From the Pastor’s Desk (64)
August 12, 2001
Every once in a while I need to remind myself of the importance of evangelism! Some of you may probably be surprised to hear me say this because you would expect the pastor to be always red hot when it comes to sharing Jesus to save the lost. Unfortunately, that is not the case, at least, with me. Like many of you, I have the tendency to choose the path of least resistance. I gravitate towards doing those things that are easy. On top of that Satan is always at work to keep us sedated on apathy and busyness. This is the reason why I am not necessarily always all fired up for bringing the lost to Christ because it often takes immense effort and energy out of me. Evangelism is difficult! It is the hardest spiritual workout!
Yet, a local church that is not devoted to the work of evangelism is a useless church and a Christian whose life is not intricately involved in bringing the lost to Christ is a wasted life! The last thing that I want to hear from God when my life is over on this side of eternity and stand before Him to settle the account is, “Eric, you have wasted your life because you failed to give your best in sharing Jesus with your lost family members, friends, work associates, classmates, neighbors and even those strangers I sent on your way!” Evangelism is difficult, but hearing from God that I squandered all the opportunities of sharing Jesus while living on earth would be more painful for me to bear.
Therefore, we must be on the alert and consciously get ourselves involved in bringing the lost to Christ. Actually, this is a pretty negative way of looking at the work of evangelism. If we deeply meditate and reflect on what God has done to save not so attractive people like us through His one and only Son Jesus, then we would be able to approach evangelism with the attitude of gratitude! And we actually experience an indescribable thrill when we start getting involved in sharing Jesus with those around us. That thrill gets greatly compounded when we see the fruit of our labor! Ah, the joy of seeing our lost friends trusting Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior and getting baptized in front of many brothers and sisters in Christ! It is an amazing experience that we can never buy with money!
In order to help you share Jesus more effectively, we, for the first time, will have a “seeker targeted worship service” on Sunday 9/9 that is designed with your lost friends and family members in mind. I believe that only the believers can truly worship God because worship is God’s children coming before Him and telling Him how worthy and awesome He really is. The lost people do not know Him to do this! But I am convinced that we the believers can help the unbelievers become curious about our Heavenly Father especially through worship. Worship is a spiritual matter, and if it is offered up to God in spirit and truth, then the unbelievers who are present at our worship will experience something that their intellect or emotion cannot explain. As a result, they will acknowledge the reality of God and be open to investigating the claims of Christianity.
The theme for our first seeker targeted worship service will be “A New Beginning.” We will attempt to communicate the grace of God that allows us to forget the past and move forward by giving us new beginnings. To accomplish this, we will carefully select praise songs and thoughtfully prepare a drama to support the message. We are also considering having one person share his/her story as to how he/she found the new beginning through Christ. And of course, it goes without saying that we will encourage and expect the greeters, the refreshment providers and the childcare people to be at their best for the glory of God and also for the sake of the lost people’s eternity!
Please begin praying to God and start investing your time and resources in building relationships with those that God might be nudging you to bring to this seeker targeted worship service on Sunday, 9/9. And commit yourselves to fast and pray and get involved in various ministry opportunities by signing up from today! We will soon experience that evangelism is tough yet highly rewarding!
Your pastor,
Eric
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