Kristyn Dolinsky leads a workshop challenging her audience to prioritize evangelism.

ACF Institute 2018: A Higher Aim

<p>Kristyn Dolinsky leads a workshop challenging her audience to prioritize evangelism.</p>

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Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Kristyn Dolinsky

Evangelize Me: Can Evangelism Ever be Too Much of a Good Thing?

Just a 1 sentence definition of what evangelism is.

Sharing Christ, so that would mean sharing Christ with others.

It's a pretty simple definition, and it means sharing Christ with others in all kinds of different ways.

So, next I'd actually like to ask, how many of you are involved in personal or let's call it unorganized evangelism, just in what you do in your everyday life.

And what about all of you as organized evangelism?

I would think that a lot of you, if you're involved in campus ministries, public campus ministries, that's considered an organized kind of evangelism.

Well, I think it's pretty clear that if you are a Christian, evangelism is going to be a part of your life in some form or another.

That's a little different from what Pastor Ron said, I know yesterday, he said not all of us are gonna be evangelists, and it's true, not all of us are going to be evangelists for our work or our occupation.

But every 1 of us, as a Christian, as a believer in Christ, is going to be involved in some amount of evangelistic work.

I'd like to open with this quote, and then I'm going to have 1 more word of prayer because we can never have enough prayer.

This is by Ellen White, and it's page 17.

And it says something very important about evangelism.

It says, evangelistic work, opening the scriptures to others, warning men and women of what is coming upon the world, is to occupy more and still more of the time of God's servants.

So that goes along with what I was saying before, how evangelism will be, not will maybe be, but will be a part of your life if you are a believer in Christ.

So let's bow our heads, have 1 more word of prayer, and then we'll get into it.

Heavenly Father, I thank you that we can be here to hear your word being spoken.

I know that you have provided a message for us today about types of evangelism and how you want us to conduct our lives as Christians.

And I pray that your Holy Spirit be upon each and every 1 of us and that you guide this seminar today.

So, just a little bit about where I was at 1 point when I started to really begin to believe in Christ.

And of course I'll continue my story later tonight.

But for now, I wanted to tell you that at some point, this was when I was first beginning to study the Bible for myself, I was very, I was raring to go and I wanted to do work for the Lord.

And I tended to be a workaholic in my natural life, and so I kept on adding more and more things onto my plate.

Many of those things involved different kinds of evangelism, whether it was organized or whether it was Bible study or whether it was different forms of outreach, different things.

I got to the point where I was tired and irritable, where I felt I never have enough time, I can never get any of this stuff done.

And so that's why this presentation today is entitled Evangelize Me.

Can evangelism ever be too much of a good thing?

And that's only 1 of the questions that we're going to answer and think about today.

I know it's a little bit small, so I'll read this.

Some of the questions that we're going to think about, hopefully answer, are why are you doing evangelism?

How do you make decisions regarding evangelism?

What part does evangelism have in your life currently?

Here I think is a, it's a specific 1 for students.

Are you afraid evangelism will not leave you enough time for study?

Are you wondering where or how evangelism fits into your life on a non-Christian campus?

So, here's some of the questions that we're going to cover and first we have an activity.

So Oscar, oh okay so I think now I'm gonna pass out each of you is going to get a sheet to fill out.

And you're going to do your own coloring, it's not filling the lines.

So Kim and Jonathan and Ryan are all going to pass out 1 sheet to you, and in addition to the sheet, you are going to also choose 4 different colored pencils, 4 different colors.

Make sure that they're all different colors, not similar to each other.

And the first thing we're going to do is we're going to fill out the top pie chart, this 1 that says current.

And so you're going to pick the 4 different colored pencils that you have, and each 1 you're going to fill in this legend here.

And this legend says, studies, or your job if you're working, how much time do you spend doing this in just your general life currently, right now?

You're going to take a different colored pencil and you're going to fill in this square here with that different colored pencil.

How much time in percentage do you spend in evangelism in your life?

You're going to take your third colored pencil and you're going to fill in this square here and tell me how much time you spend in personal, just you and God.

And then the fourth 1 is other and your free time.

And what you're gonna do is you're gonna put your percentages in the column next to the legend of how much of your time you devote to each of these.

And then you're going to make your pie chart based on those percentages.

Okay, any questions you can come up and ask me, we're gonna spend a few minutes doing this.

This is not something that you're going to share with anyone else.

So fill it in honestly, as honestly as you can be, and we'll take a few minutes time with that.

So I think we may be a little low on colored pencils, so if that's the case, please do share with the person next to you.

Okay, so you filled out your current time management pie chart.

And you're going to just keep this in mind.

Again, this is for your eyes only, for only you to think about as we go through our time together, and we go through the seminar.

So, for me, myself, and I'll speak more about this in detail later, but when I did my current pie chart, I said, wow, I want to change some percentages on that.

And so we're gonna talk about how the Lord instructs us to do evangelism and how all of these other pieces fit into how we do evangelism the Lord's way.

If you have your Bibles, we can read it together.

Right before what you were looking at today, Song of Solomon, this morning with Michelle.

Ecclesiastes 3.1 says, To everything there is a season and a time, to every purpose under the heaven.

He has a time and a place for everything.

So, here is an acronym that is very simple, and it's an acronym that I find useful when dealing with all the things that I have to do in my life, especially evangelism.

And so today we're going to use it for evangelism.

And these are 4 steps, 4 steps that you can use.

Michelle covered the same exact thing this morning.

And it goes for evangelism just like it goes for Bible study.

There's no way that we can do anything except if we have the Lord to guide us.

And prayer is the simplest form of communication that we have with him.

John 15, if we can turn there, I'd like us to read a couple verses.

I love the 15th chapter of John because it talks about Jesus' relationship with us, and not us collectively, with you personally.

John 15, verses 4 and 5, it reads, "'Abide in me and I in you, "'as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, "'except it abide in the vine.

Evangelize Me: Can Evangelism Ever be Too Much of a Good Thing?

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