are stair stepping, but the the next session, and so

you'll look forward to this is we're actually going to talk

about how do I turn that conversation from turning

talking about sports or talking about the weather to talking

about Jesus. And that's the turning point for

a lot of people. A lot of you would know some

gospel content you could share and we'll talk a lot more about

that later. But how do I actually get to

that point? How do I, how do I get over the

hurdles of fear and weirdness and awkwardness to talk about

spiritual things? And so that'll be the next

session. But tonight, let's continue to

lay some foundations as we talk about some of these crucial

issues of prayer and, and, and relationship.

So as we move through this, let's talk about this.

So, so let's talk about and answer a couple questions.

We need to talk a little bit about the programmatic approach

to evangelism versus a lifestyle approach to evangelism because

over the years what we have seen and I can, I can talk for about

6 hours on the history of evangelism, but I cut that part

out for you. You all say Amen.

But if you were in one of my classes, we would do the six

hours and I would talk about the development of evangelistic

methodology and, and life over the years in the church and how

we've kind of reached the place where we have.

And one of those decisions that happened here in the United

States of America with especially in the Southern

Baptist life that we're a part of, One of the things that

happened there was a decision that was made in the late 60s,

early 70s that really did transform the way most of our

churches did evangelism. And we went to a much more

programmatic approach. And, and the, the problem with

that is, is that it became compartmentalized over here.

So we do evangelism on Monday nights at 7, you know, and we do

evangelism for those two hours. And then I'm not evangelistic

any of the time in my life except, you know, Monday night

at 7. And so we, we need to recognize

that this is not what we're talking about.

We're talking about how a state of existence, how do I live?

If you know me, you're going to hear about Jesus because I love

him. And so one of the things we

talked about is the programmatic part of this, which is what this

is frankly this training type stuff is this actually helps you

to give you the confidence to, to share that because that's

part of what we need to talk about.

But knowing people, the relational lifestyle part of it

actually gives you the opportunity to share.

So it's a both end and then having a plan, having a plan

that provides training and practice is helpful.

So we're going to talk about methodologies later.

We're going to talk about tools and we're going to talk about

various presentations that are out there and those kinds of

things. And then I'm going to try to

help you 0 in on what are the more appropriate pre Christian,

post postmodern cultural methodologies that would

actually, and if you have no idea that whenever I say those

words, I know they bounce off, but it's like that's the world

out there. And so how do I actually share

in a way that's the most effective today?

So we'll talk about that. But then another question that

we kind of need to address. And this is something that will

hit some of you and some of you will want to argue with me about

it, but just don't because you'll lose.

So the other question is, is and by the way, if you e-mail that

[email protected]. But but, but it's a gift or

mandate and there's A and and believe it or not, you probably

not in not in this crowd, I hope.

But but there are those who write books and actually make

the strong points that that only the people with the gift of

evangelism are are really the ones required to share.

And that's just not that's not where I believe the Bible

teaches us. And and it's really interesting

because the Bible doesn't really say anything.

And this is what the point of people want to argue with me.

It doesn't talk about the gift of evangelism.

It talks about the role or the gift of the evangelist.

And those are different things when you look at Ephesians

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

chapter 4. So I certainly believe that

there are people with special anointing and special giftedness

in the area of evangelism. I mean, the greatest example of

all that you can think of in history would have been who?

Paul who? Who else?

Billy Graham. And we could go through the list

of great evangelists and there's certainly some of them still

alive today. I had a guy one time drove me

nuts who came in a guy from Florida.

I won't mention his name because some of you would probably know

him. He's a well known evangelist and

he came in and we had a big revival back in the big revival

days, right back in the crusade days, which I kind of miss.

I, I've, I've often thought we could probably put a tent out on

the field out here with some sawdust and I bet we could draw

a crowd, but they might come for all the wrong reasons, but it

would be interesting. So, but, but he came to town and

we had a, we had a, a student night.

And so we had about 708 hundred students in this room.

And and he basically stands up with his slick backed hair and

his fancy jacket and he and he basically shares John 316 and

gives an invitation, maybe a little testimony, a little

testimony. Little John 316 and gives an

invitation. And I'm just kind of standing in

the back going, I paid you for this.

Not really. I didn't say that.

I thought it, but I didn't say it.

And so then he gives this invitation.

I'm not kidding you. 100 students are down front bawling

their heads off and crying and and making all kinds of

decisions. Now, we don't take that lightly.

We talked to every one of them and we're very careful about

students and children. But I'm sitting there going

that, that you know, that's not him.

You know, that's God. And, and I had the privilege of,

of serving at the, at the time the, the nation's largest

student camp is in Oklahoma. It's called Falls Creek.

And I had the privilege of both speaking at Falls Creek and also

working the counseling side of Falls Creek.

At Falls Creek, you could have anywhere between 7 to 9000

students a week in this massive crowd.

And so you could see 1000 decisions in a night and to

watch God work through specially anointed people.

My son, my our youngest son was saved at a Billy Graham crusade

that one of the last ones he did.

And so I'm not denying the special anointing, but it's,

it's not a typical spiritual gift that somebody can say, OK,

I have this. Well, I don't, so I don't have

to, right? So there's not an out over here

and don't believe that because that's not what the Bible

teaches. Now, those who do teach that and

who preach that will also argue more fascinatingly that only

about 10% of the church have the gift.

Now what's, what's interesting about that is you got to be

careful when you say things like that because I've been a

statistician and A and a researcher for decades of

statistical stuff. I can give you 2 hours and 45

minutes of statistics on the American and global church.

And so when you start talking about statistics like that, you

got to prove it. And there's no evidence

whatsoever that that's true. And so and, and biblically,

which is the most important is that Jesus did not mandate only

10% of the people to go share their faith.

So that that that's just not where we're landing.

So if you believe in that, evangelism is not my thing.

First of all, I don't think you would be here, but I've heard

that in church life my whole life.

That's not my gift. So I don't have to do it.

Well, stop it. That's not biblical.

You're you're not, you're not off the hook.

You might not need to lead an evangelistic crusade, but you

still are supposed to share about your Savior.

And so that's where I'll land. And again, if you don't like

that, see [email protected]. All right, so let's talk a

couple of statistics just because I need you to understand

the problem. And, and Teresa will tell you

that this has been a major motivating issue to me for a lot

of my ministry. And that's the fact that over

90% of our active church members will never share their faith.

That's not a guess. I can show you 13 different

studies that will show you it's as high as 98 or 96%.

And that's the entire Evangelical Church of the United

States of America. And so over 90% of the active.

Notice what that says. It's not just any member, it's

not just people on the roll. These are the people who

actually come. So over 90% of the active

members of the evangelical church, the United States of

America, will never share their faith.

And so part of the issue, my soapbox becomes the fact that

means that the active evangelistic labor force of the

American church is simply too small to impact our culture.

So we just have a logistical, mathematical problem.

Now, that doesn't mean God can't sweep the nation in some Holy

Spirit. Work in a powerful way and we

can have the next great awakening.

He can do that anytime. I would look forward to it.

But where I sit and the work that I have to be involved in, I

recognize we got a problem and we got a real practical problem.

Tonight's going to be real practical.

The next several weeks are going to be really practical because

we've got to deal with this to say, how do we increase the size

of the Army? So when you sit there and you

say, why do I harp on you about connect groups?

Why do I harp about the reach strategy?

It's because increasing the percentage of participation is a

crucial soapbox of mine, right? I want more people involved in

more things. I want more people going on

mission trips next year than you've ever than we've ever seen

before. I want more people engaged in

inviting people to church, which is not necessarily evangelism,

but it's outreach than we've ever had before.

Because I wanted to lead to more people actually engaging and

sharing their faith than we've ever seen before.

Because this labor force is simply too small.

In fact, I can show you that only about 2%, or excuse me,

only 21% of of of our active church members will invite

anyone to church within the course of a given year.

We might do better than that at Inglewood, but across the board,

it's about 21% will even invite anybody who's not a member of

the church to come join them at church.

But only 2% will actually invite an unchurched person to come to

church within the course of a given year.

The other, the other 19 percent or so are the Methodists and the

Presbyterians who are invited to the Christmas cantata and the

Easter program. And so you got to think about.

So it's hard for me to believe if only 2% will even invite an

unsaved, unchurched person to come to church with them, that a

much higher percentage is out there actively engaging in

gospel presentations. That makes sense.

And so my argument is it's not just a 90 percenter issue, it's

a 989796 percent issue. Now, that may not be true here

at Inglewood, but as I come in, I have to believe that it is.

And I have to operate like it might be to get us to where we

need to go. And so I've been a part of teams

that worked over the years, especially when I worked with

Tom Rayner for so long as his senior vice president.

We worked so long to do research and to study this thing years

ago. But what's interesting is, is

that research continues to be assessed and continues to be

repeated to where we're we're not seeing a whole lot of

improvement. In fact, when you talk about

leadership, this isn't just a membership issue.

When you talk about leadership, pastors from effective

evangelistic churches, and that's capitalized for a reason

because it's a statistical category.

In Southern Baptist life, this would represent the top 3% of

Southern Baptist churches. I had the privilege of pastoring

2 churches that meet this category of evangelistic

effectiveness. It's top 1% of all evangelical

churches. And so the pastors from these

kinds of churches will spend 5 hours a week in personal

evangelism. Pastors from most churches spend

0 hours it that's, and that's not a, that's not a statement,

that's a study. In other words, the number would

not even round up to one of the number of hours a week they

spend in personal evangelism. So if the leadership's not

modelling this, if leadership's not being an example for this,

why would church members be much better?

Make sense? And so part of what we want to

see is how can we do this? Because there's a real problem.

I actually took part in a huge, massive study as a two year

study where we contacted the unchurched unsaved people in all

50 States and Canada for two years.

One of the things we learned is that 80% more, in fact more than

80%, it rounds up a little higher than that said that they

would come to church if somebody would sincerely invite them.

And notice how that word's highlighted.

Because it doesn't just mean you're treating them like

project #32 you actually have a relationship with them.

You're actually care about them. You're sincerely relationally

inviting them to join you on your spiritual journey.

And over 80% of the unsaved people in the United States of

America and Canada say that they would come to church.

Now they're lying. And they are lying because the

keyword is said. And whenever you see survey

work, always recognize that people lie.

There's actually a statistical term.

It's called the Halo effect. Like an Angel.

People lie about religion, they lie about sex, they lie about

money, and they lie about politics.

So whenever you see studies, be very careful because that

doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

But there's a perception or a statement that says that a large

number of them would come if they were sincerely invited.

But the problem is obviously that more than 80% of them also

said they'd never been invited. And so when I say, like I said

in our last session, that the majority of unsafe people in the

United States of America have never heard a loving, clear

presentation of the gospel from somebody they felt like that

cared about them, that is an overwhelming truth.

Don't assume they already know. Don't assume they've already

heard. In fact, it's interesting

because 86% of people who come to church come because of

personal contact with a church member.

You may not understand this or not, but a visit or contact by

one of you is 13 times more effective than a contact or

visit from me because I'm the hired gun.

They're expecting me to do this, but when a normal, wonderful

layperson actually cares and actually is experiencing God

and, and, and, and excited about that, that has so much more

weight than when the hired gun shows up.

And so if you say come, come visit my friend for me, come

show the faith with for me, come invite them to church for me.

I don't mind doing that. But at the same time, it'd be

more effective if you just did it and to try to get him here.

All right, enough of that. So why are we failing?

Why are we struggling so much? Well, the main issue is we're

failing at God's mission. We don't understand God's

mission. We don't understand that our

mission is to bring him great glory and to join him in

redeeming the nation's, which also includes our neighborhood.

And so we just don't do that. Well, we also often don't

recognize that here in our country we live in a radically

different culture. And I'll talk down the road more

about modernism versus postmodernism.

Even though postmodernism is actually not a truth in the

United States, not in its purest form.

We are something different. We're still a mix of where.

And that's why I often call us post postmodern.

We're something else. And I'll talk about that one

day. But part of the, the, the

symptom of that is the fact that we don't share the same common

story anymore. And so it may be that when you

grew up, everybody went to church, everybody went to VBS,

everybody you knew did those things and everybody knew the

Bible or everybody respected the Bible, etcetera.

Well, you can't count on that anymore.

We don't share the same common stories.

And so we have to start at different places when we share

the gospel than we once did, which is why some of the gospel

tools that we have, and we've talked about this before, are

written by more of a modern perspective, not a postmodern

perspective. And they're out of date,

frankly, or they're confusing what we're making.

A lot of assumptions that that I think you're going to care about

what the Bible says, or I think you're going to care about who I

think God is without explaining to you who I think God is.

And so we just started different places, but we continue to fail

also because people no longer believe in absolute truth.

And but you need to add this last part because the first part

isn't really a true statement. Often we talk about

postmodernism as people not believing in absolute truth.

That's not quite true. Most people do believe in some

absolute truths. Most people still believe murder

is wrong. Most people believe child abuse

is wrong. Most people believe rape is

wrong. And so there are absolute truths

in our culture today, but they don't like you to determine all

of their absolute truth for them.

They like to pick and choose. So it's a version, and I've

talked about isms during our doctrinal studies.

It's actually a version of syncretism to where they like to

pick and choose different pieces from different things and put

together their own religion. And that's, that's the religion

of America, where where my truth is my truth and your truth is

your truth. And that's good for you, but

that's not good for me. And so because I'm picking and

choosing the pieces I want often from, from, from online or from

a peer group or from a reality TV or from somebody I follow

some influencer or, or whatever, you know, And so to think about

that. And then Christians, frankly,

and our culture today have somewhat of an identity and

image problem. Our our media doesn't help us

most of the time. And so most of the time when you

see Christians portrayed in Hollywood experiences or even a

lot of media experiences, it's often more negative than it is

positive. And so we're often portrayed for

what we're against far more than what we're for.

And so that is also part of our issue.

And then another one is, is that people perceive themselves,

You've probably heard this by some people perceive themselves

as spiritual, but not in need of the church or organized

religion. Again, this is a, a version of

the syncretism or, and often pluralism to where?

To where? Your way is fine and everybody

away is fine, but this one's mine and not yours.

So I don't want to hear about yours.

And so I, and so I'm a spiritual person, but I don't need the

church, you know, And so the, the problem with and, and

sometimes I hear that in the church and sometimes I feel like

church members believe that because they're not here.

And so it, it, it becomes this interesting thing, whether it's

actively shared or just a passive thing that's true in

your life. I don't really need to go to

church. Church often becomes choice

number six. I don't, we don't have a game.

I don't have to be there. I don't have to go there.

So I don't have anything else to do.

So we'll go to church this weekend and that's true at

Inglewood to where we have a lot of every other weekers or every

3rd weekers. And you'll, you see that in

attendance flows here. And so it's interesting how we

kind of pick and choose sometimes.

And it, and part of that is a lack of understanding of the

value of the church, which is why in previous sessions I've

tried to teach you about the value of the church because if

you don't believe you need the church, you really are ignoring

a a huge section of the New Testament.

You're just not paying attention to Scripture in the Bible.

And then and then another part of it.

This might be interesting. This gets us back to

practicality. So much of conservative

Christianity's evangelism, much of our methodology has been

built upon one time encounters and memorize presentations.

We're back to the programmatic conversation.

And that's an approach that really is only effective in a

highly homogeneous culture. And we don't live in that

anymore. And you might think you do here

in the Rocky Mount area, but you don't.

And So what does this sentence mean?

Well, what it means is, is that much of our evangelism

methodology in the past was I'm going to memorize this lengthy

gospel presentation with illustration.

I get cool little pill pins for it and I've got them all trained

in every one of them. Been a trainer for most of them.

I have to do that because I'm a professor of evangelism,

emissions, etcetera. But also I did that in my local

church life. But it but also kind of amounts

to this. Listen to me, listen to me,

don't interrupt me .3 point a illustration 6 right now.

Some of you have gone through that here because I know you've

done some of the programs here and I'm not knocking them.

People were saved and they worked well, but they're not

still going on and there's usually a reason for that.

They're also tend to be short lived methodologies in in the

fact that you don't do EE anymore or you don't do faith

anymore or you don't do some of these other methods.

I'm not knocking the method we're going to talk about and

there's great value in that knowledge and understanding and

having that gospel presentation memorized.

It's much more about how am I delivering it today?

And so those one time encounters were often the way we work.

We're going to go out and cold Turkey somebody and we're going

to share this memorized gospel presentation.

And we also do this internationally.

We do this on short term mission trips and and some people I know

they're just on long term missions experiences to where

I'm going to go to somebody else's culture.

And I'm going to tell you that every single thing you've ever

known your entire life is wrong. And everybody you've ever known,

whoever told you anything is wrong.

In fact, they're all going to hell or they're already there

because they were all wrong. So everybody you've ever known,

every relative you've ever known, and everybody you now

know is wrong and they're all going to burn in hell forever.

And I just met you 5 minutes ago.

But you need to listen to me and pay attention to me and believe

what I'm telling you. You, you following me now,

people still get saved because God's miraculous.

And so I'm not saying that that, that, that that's the worst

thing in the world to do. I'm saying that let's talk about

the best things to do. Let's talk about some of the

best methodologies, especially when we're here and we're in

relationship with our neighbors, we're in relationship with our

Co workers, we're in relationship with our classmates

and our teammates and our bandmates.

How can I develop this relationship with them and share

the gospel with them? Because this approach tends to

work best in a society or culture where everybody's the

same. You all have the same beginning

points, you all have the same cultural backgrounds, you all

have the same stories. And we just got to understand

that in in our world today, that's just not the case.

Our, our world is very mixed now, which is, which is a

blessing, but it's also a challenge.

Globalization has done that, immigration has done that, and

just population growth has done that.

And so my neighborhood may not all look like me.

My neighborhood doesn't all start from the same place where

I started. And so we come from very

different places. When I teach cross cultural

communication, I talk about that.

Every time you have a conversation with another human

being, you're in cross cultural communication because my

background could be so different than yours that there are words

you're not understanding the same way there are filters.

Just think filters. Everybody filters.

And my dad in World War 2, as I've mentioned to you before,

was in communications. He coded and decoded secret

messages. But we're doing that every time

we have a conversation. And so depending upon what your

background is, depending upon how your family structure was,

depending upon how your parenting, your parents worked,

everything effects how I'm understanding your fears, your

loves, your values, everything's a filter.

And so it's a, it's a miracle anybody ever gets saved in it.

And that's why we depend upon God to do it.

So what we want to do is just present him in the cleanest,

clearest way that could be understood in the greatest way

possible. We call that contextualization,

more or less. So let's talk about that for a

minute. Let me give you a couple of

highbrow missions things. You're up for it.

You're good enough for it. You once took algebra, so you're

all right. So or you wished you hadn't and

you should have. So, so because you remember all

of that, everybody remember their middle school algebra.

Sure you do, exactly because it's been so profitable in your

life. So.

And if you're an algebra teacher here, it's C Taylor at Inglewood

Baptist dot com. So one of the things we

recognize I'm going to share with you very quickly.

And then we're going to dive into the practical experience,

which is what I want to spend the bulk of the time with you

on. But I want to talk to you about

a couple things for missions that are helpful historically

without going too far into it. Don't worry, this won't, this

won't be hard. I want to talk about a thing

called the Ingles scale for a second.

And the reason I want to talk about this is just because I

want you to understand that not every lost person you meet is

the same. That's the key lesson, right?

For a second. Not every lost person you meet

is the same. They're not at the same place

spiritually. They're not all in the same

place in, in their understanding of things.

And so don't necessarily treat everybody like project #32 I

don't want to be treated like project #2 Then it drive you

nuts when you get the weird spam texts and spam calls.

The ones I'm getting now is, is everybody has my resume and I

could earn all kinds of money live.

I could earn more money just if I stayed at home and sold

whatever they're lying to me about to sell because they've

got my resume. And of course, you know, it's

just spam. But so anyway, so the Engel

scale, Engel was actually a businessman and he, he was saved

and wanted to use his business practices like some of you do

in, in ministry. And so he helped our mission

boards and some of our mission understanding to develop a scale

of lostness and a scale of, of, of receptivity.

How close would somebody be to being willing to hear the

gospel? How close would they be to

understanding the gospel or how far away are they?

And so he developed a way for missionaries and mission

agencies in a sense, to, to, to be able to, to categorize

peoples or individuals into different groups.

And so you can have like in this one.

And by the way, there are about 40 different versions of this

because over the years it got tweaked a lot.

And I'm not expecting you. There's, there is no test.

There is no exam. So just relax.

But the idea would be that like this -8 person, this is a person

with absolutely no knowledge of the gospel.

Every Sunday morning and, and, and, and other times we often

pray for UPGS or UUPGS&AUUPG is a totally unengaged people

group. They have no knowledge of the

gospel. They actually have no access to

the gospel in any viable way. And so you have people that are

that far away, they've never heard any story.

So you think about your neighborhood.

You think about your office here.

There are people in Rocky Mount, trust me, who have never, ever

heard the Gospel. They don't know what that is,

right? They may not be a -, 8 because

they might be more of a a -, 7. There's some awareness because

they watch the Easter programs on TV.

They watch the Discovery Channel or The History Channel, helping

us to discover the real Jesus. That comes on twice a year.

And that is never right. But you know, they come on twice

a year and so they have some awareness, they've heard some

stories, or maybe they're a minus, even a -, 6.

They have some awareness Jesus died on a cross for some reason.

They've seen crucifixes. They have some idea, you know,

And so, so you just think about where is this person in, in, in

their receptivity. Maybe they even have some grasp

of the implications of the Gospel.

But then they get closer and closer to where they might have

a positive attitude toward the Gospel.

They might even have some, some personal problem recognition.

They actually do recognize I, I, I need something, I'm, I'm a

Sinner. I need to be saved.

When we talk about our personal testimonies in a couple of

weeks, I have a different outline than you've ever seen

before. And some of it at the beginning

will sound familiar, but later on it gets very different

because I want to talk about what Jesus is doing in your life

today, not just what he did when you were saved, but one of the

things you do have to talk about is when did I realize I needed

to be saved? How do did I realize that that's

a really important point to be able to share with somebody.

And then and then even a decision to act.

And then you get into what he would call -1 And 0 salvation,

basically, right when you hit zero, you're saved.

And so the fact that I'm ready to repent, I'm ready to be

saved, etcetera. And then Engel goes to the

positive side and again sometimes this carrot gets

carried way out into discipleship.

So you have kind of a a post decision evaluation, you have

incorporation into the body and then you have basically

discipleship, right And it can continue on in all kinds of

increments etcetera, etcetera. Now you're, you're not going to

hear me talk about the Engel scale from the pulpit too much.

You're not going to, I'm not going to you're a -, 4.

I'm not going to, you know, I'm not doing that to people.

But it but what I want you to have this awareness of is is

there, there are lost people and then there are lost people.

And what's probably more helpful is what a friend of mine did

here in North America, Tom Raynor developed a Raynor scale

of faith stages. And, and I was a part of this

development and, and worked with him on some of this as he was

writing these books during these days.

And so one of the things that we recognize that AU1 and AU5 are

very different people. So AU one is somebody who's

highly receptive to the gospel. Estimates in the United States

of America would be that between what U ones and U twos, there

would be 70 million Americans who are very receptive to the

gospel there. There are millions of Americans

who would be saved today if somebody would just share with

them how? And that's a truth, That's a

statistical truth. And so if we just shared with EU

ones and EU twos, we could see the greatest spiritual awakening

in the history of humankind in the United States of America.

But we don't share. Remember, 96 to 98% never share.

And so the evangelistic labor force is too small to push to

pull that trigger, to put that into motion.

We've got to expand the army. We've got to have a higher

percentage of participation. And so we need to be an example

here at Inglewood to show them how we can certainly have higher

than 10% sharing the gospel. But we recognize that there are

folks who are highly receptive to the gospel.

And then you have you, you twos. And the difference between some

of these isn't apparent. There's there's chapters

written, I'm not going to give you all that, but there are

chapters written about each one of these and the techniques that

you would use to reach these people with you.

Ones just share the gospel with them.

They're ready to hear it. They're probably already coming

to church. U ones are already open to

church. They're the ones who are

visiting your connect group. They're the ones who are here on

Sundays. They're the ones that are almost

ready. U twos are close to that.

They may not be coming yet, but they would be very open to the

conversations. U Threes, which are the largest

group. There's statistics for all these

groups. U3 is the largest group.

They're they're neutral, but they're not against the

conversation. They're not thinking about the

conversation, but they're not opposed to the conversation.

And then you get into the more negative side.

And the problem that we have as Christian, as Christians in the

US is we believe a lot of Satan's mythology and Satan has

done a very good job of convincing us that all the lost

people in our country are U fives.

And that is not even close to being the truth.

In fact, this is very much a bell curve.

And so the percentage of people who are highly resistant to the

gospel, you fives who are antagonistic, these are

protesters, these are lawsuit people, these are screamers,

these are door slammers. Is always been less than than 8%

of the US population. But we think everybody's that

way because we see it on TV and we see it in the media.

So everybody's against us. Everybody hates Christianity.

And that's not true at all. That's not even close to being

true. The view of the Bible still

high, the view of the church is relatively sound.

The child abuse cases haven't helped that.

But but what we see is, is that the way you would show the

gospel with AU five person, very different than the way you would

show the gospel with AU one person.

So with AU one person, they're wide open, they're eager,

they're wondering how come you haven't shared that with them

before. AU five person is going to take

prayer, a lot of relationship building, a lot of demonstration

of life in front of them, loving them often through crisis and

need and helping them during difficult times.

And them also watching you go through, and this is the part

that a lot of Christians don't like.

They might need to watch you suffer, and they might need to

watch you go through something and how you handled that as a

demonstration of the reality and authenticity of your faith.

So when you're suffering, when you're hurting, don't ever

forget what the greater meaning of all that could be.

We go back to the problem of evil that we've talked about in

the past, but the fact that you might be going through what

you're going through because there's somebody watching you,

you might not even know it, but the testimony of how you go

through what you're going through is the catalyst from

moving them. You can understand that part of

the goal here. Think about this.

If I could just move AU4 to AU5 to AU4, that's a significant

moment for them. Move them to AU3 and then

actually get them even closer. So sometimes it's not that I'm

expecting you to get saved today, I'm just expecting you to

not scream at me today. You used to scream at me.

Now you don't scream at me anymore.

God's working, God's moving, you know, and so we've got to

recognize how this works. And so, so each one of these.

And so my main point though, simply this, that you don't

label every lost person the same way.

Their law, everybody's lost, who's lost the statement,

everybody's lost. That was the depth of my

discussion. Everybody who's lost is lost,

but they don't all have the same characteristics and needs and

next steps. And so recognize that for some

of them, the expectation that they're going to get saved in

one encounter with one presentation is probably not

realistic. That I that this is going to

take time, this is going to take multiple encounters, This is

going to take multiple conversations.

And that if I can just get them to move a little closer, then

God has worked and, and planted and watered well.

And, and I've been faithful and God's happy about that.

All that makes sense. All right, now let me turn the

page and help you to understand some barriers.

I could probably come up with a different list and I, to be

honest with you, find this list a little bit redundant.

But I want to talk about what Tim Booker, who's a friend of

mine, Tim Timothy Booker, is a professor at Southern Seminary

who's an evangelism professor. He wrote a little book about

this. And so that's where these words

come from. I want to give him credit at

times I find they're a little repetitive, but it's as good a

list as as we can use as a discussion.

If you were in class, you would be required to share what your

greatest barrier is and what you believe the greatest barrier of

those around you is as well. And so we'll see whether or not

I feel like you need to share and wake up here in a minute.

But let's talk about these barriers for a moment and let me

just define them for you. And I want you to think about

this. Maybe you have no barriers.

If you're one of those, you're probably A2 percenter and we

need to have a conversation later because I need to unleash

you on some people. But the fear barrier is the most

common without a question when surveys and studies are done on

why people don't share their faith.

The number one reason without any close second, frankly, is

some version of fear. And I'll talk more about fear in

a minute. But let's talk about these other

ones. The fear, the the barrier of

ignorance is the idea that I don't know what to say.

I, I would love to share my faith.

I want to learn how to share my faith, but I don't know how.

I don't know what to say, right? And so for a brand new believer,

that makes sense that there's some things that they just

don't. They just don't know what that

means yet. And so certainly for a brand new

believer, that ignorance is, is an honest, honest response.

For the rest of us, this is just an issue of training and

education. It should be so that that excuse

or that that barrier gets taken away.

You know what to say and you know what to do.

And if you keep coming to these sessions or listening to them,

you can't use that one anymore. So that doesn't mean don't come

next time, just come and learn. As you can imagine, the barrier

of apathy is I don't care. And there's a lot of that.

And it gets mixed in with the last one of busyness quite a bit

in the sense that I care, but I don't really have time to care

or I just don't think about it. I, I, I wish I did think about

it. And when I think about it, I

care, but I go through my life and day's over and I didn't

think about it and I just don't have time to think about it.

But true apathy means I don't care.

I have no burden for the lost. For some, there's even a

theological perspective that I don't need to show the gospel.

God is sovereign and he'll save whoever he's going to save.

And we don't need to get involved with that.

And so for those who don't know, we call that hyper Calvinism

normally not Calvinism, hyper Calvinism.

And so there's a difference. But to talk about this, this

state of God is so sovereign that we shouldn't actually be

involved in evangelism remissions that that God will

take care of that we don't have to worry about it.

Or I just frankly don't care. Often if that's the case, your

view of eternity is a little shallow.

Your view of hell is often limited.

Again, down the road, I'm going to do a series on heaven, hell,

and the hereafter, and you may want to miss some of those

sessions and listen to them later because they might be too

much for some of you. Because I will talk about hell

pretty graphically and tell you what the Bible really says,

breaking the barrier of introspection.

This is one that sometimes people don't know.

What does that mean? That means that I, I'm not

worthy to share. I'm such a Sinner.

Why would God use me? I'm not, I'm not worth in enough

to be able to be used. It's something that important to

see somebody saved to be an instrument in God's hand towards

salvation. I'm, I'm not worth that.

I, I'm too sinful. If you knew, if you knew me, you

wouldn't even ask me to be involved with this.

God can't use me. So it's that kind of place.

There ought to be a little bit of that in all of us.

It's called humility. But when you take it to that

next degree of inactive, it takes me to a place where I'm

inactive, then introspection gets in the way, and then you

can imagine busyness, which is a curse for a lot of us.

So we're too busy to do this. I wish I could.

I wish I did. I wish somebody else would.

I'm so glad you're doing it, but I don't have time.

Or again, I wish I did. And I meant to, but then the

day's over and I didn't because I'm I'm success is often defined

by how many things I checked off of my duty list for the day

without necessarily considering what God wanted me to do today.

And our culture is obviously caught up in the swirl of this

all the time. So mixtures of these things

would be common. You're they're not hard lines

and often you might say, well, I'm this way one day and I'm

that way another. Depends on the situation,

depends upon the context, depends upon who I'm sharing

with. If I were to ask you though, let

me do it this way. This is the safe, easy way to do

it. What do you see in others?

Most of the time somebody just shout out what and use these

words. Which, which one of these do you

see most of the time? And others that you know,

ignorance, apathy, What else did I hear?

Fear, busyness. So all of them, right.

Yeah. Different times.

The the big key is this. When you look in the spiritual

mirror, why don't you share your faith more now that that's not a

judgement call? Because some of you might, some

of you might share your faith more than anybody I've ever met

in my life because I don't know everybody in this room and I

don't know what you do all day long.

So, but if you don't share your faith as much as you know you

ought to share your faith, why? And what are you going to do

about that? And so because fear is the

number one issue, let me make a couple more comments.

And some of these are old comments, but I want to put them

back into this context of this lesson because it fits.

Always remember that fear is an act of worship.

And I've said that to you 10 times.

I'll say it to you 100 more because it's such a vitally

important truth. Fear is an act of worship.

When you fear something, you give it power.

When you fear something, you submit to it.

When you fear something, you pay homage to it, right?

And so we need to be careful because that's why in every and

over and over again, the Bible says to only fear God.

And I've said all around the world on just about every

continent that anytime we fear something or someone more than

God, we are an idolater, right? And I get pushed back.

So I'm not afraid of the traffic.

Hush. See Taylor at Inglewood that I'm

talking, That's not what I'm, you know what I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about sticking your hand in a fire.

I'm talking about spiritually and relationally because these

are issues of relational authority.

Love and fear are based on relational authority.

So I'm to love God more than anyone or anything.

I'm to fear God more than anyone or anything.

And if I do anything other than that, I'm breaking the the

commandments and I'm breaking the teachings of Christ when he

quotes the greatest commandments.

So when we think about that, every book of the Bible then has

some version of fear, not every single one of them, because God

knew it was going to be a problem.

And so for us, and especially in personal evangelism application,

the opposite of fear then is not courage, it's faith.

I've got to believe that the reason I'm having this

conversation with you about Christ is because God is so far

ahead of me, right? There's no reason we ought to be

having this, and this God is already.

I believe in divine appointments.

I believe absolutely, blindly, clearly believe in sovereignty

and divine appointment and orchestration.

I do. I depend upon that.

I don't believe in chance. I don't believe in luck.

I don't believe in fate. I believe in a God who's at

work. Now, that doesn't mean I can

explain everything. That certainly doesn't mean I

understand everything. Go back to the problem of evil.

But I do believe in evangelism, especially.

There is no way I would have met you at the coffee shop or would

be standing on the street corner or I'd be in that airplane 1000

times last year or, or in that airport and you struck up a

conversation with me. Holy Spirit's all over you,

right? And I got to, I got to believe

evangelism is an act of faith. See, I can't save anybody.

We talked about that last time. I can't save anybody.

So I have to believe that God will and can.

And so I'm absolutely trusting him.

So if he puts me in the situation to have a

conversation, the least thing I can do is open my mouth and say

something and we're going to talk about how do I actually do

that next time we're together? How do I actually engage in

those conversations? So this is really important.

And that's why, again, as I've shared with you before, but I

want to put it into this context, why first John 418 is

so true. So when we talk about there is

No Fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, this idea

that there's no Phobos in agape. So that's what those Greek

words, it's Phobos which is think about phobia.

There's No Fear in agape. This willful decision,

unconditional, willful choice by God to love you no matter what,

but perfect teleos, agape, perfect, whole, complete, all

the pieces are there. So it's not just agape, it's

perfectly complete agape by God that he loves me this way.

It casts out, it leaves no room for it pushes out Phobos.

So in the words, if I'm so full of God, I'm so full of the

Spirit, I'm so full of his agape, my fear is not going to

have room. Now this takes us back.

This is why this is a stair stepping experience.

If you didn't listen to the last session, you need to listen to

the last session because I talked about two relationships.

Relationship number one, this intentional relationship with

God and his people. Absolutely essential before I

can have the intentional relationship with the world and

its people. Because I got to be so full of

God that not only am I empowered by that, not only am I faith in

that, but the overflow of that into the lives of the lost

people around me. That's when real power happens.

Because it's not me, it's him. I was talking to a leader

yesterday in my office and I held up my empty cup and I said,

my friend, this is who you are right now.

Because they're burned out. They're, they're empty.

And I said, and when you're empty, you've got nothing.

You can keep pouring out to somebody else.

You've got to keep filling yourself up and handing the

overflow. That's when the best ministry,

that's when the best evangelism, that's when the best

discipleship, that's when the best influence takes place.

And so we've got to remember that.

So I need to be so full of Teleosagape and believe in it so

much. Perfect, whole, complete, the

image of a piece of fruit that's ripe and all the pieces are

there. The unconditional, willful

choice to love me no matter what.

By God, man, that ought to empower you.

It ought to inspire you. I don't know what else you have

to believe in. You've got to cling to that,

right? So then we go to my definition

once again, which I shared last time, but I want to bring it

into context. So for me, evangelism, this is

the John H Hewart definition is I'm intentionally preparing for

and pursuing opportunities to personally show the gospel of

Jesus Christ with with those who are unsaved in the power of the

Holy Spirit while leaving the results to God.

And I give due credit to Bill Bright stealing part of his

definition. I always do that.

But in other words, there's an intentionality in my

preparation. So part of my preparations,

relationship number one, part of my preparations, pre evangelism,

I'm going to prepare myself by being full of God.

And I'm also going to be prayed up and I'm praying for them.

Part of the pre evangelistic stuff we're getting ready to

talk about for a minute or two. And that intentional preparation

then leads me into the intentional pursuit.

Relationship number one to relationship #2 So the more I'm

intentionally preparing for this, if I open my day by

praying for my lost neighbor and thinking about him, then when I

see my lost neighbor out there, I'm not thinking about whether

or not he pushed his trash can in the right way or not.

I'm thinking about whether he's lost.

And then I'm looking for these opportunities to share the

gospel. That's all I can do.

All I can do is share. All I can do is point.

I point, I point, I share. And we're going to talk about

how to share in the best way, how to share in the most

complete way. Here's a whole gospel that we

need to tell somebody. But then and then in the end,

our Holy Spirit, you just filled me.

You're overflowing now. So you got to, you got to save

them. Bill Hybels, who I don't quote a

lot, if you know that name. If you don't, it doesn't matter.

Mega Church, Former Mega Mega Church pastor.

He had a formula in one of his books for for evangelism.

I like the formula. So you have HP.

So I told you we're going to do algebra?

Yeah. Don't pay attention.

HP plus CP plus CC equals MI. In the beginning, I wasn't going

to give you the key. I was just going to have you all

work on a board. You know, somebody come to the

board who can do their homework. But basically the idea is that

high potency. Now what do you think that

means? So high potency, that means I'm

filled with the Holy Spirit. I'm filled with the word of God.

I'm in relationship number one. I am so passionately in love

with Jesus. I'm full of the dunamis power of

the Holy Spirit of the hagios and numatos.

I'm full of him, plus close proximity.

Now see, we get practical. I got to hang out with lost

people. I, I got to know him somewhere.

I got to be in an intentional relationship with him.

I've got to be able to have a conversation with them because

I've got to have clear communication.

Now, when those three pieces come together, that's when

you're going to have maximum impact.

So I can come to church all day long.

I can be in every single study. I can be here every single time

the doors open. I can be raised in church from

the nursery on which I wasn't, but some of you were.

I can be and I can know. I can know.

I can ask the the greatest, deepest theological questions

and have the most rabbinical type conversations about it that

you want. But if I have no close proximity

then I'm never going to have clear communication and there's

no impact except the selfishness of my own self inflated

sponginess of discipleship. How was that?

So we need to be careful. So let's talk about this.

How do I do this? So how do we build intentional

bridges of relationship? So we've got to think about this

for a minute. People need to trust the witness

before believing the message. Now it may sound like a weird

thing to say, but I'm talking about relational evangelism.

They need to believe this is real to you.

There needs to be an authenticity to you.

We're going to talk more about that.

The word real is crucial in a pre Christian, post postmodern

culture. You want to have impact.

Real, authentic has to mean something.

They can smell a fake a mile away.

They can, they can. They can smell a sales pitch a

mile away. That's not what they're after.

They've seen enough of that. They've seen enough of cheap

Christianity. They've seen enough of of, of

media born Christianity. So 80 plus percent of all

converts come to Christ. The influence of a Christian

friend or relative. You just got to understand how

important you all are. We will not reach thousands of

people. We will not make an impact on

the 74% unchurched rate right around us right now.

We will not make that impact. If it's all up to me, I'm not

saying it is. I know some of you are very

active. Thank you.

But all of us, the whole church has to be mobilized.

Thus 100% participation. Thus everybody in a connect

group, thus every connect group during the reach strategy, just

to get you loosened up, little, little lubricated and flexible

to reach out to people. There's a madness behind the

method, I assure you. But there's also some method

behind the madness. Christians have to befriend lost

person people. But I'll tell you that.

But, but before we get there, we need to think about the

characteristic of a good witness.

And I'm using the word as a noun the right way.

That was a verb. I don't like that verb

witnessing. Go go back in last time and

listen. You'll see why Leighton Ford

once said this. The transformed character of

Christian men and women is the key to world evangelization at

the end of the 20th century and beyond.

Our lives have to be changed. This has to be real.

This has to be who we really are.

Fake doesn't work anymore. In fact, Acts 413 reminds us

now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived

that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished and

they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

Now, when I preached through this months ago, I told you that

that wasn't a positive statement.

It was actually a -1 that they were actually mocking them for

being with Jesus. But it was still an impactful

statement. They could tell you're like him.

You're like that thing if their attitude, but it was still clear

that he had rubbed off on them. So when we talk about the

characteristic of a witness, we need to recognize that the more

we witness. This is what I talked a little

bit about last time. The more I witness God work, the

more I'm going to testify about God working.

So I witnessed the grace and the work of the Holy Spirit in my

life and the life of others. And then I testify about that to

everybody else. And this is something that we

must do. So we're going to talk about how

do I testify down the road? And this is going to be a

balance of the intentional and the neutral.

In other words, there are things that I'm observing and there are

things that I'm sharing. So let's be real.

We need to be consistently authentic and we need to be

relevant. We need to be contextually

important. Part of the problem in the

United States of America, hear me.

This is not a guess. It's based on research.

Part of the issue in the United States of America is not that

lost. People are sitting home on

Sunday morning cursing the church.

They're not sitting there thinking about how stupid and

how bad the church is. They're sitting at home on

Sunday morning not thinking about the church at all.

It is totally irrelevant to them.

This has no meaning in their life.

It's not a part of the social construct that it might have

been at one point in certain parts of the country.

OK, it never was in other parts, but in some parts, you know, the

socially acceptable thing to do was to go to church.

Businessmen went to church because they felt like they'd

lose business if they didn't. Right?

In fact, one of the great characteristics of one of the

great spiritual awakening. So you want to drag me down into

this history, I won't go there. But one of the great

characteristics of one of the great spiritual awakenings in

the United States of America was when they had to write about the

dual covenant theology, or excuse me, the halfway covenant,

not dual covenant. That's a whole different thing.

Halfway covenant theology of the church to where people, you

could have a halfway covenant member or a full covenant

member. A halfway covenant member of the

church was an unsafe person. You could be a member of the

church and you didn't have to be saved.

If you want to be full covenant, you had to be saved.

And so the church was full of recognized, officially listed

unsaved people because it was a social construct to go to

church. In fact, one of the catalysts

for the Great Awakening was a was a thing written by the by a

father and a son. And they wrote about the

unconverted ministry. In other words, they were

writing about unconverted pastors who are leading

churches. We still have that today.

So we got to be real. We got to be relevant.

So how do we get there? How do we get there?

So let's here we go. Here's some practical stuff for

you. How do we build these

relationships? So we need to intentionally seek

them out in the first place. Don't forget the definition of

evangelism. We've got to seek out

intentional relationships and encounters with lost people.

If we don't do that, lost people aren't going to hear the gospel.

Let me let me show you. Here's the deepest thing of the

night. You ready?

Lost people need saved people to share the gospel with them.

I know something isn't it got me those two doctorates for that

one. But anyway, so the other thing

you got to do is pray and we'll talk a little more about that in

a minute, but then build an expectant relationship.

In other words, this is, this doesn't need to be a fake

relationship. I'm not just trying to use you

so I can get to a gospel presentation.

Be careful. Do I genuinely love you?

Do I genuinely care about you? Am I genuinely your friend?

Am I genuinely in a relationship with you?

You got to ask yourself that. But am I expecting the

opportunity to tell you about who I really love?

So it's a guided expected moment.

So I want to show when possible. So showing is important,

especially for the U5U four. I got to show them.

They got to see this in me. They're not, they're not just

going to listen to my words right off the bat.

They need to see something different.

That guy's different, that family's different, right?

Listen, I tell you when this, when we were doing this study,

we talked to people all around the world, all around the US and

50 States and Canada. And here's what we heard.

My next door neighbor's a Christian.

We know they're a Christian. We watch them go to church every

week. They don't know we're watching,

but we're peeking out the window watching them go.

Why don't my neighbors think we're good enough to go to

church with him? Why don't my neighbors think I'm

good enough to know they're Jesus?

Is there something wrong with us that where they won't even come

over and talk to us about what they think the most important

thing? We know you all think it's

important, but we're not worthy for you to even come and talk to

us about that. We heard that kind of thing over

and over and over and oh, it's the silence.

It's the hypocrisy. Show when possible, share as

soon as possible. It's almost a bumper sticker of

mine. You got a difficult person in

your life. Somebody was sharing with me on

Sunday a legitimate situation about somebody at work in a very

different kind of lifestyle situation, difficult situation.

And I use that phrase. You got to show them as you got

to show them when possible and as often as possible and you got

to share as soon as possible. Then we we let God pushes out of

our comfort zone. We're going to talk more about

that next time. How does that happen?

And I'm going to approach people with this heart of love.

This has to be genuine. If you don't know how to love

people, there's your problem. You got it.

You got a relationship number one problem over here.

You've got to deal with, with God to our, I don't love

anybody. I don't know how to love.

That's a, that's a spiritual problem that you need to deal

with. You need to repent and confess

of that sin and let God help you with that, right.

And so I approach people with a heart of love.

I approach them with an attitude of expectancy.

And I'm sensitive to the Holy Spirit because I'm telling you,

I believe if, if I actually like I'm at a gas pump the other day

and a guy starts talking to me and he, he, he asked me a

question about the military because I got a sticker on my

back window about my grandson in the Air Force.

And next thing I know I'm, no, I'm a preacher.

And he goes, you want to hear my favorite verse?

And he's telling me his favorite verse.

And then I'm telling him my favorite verse.

Now there's a, there's four or five cars gathered around us and

they're all here in my favorite verse.

That's just God. Then we get really practical.

So we bust through the barriers. What's my barrier?

What's the big hold up? God, you got to help me with

this. You got to confess that before

him. You got to lay that before him.

I'm too afraid. I don't know what to do.

This is such an important thing. I'm afraid I'll mess it up.

That's a fear. So God help me.

And we're going to talk about that.

Don't worry, we're going to talk about those methods.

We got a lot more sessions coming and then I'm praying for

the opportunity and then I'm going to take the initiative and

lead the conversation to Christ, which is exactly what we're

going to talk. Here's exactly how to do that

next time we're together. And I don't think you've ever

heard what I'm going to say to you in the next session before.

I've never never heard anybody else teach what I teach.

And that's not, I hope that if that sounds arrogant, then it's

just see, Taylor, it didn't go with batteries, but I don't mean

it that way. It's just I've, I've read, you

know, you got to think in my line of work, I got to read

every book. I got to read every

presentation, and I don't know why we don't approach it in such

a natural way. This ought to be just an outflow

of relationship #1 and that's what we're going to talk about.

How to make that work. And then we come together.

So we talk about praying all the time.

So let's talk about prayer and evangelism for a minute.

The other side of your prayer handout.

Now normally, like if I'm in class, we would spend 30 minutes

together praying for this, but we've actually done an entire

podcast about this and we've actually had an entire Wednesday

night prayer service kind of modelled on this in the past.

So in this session, we're not going to spend the time doing

that tonight. But here's what I want to

challenge you to do. And we're going to talk about

this every single time from now on because this is stair

stepping. So I don't believe you got to

hear me clearly. I don't believe you will ever

lead a conversation to Christ if you're not praying.

I just don't think it's going to happen that often.

I don't think the sensitivity is going to be there.

I don't think the awareness is going to be there.

So this is foundational to what we're going to talk about 3

sessions from now. You can understand that.

And So what I want you to do is at the bottom of that, you see

blanks. You see 4 blanks in Person X and

an outline. We've walked to the outline

multiple times here at Inglewood, so read through that.

If you haven't ever seen that before, just read through it.

Use this as your quiet time. Read these passages of scripture

and begin to pray this way. Pray every day.

Pray every week however you can do it for a lost person.

My suggestion is, as you find 4 lost people in your life, you

can begin praying for by name. And just what?

I dare you to do it. I've dared churches all around

the world to do this. I dare connect groups to do

this. I dare you as a small group to

adopt people like this and pray for them that way.

I dare you and watch what God does.

And when he answers that first one, you will be so much more

emboldened for the next one. And then person X is the person

you don't know. That's that person you're going

to meet that person at at Tractor Supply.

That's that person at Lowe's. You can tell where I hang out.

That's that person at Smith's Red and White who, what are TV,

whatever commercial, what else we got?

Anybody got a business in here? I'll, I'll shout it out.

This is that person you meet at the gas pump.

This is that person you haven't met yet.

But I'm, I'm, I run into them today.

But see, I'm not just haphazardly running into person

X. I'm asking God for person XI

want to run into him today. When I travelled, I had all of

my students in my classes praying for me.

And then when I came back to class, they were were ordered to

interrogate me. So if I missed a week of class

because I'm gone. So like last year, I did 11

international trips last year. So if I'm teaching a class and

I'm gone, when I come back, they're supposed to interrogate

me. Who'd you talk to?

Doctor Ewart? Who'd you sit next to Doctor

Ewart? Who was person next?

Doctor Ewart, who is that person?

See, don't don't rush by. So that's your favorite verse at

the gas pump? I don't know his name.

I should, it's bad. I should have.

I learned it. At the moment I don't remember

it. I should.

But who's person next tomorrow? Who's person next tonight?

Pray for them. So pray God give them to me.

Don't, don't, don't and and and don't be the, you know, I know

people who go. It's so funny.

So in the old days, you know, like I was an EE trainer, faith

or whatever with CWT or whatever.

Some of you have no clue what I'm talking about.

These are evangelism programs and.

And we'd go out and we'd go knocking on doors and.

And I've been out with many of times when it was almost kind of

like nobody's home. Yeah, we tried.

We went out. We went out tonight, knocked on

a bunch of doors. Unfortunately, nobody home.

Can I can I hear a testimony? Thank you for those hands.

Your buses will wait. So, so one of the things that we

recognize, it's just that that we want to pray for this because

then because then I have Holy Spirit, boldness and power and

feeling behind me. This is all about your walk with

God. I hope you're getting that.

So it's all about living out seven essentials of

discipleship. And I know you think none of

this stuff matters or maybe this didn't connect, but it all

connects. We're building a train from day

one. We're building a train and so

recognize this. Let me share a few verses with

you about prayer. Some of these are on your prayer

guide. So James 4/2 you desire and you

do not have. So you murdered.

You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

The context of this is massive conflict.

But then you have the last part that we often quote.

You do not have because you do not ask.

So whether it's physical conflict, emotional conflict,

relational conflict, or spiritual conflict, are you

asking for the lost souls of your people?

Are you asking for the lost souls of the Rocky Mount Area

area? Well, why would God give them to

you when you don't even ask for them?

You have no burden. You have no care.

Why would He give them to us? Why would He trust us with

spiritual babies when we don't act like we even like babies?

Matthew 938 preached A sermon about this one day.

Therefore, pray earnestly or beseech earnestly.

It means to ask passionately and specifically to the Lord of the

harvest. To Ekbalo.

To send out that word means to push, to throw, to thrust, to

pick up and toss laborers into His harvest.

I dare you to pray in your small group that way for one another.

Force us out there. Don't let us sleep.

Don't let us rest. I've said many a time to a lost

people, and this is not the technique I would probably use,

but I've said to many a lost person, I'm going to pray that

you can't sleep, that you're sick to your stomach.

Then you can't breathe until you pay attention to what I just

said to you. See, I I'm not worried about a

lost person being mad at me. I'm worried about a lost person

going to hell. We got to take this seriously.

Colossians 4 reminds me of our friends and a friend you're

going to hear in a couple of weeks.

It's amazing. I got 2 guests coming at the end

of the month, both of whom have been arrested for their faith,

which with everything else that's happened to other friends

wasn't an original design. But Paul's in prison.

I've shared this verse with you before in a prayer meeting in

Colossians 4. He's in prison, he's in chains,

and he asked the church continue steadfastly in prayer, being

watchful in it with Thanksgiving.

At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a

door for the Word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of

which I am in prison. He goes on that I may make it

clear, which is how I ought to speak.

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so

that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Lord, I prayed, now you put this.

This is on your prayer guide. You put this into the life of

that person you name God, I want you to open the door to the

gospel in Sam's life. Make me aware of it.

I want to see it. I want to see that door open.

Show me the door. Show me the window.

It's the word just means opening.

Show me the opening to the gospel that you open up in Sam's

life. And then let me speak the way I

ought to to him. Let me sprinkle salt on him, let

me share with him. Ephesians 6 is very similar,

same thing. He's in prison, different

church, but in prison. And he says praying at all times

in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication to that, and

keep alert with all perseverance, making

supplication for all the Saints. And also for me, that words may

be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the

mystery of the gospel for which I'm an ambassador in chains,

that I might, may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Here's the apostle Paul. I pray for boldness.

How should we be praying for one another?

God help me to be not only see the window open, but let me be

bold enough to say something. Romans 10/1.

I've mentioned it in a sermon not long ago.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that

they may be saved. Do you care about the salvation

of your people? Do we care about the Rocky Mount

era? Do we?

Do we care about the 50,000 new people who will be here within

the next 10 years? That means that means 25,000

people in the next 5. Most of them will be lost.

Statistically, it's easy to say that most of them will be lost.

Who's going to get them? Who's going to reach them?

Who's going to share with them, right?

Who's going to make disciples out of them?

So we pray. We pray for receptivity in these

guides. We pray for exposure, we pray

for acceptance, we pray for commitment, and we pray that God

would be honored. And if you notice what that

spells out, because we're praying that they'd be receptive

to the gospel, we pray that they would actually be exposed to a

gospel presentation, that they would accept the truth, they'd

make a commitment, and that God would be glorified.

And then we talk about a couple of other things, and we'll hit

this a little bit more later, but we talk about social

ministry and the fact that doing good things for people, meeting

physical need, meeting emotional need, meeting relational need.

So this could be anything from a food pantry to counseling.

How do we, we have benevolence funds here.

We have a lot of ministries that go on in our community.

How do we help people? How can that be used as a pre?

Is that pre evangelism to where we we have the opportunity to

help relationships with people, genuinely love them, with the

hopeful, with the hopeful opportunity of sharing the

gospel. It's also a post evangelism

activity for Christians to love them and to help them and to

feed them. And so that's part of it.

I've taught an entire class about how do we do that?

How do we adopt schools? How do we adopt people?

Jesus met people that way. What are we going to do?

So let me give you a couple of quotes before we kind of go

because it's time to go. Some of you have already left,

but thank you for not doing that.

And those of you who left, I watched you.

You know, it's funny on Sunday morning.

You think I don't see it when everybody gets up and walks

around. So you are so funny.

People have places to go. I'm it's fine.

Bless their hearts. Don't embarrass them.

I just did so Robert Lewis, who has written multiple books, but

I won't go into that. Just listen to this quote.

We have at times burned bridges to our communities by being a

disembodied voice of judgement. The world must see that while we

are firm in our convictions about sin, we are also actively

loving sinners by seeking to pick up the pieces of a broken

world. We must not be seen as casting

stones of judgement from a distance or Elton True Blood

much older quote. Testimony must be both words and

deeds. The spoken word is never really

effective unless it's backed up by a life, but it is also true

that the living deed is never adequate without the support the

spoken word can provide. This is because no life is ever

good enough. The person who says naively I

don't need to preach, I just let my life speak is insufferably

self-righteous. What one among us is so good

that he can let his life speak and leave it at that?

We need both, and let's show them whenever possible the share

as soon as possible. You don't want to stop at this

point. You've got to come back.

This all builds you missed last time.

Listen to it before next time. And then next time we're going

to get into the real heart of the matter.

I think so you'll want to come back.

Father, thank you so much just for the opportunity of being

your ambassador. Father, we don't deserve to be

used. We should never be used.

But Father, you have an incredible plan.

So, Father, I pray that you'll open the window of the gospel

and give us boldness to share as we ought give us the words to

share. Thank you, Father, for this

opportunity. Thank you for those who are here

and for those who are listening to this online.

I pray, Father, that if they don't have a church home, that

Father, they'll join us this Sunday as we talk more about how

you worked around the world. Thank you, Father, in Christ's

name, Amen. God bless you all.

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening

today and I also hope that you'll go to our website at

englewoodbaptist com as well as our app and find many other

resources that will bless you and your families.

Thank you once again.