GYCE Focus 2016: Coming to Christ

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GYC Europe

#Evangelism

Naison Chitiyo

#Evangelism- Part 1

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for this opportunity that we have to learn from each other.

I thank you for the time that we have to read into your word and see how we can be able to apply the principles that Jesus himself practiced when he was reaching out to people, so we can be more effective for you as missionaries, as witnesses for Christ in the world that we live in.

When we think about evangelism, who would be the most obvious person to be our model?

When we think about how Jesus interacted with different people, we can be able to find different principles that we can apply in our own interaction to see how we can bring people to Jesus.

And so really what I'm trying to do is that you notice that this is not so much of a specific, oh you can do this blog or you can do that, but it's rather more bringing out principles that we can be able to use in any form of evangelism, even though as you can tell it's primarily focusing on digital and media and all those different things, but I just want to bring principles that are general to every single thing.

So hopefully it should be relatable and it should be something that you can take away with you in any form of evangelism that you do.

But you notice that whenever Jesus turned up somewhere, he often drew up a crowd and whether he was teaching, whether he was healing or whether he was preaching, people wanted to hear what Jesus had to say.

And I want to look first of all at the first phase, we're going to be talking about evangelism, the motive.

So from yourselves, evangelism, Is evangelism important?

Feel free to just shout out I'm sure my mic will pick up your voice.

There are a lot of people who don't know, like who've never had the opportunity to know what we know.

There are a lot of people who have never had the opportunity to know what we know.

I think I read somewhere that there are 3 really important processes to being a good Christian and that is prayer, evangelizing and...

And it's because it helps us to grow spiritually as well.

So evangelism is a fundamental factor of how we are able to grow as Christians alongside prayer and Bible studies.

So I think, I don't know how many of you work or how many of you are studying, when your lecturer tells you to do something or when your boss tells you to do something, you do it because they're in charge.

And so when Jesus, who is in charge of everything, tells you to go, that makes it important just simply because he said it.

But here, I want us to look at another reason why evangelism is important.

And we're gonna be drawing primarily from the book of Luke, chapter 15.

So if you have your Bibles, you can turn that with me.

Luke, chapter 15, we'll be looking at verse 1.

And it's a passage that we know so well, we're all very familiar with.

And I just want to bring out some principles that apply generally to the subject of evangelism that we might be able to use.

And obviously because our group, we're all open, I'll be asking somebody to read from us when you get there.

Luke chapter 15 verse 1 and verse 2 Thank you very much So here Jesus is teaching and like every other occasion people come to hear Jesus and in verse 1 we're told about a specific group of people who come to hear what Jesus has to say.

Now being a sinner, everyone is a sinner, but when you have that attached to you as a title, that's an almighty condemnation.

And then you have alongside the sinners, people who are called the tax collectors.

So from this, do you get the impression that tax collectors were they good people or were they bad people?

Were they looked upon in a positive light or a negative light?

So you have a group of people who are considered as being the outcasts of society and then these outcasts of society what do you find them doing?

And then as they're coming to Christ, there's a different group of people in verse 2.

So this is another group of people and then what they say is that this man what?

The word them is a plural word that you use to refer to a group of people or objects that you are not a part of.

So when the Pharisees say that Jesus receives sinners and eats with them, what were they saying by extension?

And so in their minds they're thinking, how can this man who claims to be the Messiah, who claims to be the anointed 1, be eating and drinking with them, sinners, instead of interacting with us, righteous people.

And it made me think, sometimes in church, are we also guilty of having that kind of interaction?

Do we sometimes look down on people as them because they're different to us?

Do we ever have those problems in church?

Even among ourselves sometimes in church, people who are in church, you know there's some people who worship God or praise God in a different way and we look at them and think oh you know they're weird or they're strange just because they're different from how we are.

And sometimes because the Pharisees are doing it so exaggeratedly it's very easy to pick on them and say that's wrong but then we can look at ourselves and think actually are we guilty of the same sin.

And so when it comes to evangelism, the very, very first step is that you have to actually have open arms to people who are different to yourselves.

But you see that Jesus, when he sees these people, how does he treat them?

He says that he receives them and he eats with them.

So the sinners, even though they were sinners, they loved to come to Christ because he accepted them as they were and he dignified them and he made them feel human in contrast to the Pharisees.

And so here we have the very very first thing about Jesus, that he's willing, he's a friend of the sinners.

That gives us comfort because we are sinners too.

But then it means that anyone who's out there can come to Jesus because Jesus is willing to receive them too.

Jesus was not pleased with the Pharisees as you can imagine.

They were really upset about what he said.

And so Jesus himself, he wanted to respond.

He couldn't let this go without saying anything.

So what Jesus does, he in response gives a series of 3 parables.

The first 1 is the parable of the lost sheep, then the parable of the lost coin, and then the parable of the lost son.

Now we are familiar with most of them, probably maybe not the lost coin.

It's kind of like just the in-between, the middle child of those parables.

Series is we know the lost sheep and we know the lost son, but we don't often talk about the lost coin.

Unfortunately, I'm not gonna talk about the lost coin either today, but I want to focus primarily on the parable of the lost sheep.

Jesus tells these parables to illustrate, First of all, he's not primarily doing it to rebuke the Pharisees.

He's doing it to illustrate God's attitude towards sinners in contrast to the Pharisees and that's served as a rebuke.

So we're going to read from verse 3 and then verse 4.

Someone else can pick that up for us with the loud voice so that the mic can pick you up.

So he spoke this parable to them, saying, What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses 1 of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after it, after the 1 which is lost, until he finds it?

So here in response, Jesus begins by asking a question.

What kind of a question is Jesus asking here?

That means that the answer is implied in the question itself.

#Evangelism- Part 2

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the information that we've already been able to share, the discussions that are going on, the testimonies that we've heard from the experiences of everyone here, and I pray, Lord, that you may just continue to help us to learn from each other, from 1 another, to see how we can be more effective in reaching out to people for you.

So the third part of our workshop is entitled The Digital Age.

Again, this is going to be on the handouts, so you can have them at the end.

I just didn't give them to you at the beginning just in case curiosity tempts you to read ahead of me so I'll keep them until the end.

We established in the first part that The world is truly global and the question is not so much would the Apostles or Jesus ever use social media as a way of reaching out to people, but the question is more, I guess we have what would Jesus do, but if Jesus was on Twitter, what would Jesus tweet?

And really so we're trying to think how do you actually use social media in a way that would actually impact people for the better and not for the worse.

I think you often find that in every single thing there's always gonna be a way that God can use it for his glory and Satan can use it in a way that dishonours God.

For example, Jesus went to feasts, Jesus went to parties, but there's some parties that Jesus would never have been a part of.

And so it's not always the event in and of itself, but it's kind of like the attitude of the person who's approaching it that modifies the whole thing.

And so, yes, there are drawbacks, but I believe that our apostles would use, they would have a Twitter handle or something, I'm sure.

We read this verse in Acts chapter 1 verse 8 And it says that you be my witnesses where?

Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

What can you notice about those 4 places that I mentioned?

It goes from the inner circle and then it goes out.

Have you ever had the statement that charity begins at home?

When we do evangelism, where do we often begin?

We want to start at the end of the earth.

So everyone's just thinking, oh, can you please, you know, that crowdfunding page.

I want to be a missionary in Mongolia or something like that.

And think, well, have you done anything around your neighborhood first?

And your family and your friends, that's free.

And so really, the point I was trying to share with you is that this whole digital age that we've already spoken about, it means that we are more connected than we were before.

That means that it's all about connectivity.

When you think about yourself, you have your own personal network.

You can't choose them, so they're just there.

Your name or your associates, people that you work with, at work you interact with them, at university in lectures.

You have your, yeah, and your neighbours would also be a part of that.

And then you have the infamous Joe Blogs, the random stranger on the street, person X that no 1 knows.

When we do evangelism, we often want to talk to Joe Bloggs.

And we never really talk to our friends, our associates, or our family.

Is it just a novelty or is there a reason why we don't share with our friends?

If you don't share or if people don't share in general what is it that makes it easier to speak to person X rather than your own family or your neighbors.

I think if you share with someone you don't know and they reject it, it's less painful because you're never going to see them again.

But if it's someone close to you, it hurts.

Yeah, so sometimes it's because that rejection is more profound when it's someone that we actually care about and their opinion matters.

And not even just that, I think sometimes the gospel is often by its nature offensive.

And so sometimes when we share it with say like our dad isn't a Christian or our mum isn't a Christian and we're living a certain way and they can perceive it in a way or we share the gospel with them and it convicts them but it hurts, then that can actually break relationships.

I think often when we share with people closer, it can have consequences, it can become awkward, you know, if you've said something to someone and they're like, oh you managed to keep the sound up and you're like, yeah, and they're like, oh I don't want to, I don't like you anymore.

And it's kind of just, it can happen, when we just tell Joe blogs and they're like, I don't want to keep the sound up, he's like, okay, see you never.

It's easier to evangelise to strangers because you don't have to see them again.

When you evangelize to somebody who is in your inner circle, the day that they've rejected you, you see them again tomorrow.

And that's interesting because the hardest part we actually have is follow up.

And that's often what we have to do with family, it's like every day I'm stuck with you and you're stuck with me.

So we go for Jawblogs, who doesn't really live anywhere near us, and then we never do any follow-up on Jawblogs.

So Jawblogs is just lost in translation, we never actually speak to him again.

But it's great because we took a picture of it, and again, we can put it in the messenger, and it was a success.

But have we actually made any real impact in Joblog's life?

Sometimes we have done, but would it be more effective if we actually reached out to people that we can reach out to over and over and over again I just want to say like for me it's so hard to speak to my my family is like christian and stuff yeah but you mean this as in like the size of your family?

Oh my house okay yeah yeah yeah speak about this to my father is quite strange but I think it's easier to reach my family and my friends because you don't need to speak you just need to live yeah I mean like for example I live with my friends at university and stuff I don't speak to them about Jesus and about having rented a church.

Before I speak to them, they already know that I will be doing something in the church.

When I was younger, I was ashamed of the gospel and I was ashamed of sharing it to my friend and even my, but now I care, especially at my work where, you know, they are not Christian, so they like to go to bar, club and everything, especially on Friday night.

So I'm like, no, it's Sabbath, and they look at me like, what?

And after they asked me, but when I was younger I was like, I don't know what to say.

But now I think, when you spend like 5 days a week with people, you have so many times to just share something.

And sometimes they feel that they need to have some meditation.

So I bring some books and we read in the morning and we just share.

And after we spend the day, we discuss and on Sabbath, I told him, stop talking about your stuff.

It's okay and some of them are like, yeah, she's going to church, so what?

And when you share it, they feel like, oh yeah, I have someone to talk to when I need help or when I feel I'm lost so yeah now I think it's good to talk to your friends and your co-workers.

Yeah and then we'll come back to Zama and then we'll move on.

I just wanted to add to what the brother said about having to live.

Because, you know, like what Jesus said, that a prophet is never accepted in his hometown.

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#Evangelism

#Evangelism- Part 2

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#Evangelism- Part 1

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#Evangelism- Part 2

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