Sermon Transcript
Well, take out your Bible this morning. We are going to look together at a passage that is found in 2 Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 5. I am going to get there in just a minute, but this is a passage that speaks to a matter that is one of the greatest joys that I have experienced in my life, and I hope it has been a great joy in your life as well. It has to do with doing the work of evangelism or helping people come to faith in Jesus Christ. If you ask me, there’s nothing like helping a person come to faith in Jesus Christ.
I find it’s the most fulfilling thing that I can do as a person or as a pastor. And really, it motivates me to want right now to make more significant connections to unbelievers to help them come to faith in Jesus Christ, to love them and help them come to faith in Jesus Christ. I have to say though that that desire and that intentionality in making connections with unbelievers has not always been very strong in my life. It’s not always been something that I’ve given a lot of focus and attention to. I have, since I came to faith in Christ, naturally connected with Christ followers.
And I think probably all of us understand that. I mean, once you become a member of a family, this amazing forever family, it’s just natural that we would connect with each other. And over the years, I found myself spending more and more time with believers. And of course, as a pastor, that just kind of makes sense, doesn’t it, that I would spend more time with believers? Because a pastor’s job’s all about church, and it’s all about working with church people.
And so Bernice and I have done that, and we love working with the church. We love working with those who are members of God’s family. And it would be very easy for us, therefore, to spend all of our time, all of our waking hours on church things, things that relate to believers. But some years ago Bernice and I made a commitment that we were not just going to only spend our time with believers or edify believers in the church, but that we would also do what Paul talked to Timothy about here. We would do the work of an evangelist.
In other words, what we could say is, for us, there was a wake-up call. It was like, you know, one day the Lord just woke us up to this call that Paul gave Timothy, found in 2 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 5, where he said this to him, but you, speaking to Timothy, Paul wrote these words, but you keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. If you look up in that passage, if you have your Bible open and you look up at verse 2, he’s just told Timothy he needs to preach the Word, which is to focus on believers. It’s to focus on edifying believers and building up believers. But now just a few verses later in verse 5, he says, but you need to also do the work of an evangelist.
So it’s not just the work that’s done with believers, but it’s also the work that needs to be done with unbelievers. And around here at Bridges Community Church, we talk about how we want to do 2 things really well. We want to help people who are unbelievers come to faith in Jesus Christ, and then we want to help believers become more and more like Christ. So essentially we could summarize our mission with just 2 words: come, become. Those 2 words, helping people come to Christ, helping people become like Christ.
Another way to say that is we’re just trying to do the front half and the back half of the Great Commission. You familiar with the Great Commission? To go and to make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teach them to do all that I’ve commanded you. And Jesus said, Lo, I’m with you always, even to the end of the age. So you’re not going to do this alone.
I’m going to be with you. But the focus of this mandate was twofold. It was helping people come to faith by going and then baptizing them once they’ve come to faith. And then it was by teaching them to do all that Christ had commanded. The fact of the matter is— and I think you probably identify with this— The fact of the matter is, is we are better at the back half of the Great Commission than we are at the front half of the Great Commission, that we gravitate toward the back half of the Great Commission, which is building up the saints, which is helping the saints grow.
In fact, the longer that we walk with the Lord, the greater likelihood that we will be spending most of our time, if not all of our time, with believers doing the back half of the Great Commission. We can get so busy with each other that we don’t have any time to do the front half of the Great Commission. That could become sort of a secondary focus in our lives. It happens when we decide we’re gonna go out with some friends, and oftentimes what that means is we go out with church friends. We spend the time when we’re out with church friends instead of spending time with unchurched friends.
Now I’m not saying that this is the only thing or this is the only thing, I’m just saying that we tend to gravitate, or another way to say this is we tend to drift toward the back half of the Great Commission. And Bernice and I, when we got involved in ministry, that’s where we drifted. We drifted toward the back half of the Great Commission, focused on the church, focused on believers, instead of the unchurched. In fact, I read a church leadership report this week that said people who attend a church that was started in the last 5 years, people that attend a church that was started in the last 5 years are 52% more likely to share the gospel than people who attend a church that’s older, than 5 years. Those who are in a church that’s up to 5 years are 52% more likely to share the gospel than those who are in a church like our church.
Our church is older than 5 years. If you go back and you look at the history, we are 70 years old this year, 70 years old. That’s incredible to realize the faithfulness of people to this church for 70 years. We are already beginning to plan for our 75th anniversary as a church. It’s going to be wonderful.
But hey, at least we can mention this morning we’re 70 years old. There’s so much good to celebrate in that. But when it comes to the matter of evangelism, the fact that we’re older suggests very likely that we’re not a church who is as intentional as a young church, as a a new church, we’re not as intentional about sharing our faith as people are that are in churches that are less than 5 years old. Now what that means is we need to take to heart what Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 5, where he said, you need to do, Timothy, you need to do the work of an evangelist. You need to make a conscious decision to do the work of an evangelist.
Now, I take it this means that Paul realized Timothy did not have the gift of evangelist. If he had the gift of evangelist, he would not have to remind him that he needed to do the work of an evangelist. He’s saying to a guy who doesn’t have the gift of evangelist, you still need to do the work of an evangelist, which speaks then to all of us. That all of us, whether we have the gift or not, that we are called to do the work of an evangelist. If we don’t have the gift, we’re still called to do the work.
If we are shy or we’re fearful or we’re introverted, and as you read the account about Timothy, you realize that Timothy was a timid guy. He was a shy guy, and Paul has to call him out and say, Timothy, you’re going to have to do things differently. As a Christ follower, as a leader. It would be easier for us to spend time exalting God and edifying each other, but the Scripture says we need to do the work of an evangelist. Even though we’d rather hang out with believing friends only, we still need to do the work of an evangelist.
Even though we’re living busy lives, I mean, most of us, we can’t even figure out how we can get everything done right now. Let alone add to the, you know, the pile of things that we hope and want to do, the work of an evangelist. But yet we’re still to find the time to do that. Even though we struggle with witnessing fears, we must do the work of an evangelist. Well, that’s what hit Bernice and I upside the head some years ago after spending more and more and more time with churched people, with the church and doing the things of the church, and certainly I’m not in any way negating that.
I’m just saying that we came to a point where we realized that we did not have significant relationships with unbelievers, and most of the people that were in our life were believers. In other words, we were not doing the work of an evangelist, and that needed to change. And I want you to think this morning about where you are in all of this, because you may have a reaction something like Moses when you hear this concept of doing the work of an evangelist, of living a missional ascent life. You may have a similar reaction to Moses. You remember when God called Moses and he said, I’ve got a job for you, I want you to go.
In fact, in Exodus chapter 3 and verse 10, the Lord spoke to him and said, so now go, I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. Do you remember this? That the Israelites were in bondage and the Lord wanted to use Moses. And of course, for Moses, this wasn’t on his career what I want to do list, you know, things that I want to do with my life. And do you remember what his job was?
I mean, what his response was to this job? Exodus chapter 4:13, this was his response. But Moses said, O Lord, please send someone else to do it. I know you want me to go, but listen, I’m not the right person for the job. You need to have somebody else do it.
Applied to what I’m talking about this morning, the Lord has given us a go. He’s given us all a go to connect with unbelievers in significant ways. And do the work of an evangelist. But quite frankly, for a lot of us, we would identify with Moses’ excuse, Lord, send somebody else. I can’t do that kind of work.
I can’t do it. Now, if that’s how you feel this morning, I want to just say right off the top that you’re right. You can’t do it. We can’t do this. Even if we’re extroverts, we can’t do the work of an evangelist without God.
We will fail if we try to do this work alone. In fact, Jesus said it this way in John chapter 15 and verse 5. He said, I’m the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do— what does he say there?
You can do what? You can do nothing. Nothing. If you think that you can do this without me, you’ve got it wrong. You could do nothing, nothing of eternal value without me.
The apostles and the early church, the early Christ followers, absolutely believed that. They got that message. They got the message that, you know what, the Lord is sending us out, but without him, without us abiding in him, we’re not going to be able to do this. So after Jesus ascended, His followers met together in Jerusalem, and we’re told in Acts chapter 1 that they did a couple of things, but the main thing that they did was they devoted themselves to prayer. They devoted themselves to prayer, and they waited for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
What’s fascinating is this comes after Jesus has already told them to go, to go and make disciples. But after he told them to go, he told them to wait. In Acts chapter 1, verses 4 and 5, it says this: On one occasion while he was eating with them, Jesus was eating with his followers, he gave them this command: Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you’ve heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now what that does is that tells us why they needed to wait.
Why were they praying? Why were they waiting? Because Jesus had already made it clear that apart from him they were going to fail, and with him they could bear much fruit, but apart from him it wasn’t going to happen. So they waited. They waited for the Lord to send the Holy Spirit, and then they would go out in the power of the Holy Spirit and they would do the work of an evangelist.
Knowing they could not save people, they waited and prayed. Knowing they could not redeem people, they prayed and waited. Knowing they could not cancel people’s sins, they waited. Knowing they could not give new life to people who are interested in Christ, they waited. They couldn’t draw people to God.
That was the work of God. That was the work of the Holy Spirit. So They waited. And in a similar way, as we look into this next year, we would love, wouldn’t we love to see a whole bunch of people come to faith in Jesus Christ? Wouldn’t we love to see people who are outside of God’s family, people that God loves, come to a place where they place their faith in Christ and they recognize their need for a Savior and they receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior?
Would we love to see more people come into Christ’s family? Answer: yes, of course we would. But can we make salvations happen? Can we all of a sudden decide, you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to win 300 people to Jesus Christ this year.
Could we make that happen? Answer: no, we can’t save people. That’s, that’s a work of God. You see, Jesus, when he said, apart from me you can do nothing, was speaking to these kinds of issues. And some of us realize this just by experience where we’re connected to unbelieving friends or we’re connected to unbelieving family members, and we’ve presented the gospel myriads of times.
We’ve talked to these people about faith in Jesus Christ and what Christ means to us, and we’ve shared our story and we’ve shared our testimony, but to date they haven’t received Christ. They’ve basically, in so many words, said, that’s fine for you, but I don’t have any need for that. And so far they haven’t come to the place where they’ve reached out to Christ in desperation and said, Lord, I need you to save me from my sins. They have not done that. And in these conversations and these relationships that we have, when we have tried our best to help these people come to faith in Christ, we begin to experientially see we’re not going to be able to do it.
We can’t do it. We can’t convince people to become Christ followers. I’ve got some people in my life right now we’ve spent hours with. We’ve tried to help them see that Jesus is the Savior, that Jesus is the Messiah, but right now they don’t believe it. They don’t believe it.
How should we feel about that? Well, one of the ways that we should feel about that is how important it is that we pray, because I can’t convince people. And that we wait upon God and we follow God’s leading. And certainly if we do this witnessing thing, recognizing that we can’t do this but through the power of God working in and through us, an absolute dependence upon God. So in a sense, for me to stand up here this morning and say to you, we need to do the work of an evangelist, one of the things that we all should be thinking is, well, we can’t do that.
Because in and of ourselves, we can’t do the work of an evangelist. It’s going to ultimately take the work of God working in the lives of people, working through us. So there is a sense where we would say, We can’t. But on the other hand, there’s a sense where we can say we can. We can do this work.
And that’s why Jesus sent his disciples out. He said, you go out and you tell people about me. There was a can in this as well. There was a can’t part where they needed the Holy Spirit and they needed to connect with God through prayer and his mighty work, but there was a can part where they were then to follow the work of the Holy Spirit. They were to go in the leading of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit, the unction of the Holy Spirit, and speak forth the words that the Holy Spirit brought to their minds.
They were to do that which God would be doing in them in the world that was around them. So, in a sense, we could say that a person who is a Christ follower who has the Holy Spirit living within them no longer has any excuses for not doing the work of an evangelist because the excuses have been taken away now that God is living within us. And through His power, we can do what it is that He wants us to do. But what’s also interesting about this is that we’re already doing on social media what an evangelist would do. I think that’s a very fascinating thing to think about.
We’re already doing on social media what an evangelist would do. Now, I know that not everybody in this building is on social media, but the majority of us sitting here this morning are on social media. We’re on, you know, whether it be Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or some other form of of social media. And those of you that don’t know about social media, hang with me for just a moment because this would be a good time for us to learn something from the millennials and others who are using social media in a regular way to connect with people, to connect with people. And there are lots of ways through social media that you can connect with people, not necessarily for the purpose of spreading the gospel but just for connecting with people.
So some of the common ways is you can friend people. Today, friend has become not just a noun, but it’s also a verb. It’s actually something that you can friend somebody. I want to be your friend. You can post.
You can let others know what’s going on in your life through social media by posting something. You can like. You can show an interest in somebody else’s world by liking what they’ve shared. You can listen to them and affirm them and hear their story. You can share on social media.
Sharing is an opportunity to take something that somebody has shared and pass it along. They— you’ve benefited by something, and so you thought this was really good, and you’re going to pass it along to somebody else. Or you can comment. That’s a part of social media where you celebrate Maybe something that’s happening in your life, or maybe you’re just commenting on something that somebody else is doing or, or is about ready to do, and you want to encourage them. You want to share in their joys or their sorrows.
And you can invite, you can invite people into your life through social media. You can invite them to a party. You can invite them out for coffee. You can invite them for a meal or whatever it might be. And, and most of us that are sitting here this morning are in some way involved in social media.
Social media has become a way of life in the 21st century. It truly has. I’m on several social media platforms, and for the most part, it’s been really a good thing for me. I’ve been able to connect with people and add value into some relationships, and them adding value into the relationship that we share with me. So there’s something good about all of that, but I’m not here today to try to convince you to get on social media, okay?
So just relax. You don’t— I’m not here so that you’re going to leave and now I’m going to get on social media, okay? That’s, that’s not the point of this. But here’s what I want to say. I want to say that what people are doing with social media and what most of us in this building are doing with social media we can do in our relationships, in our real relationships with others.
In other words, what we’re already doing on social media could be done in real life in making intentional evangelistic connections.
We can take what it is that we’re doing on social media, we can learn from that, and we can translate or transfer the same concept into intentional evangelistic connections. What we do over here, which is very natural for us, can be done over here when it comes to evangelistic practices. We can take the same things we’re doing over here and we can translate them over here into the real world with unbelievers, into the real world with unbelievers. Now think about that. You can friend somebody.
Did Jesus intentionally friend people? Yes, so much so that he was often criticized for friending the wrong kind of people. You may remember this account, Matthew chapter 11, verse 19, where it says, the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, here’s a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. What’s that all about? Well, Jesus had begun these intentional friendships with people who are outside his family, intentionally building relationships with them that he might love them and evangelize them.
And we can do the same thing. We can begin friendships with coworkers, neighbors, fellow students, people at the gym, you name it, and we can end these relationships share our spiritual beliefs. In fact, one of the things that’s important, I think, in friendships is that you get a sense, we get a sense of where people are spiritually with God. The friends that we, we have, I, I think we need to have a sense of where they are with God. We usually have a sense about a lot of other things in terms of this friendship, like the family, how their health is, You know, how things are going on their job, things like that.
And oftentimes we ask them about those kinds of things. Well, why can’t we ask them about their spiritual life? Why can’t we say to them, hey, do you have any spiritual beliefs? There may be friends right now that we have in our life, we have no clue where they are spiritually, but we can take the relationship there if we choose. And we can post, we can not only friend, but we can post, we can let unbelievers know what’s happening in our life.
We can talk about— and I’m not talking about using social media for this, I’m just talking about using the concept that we already use on social media— we can talk about what God is doing in our lives. We can talk about the ups and the downs. We can talk about the joys and we can talk about the sorrows with friends. We can talk about things that have been difficult in our life right now. Why not?
They need to get the whole picture of God. We can post. You know, the Apostle Paul, when he talked to the church at Thessalonica, he said this to them in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 8: We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. We loved you so much that yes, we shared with you the gospel, we— but we also made these personal connections. And I love the words so dear.
You had become so dear to us. Those are words of, of a relationship. Those are words of a person who’s connected to other people. And essentially, that’s what liking’s all about. We can stay connected to others.
In, in terms of translating this into the real life, we can show an interest in unbelievers’ lives. We can listen to them. We can affirm them. We can support them. We can be involved in their lives in significant ways.
And not only that, we can share with unbelievers. We can share with unbelievers what somebody has shared with us, beginning with the Word of God, what we’ve read in the Word of God and how God has communicated to us in such a way that it’s transforming our lives. We can share that with others. We can share with others what we’ve learned in a class, what we’ve learned in a book, what we’ve learned in a podcast. We can walk around talking about what God is doing in our lives as he opens doors.
We can share the gospel for sure. And not only do we have the opportunity to share, but we can comment in relationships. We can respond to things that are happening in other people’s lives. And we can enter into their life in appropriate ways, respond to whatever their situation is in love and grace and truth. In fact, Colossians 4:6 says, let your conversation always be full of grace and seasoned with salt.
So as you’re connecting with people around you, do so in such a way that it’s uplifting to the relationship, always having answers, answer them in an appropriate way that fits the need of the circumstance. And then we can invite, can’t we? I mean, we’re doing that on social media. Can’t we do that in real life where we invite people, unbelieving friends, into our lives to share activities with us, to share coffee with us, to share a meal with us, to make time together to go to a sporting event or a hike or go to a movie or share a holiday party. Of course, we can even invite them to church-related kind of events.
Think about the woman at the well that Jesus met, and after she had this conversation with Jesus about spiritual things, she went back to her home and she announced to the townsfolk there, she said, come and see a man, John 4:29, come and see a man who told me everything I ever did Could this be the Messiah? This brand new spiritual believer all of a sudden is out inviting others. She all of a sudden is out, could this be the Messiah? Isn’t that, wouldn’t that be a great question to ask some of these friends that we have in our lives? Could Jesus be the Messiah that God promised to send?
Now let me ask you a question. You take those 6 areas, those 6 areas that are so common a part of social media, and translate them into real life. Let me ask you, could we do that? Could we do that? Should we be doing that?
Absolutely we should be doing that. What are we talking about when we’re talking about those 6 areas? What are we talking about? What we’re talking about simply is this: Friendship building. That’s all we’re talking about.
We’re talking about intentionally building loving relationships with unbelievers, just like Jesus Christ did. Connecting with people and loving them into relationship with Jesus Christ. That, friends, is doing the work of an evangelist. That’s it right there. That’s doing the work of an evangelist.
Now I know that in the Christian life there are many things that we can’t do.
We can’t in the year ahead control the number of salvations. We can’t in the year ahead control the number of baptisms that Bridges Community Church will have. But I do know this: we can make intentional evangelistic connections. Every one of us can. And if you don’t think that you can, go back and look at what you’re already doing in social media, because what you’re doing on social media can translate into real-life evangelistic connections with people.
We can do that. We can friend unbelievers. We can talk about our lives and our beliefs and our values and our pains. In other words, We can post and we can support others and we can affirm others and we can connect with their story. We can like and we can share something that’s helped us, something that’s helped us spiritually progress in our relationship with God.
There are so many ways that we have conversations with people where we can, in those conversations, talk about the Lord. And we can comment, we can add wisdom to conversations and value and advice and encouragement, and we can invite people into our lives and we can invite them into the Bridges community. In other words, we can translate what we do on social media into face-to-face relationships with people that God loves and God longs to save them. We can do that. And when Bernice and I became more intentional about that, that just began to change where we spent our time and what was most important to our focus.
And I’m asking you this morning to just consider where you are in this whole matter of doing the work of an evangelist. Is it happening in you to the degree that the Lord wants it to happen in all of us? Now, why are we talking about this this morning? I mean, other than the fact that it’s an annual celebration, why are we talking about this this morning? Well, because back in April, your elders, the leadership in the church, spent a day of planning together.
And on this day of planning, we said, Lord, what is it that you want us to focus on in this next year? And I shared over in the ministry meeting a couple other matters that we felt the Lord wanted us to focus on. But one of those matters was— is the one we’re talking about right now. It’s the whole matter of evangelism. We as a board said, you know what, we have just got to take steps forward as a church in doing the work of an evangelist.
This has just gotta become a priority focus for us. We have to, in some ways, go back and be like a young church again. We just need to be people who are vivacious in our faith for Jesus and willing to share the bread that God has given to us, the living bread, the living life. That Jesus has given to us, the living water that he, he has given to us. And so we as leaders have said, so in this next year, let’s do what we can to do better in doing the work of an evangelist.
Let’s, let’s make it a priority commitment. But to do that is on the one hand to say we can’t do this, on the other hand is to say we can do this, but on the other hand is to say, let’s do this. Let’s go do this. Let’s, in this next year, let’s take steps in such a way that it’s going to move evangelism into a priority focus in the life of this church and a priority focus in our individual lives. And so in the year ahead, we’re gonna launch an initiative, an initiative that we as pastors and leaders are committed to, an initiative that we hope you’ll get on board with, as the Bridges family, that this’ll become a matter of prayer for you, a matter of intentionality.
But the initiative’s just gonna be called 20K. 20K. And this 20K is built on a BHAG. You familiar with the BHAG concept? A BHAG, if you’re in the corporate world, a BHAG is a big, hairy, audacious goal.
B-H-A-G. Big hairy audacious goal in the corporate world. But in the church world, we don’t use that kind of big hairy audacious kind of stuff, so we changed the language. And in a church world, a BHAG is a big heavenly awesome goal. A big heavenly awesome goal. And so we are in the year ahead saying together, you know, we really believe we need an awesome goal that will push us forward that will help us reach forward through prayer and whatever work God wants us to do to make 20,000 intentional evangelistic connections in this next year.
20,000 intentional evangelistic connections in this next year. In other words, what we’re praying for is that we will translate what we’re already doing on social media, and again, I’m not trying to get you to do social media here, I’m just using an analogy. We will translate what we’re already doing on social media into intentional evangelistic connections and reaching the lost or the real world for Jesus Christ. In other words, doing the work of an evangelist in 6 primary areas: friending them, posting, liking, sharing, commenting, and inviting.
Now, to say that is to say, well, this is probably not something that we’re going to do well with unless we have some kind of support and some kind of encouragement and a commitment to pray about this and take steps forward with great faith. But we’re going to do all that we can as a church to try to support this effort in the year ahead, to try to encourage this effort, to try to talk about this effort And all along the way, here’s an important matter, we want to celebrate the progress that we’re making, the progress that we as a congregation, we as individuals, and as a church are making in these evangelistic connections. Now, is it important to celebrate progress?
Answer: yes! Are you kidding? I mean, if you have a 3-month-old and after, you know, 2, 3 months of working with this baby, the baby has never smiled at you, and all of a sudden the baby smiles, you know what you’re doing at this point? You’re happy. You’re ecstatic.
There’s a little bit of progress being made here. This is wonderful. In fact, you’re so excited about it, you probably take the baby and show everybody that’s around you that the baby can smile. Watch. The baby’s smiling, celebrating progress.
We had a group earlier this year that ran a half marathon, a group of people from this church that ran a half marathon. And when they decided to do this run— by the way, I wasn’t among this group— but when they decided to do this run, 13.1 miles, they decided that they were going to be the support community to each other. And one of the ways they were going to support each other was through a web app.
And so they found this app, and this app then allowed them to share together their runs with each other. It allowed them to share, you know, progress that they were making, calories even that they burned on their runs, pictures, stories, all of that and more, just because they connected through this web app. And why did they choose to connect through this web app? So that they would be able to stay connected to each other and celebrate each other’s progress as they were moving toward the objective of making this 13.1-mile run. Well, in the same way, as we move now into this next year, we’ve put together a web app, a web app that will help us celebrate progress because we really want the same thing.
We want a community of people that are celebrating together the work that God is doing in our midst and being able to support one another in those moments of celebration, in our prayers, and in our desire to make progress toward what it is that the Lord has for us evangelistically in the year ahead. So if you have your phone, I’m gonna ask you to pull it out right now. This is, yes, permission to open your phone in the worship service this morning, okay? And if you can find a web browser, all right, so like Safari or Firefox or Chrome. Now if none of those words mean anything to you, just listen for a minute, okay?
This is not gonna connect with your phone. Now you’ll be able to connect though when you go home on your computer, if you use a computer and you use a browser. If you’re on email, you got a browser, okay? So anyway, if you, use a computer, you can do this at home. But if you’ve got a phone where you’ve got a browser, go to the browser right now and type in bcc20k.com.
Now hopefully this is going to work and we’re not going to crash the system. If, by the way, you’re on Wi-Fi, it might be either good just to get off of Wi-Fi, or you can look at the 5, Guest 5 site that’s there, and that would probably be a lot faster than just the guest site if you’re on Wi-Fi. But bcc20k.com, did you get it? bcc20k.com. Now what you see initially is you’re going to see the outside of the bulletin cover, right?
In fact, this is what it looks like. Go ahead and pull that page up. You see 20K and you see Intentional Evangelistic Connections. Intentional Evangelistic Connections on this page. And you read up at the top where it says, in which of the following 7 ways have you connected with unbelievers?
We put this together as a way of tracking progress in our efforts for the next year in reaching toward this 20,000 goal: 20,000 intentional evangelistic contacts in the next year. Now, what is an evangelistic contact? Well, you can push each one of these stickers that are here. For instance, if you push friend, if you push friend, you see there it says, I met a new unbelieving friend. Well, if you met a new unbelieving friend, We would love to hear that.
We would love to celebrate that we’re making progress in intentional evangelistic connections over the next year. So you can just submit that right there. In fact, I just pushed submit. You can submit it with me right now. You can make comments right now.
If you wanna make comments about what I’m saying right now, you can make the comments because as soon as the morning is over here, we’re gonna erase the whole thing anyway.
And start where we should start. But if you make a friendship with somebody, hey, wonderful! You celebrate that. That’ll be an encouragement to you, but it will be an encouragement to others here at Bridges Community Church. What about the, the post?
I had a conversation telling an unbeliever about something that’s going on in my life or my walk with God. Now some of you have not opened the phone and so you don’t know, you know, exactly what’s being said here, but if you flip over the message notes, the 7 areas that are found on the message notes on the back side are all representative of what’s behind these stickers that are here on the website that we’ve created, on the web app that we’ve created. And you can go through all of those areas and kind of get a sense of what we’re hoping to do as we measure progress and celebrate it in the year to come. So that when you do something intentional, or the Lord opens a door for you in such a way that it intentionally builds some kind of evangelistic connection, we would just like to celebrate that with you. We would like as a church to have a collective sense of moving forward and doing the work of an evangelist.
It’s just a way to encourage each other, just like you would use an app if you were running in a race and you were preparing for that race and you were connected to other people and you wanted to be an encouragement to them. This could be an encouragement to us.
You say, Where did you get this idea? Well, let me take you back to something that Nate and I read earlier this year. We read an interesting column that was written by Tom Rayner, and Tom Rayner was talking about the whole area of evangelism, and he was talking about the things that a church could do and the things that a church can’t do. We can’t save people. That’s the work of the Lord.
But there are things that we can do. We can build friendships with people. We can share our lives with people. We can share our spiritual stories with people. We can invite people to come to a place where they’re gonna hear the gospel.
We can share the gospel. There are many things that we can do. And Rayner was talking about a church in this article. He was talking about a church, not a large church, a church of 130 people. And this church had not seen a salvation for 5 years, for 5 years.
And they said, you know what, we’re going to do something this year to try to do this work of an evangelist in a way different than we’ve been doing it before. And so they set a goal of 1,000 contacts in a year. They said, what if we were to, as a congregation, agree we’re gonna work together on this and we’re gonna help each other do better than we’re doing right now in making intentional contacts with unbelievers? And so they set that up and they began to work toward that goal. At the end of the year, they ended up with 1,700 contacts.
The church grew from 130 to 190, so almost 50% growth, and 24 people came to faith in Jesus Christ.
And when Nate and I read that, it really triggered something in us. It caused us to stop and say, so what is it that we’re asking our congregation to do? I mean, we all wanna see people be saved, don’t we? I mean, that’s ultimately what we hope and pray for. But along the way, we’re called to love them.
We’re called to be significantly involved in people’s lives, and especially in this culture, you just can’t, you know, have sort of a presentation and that’s it. It’s usually some kind of intentional connection in a significant way. That life change happens. And so we’ve begun to pray about that back in April. We said, Lord, what do you want for us?
And, and God brought us to this. God brought us to the idea of, well, you can’t do this without me, no. So you’ve got to make prayer a priority, and you’ve got to make sensitivity and to the leading of the Holy Spirit a priority. That’s got to be a priority in your lives. And the priority in the church.
But more than that, there are some things that you can do. And we realized that those things that we can do basically are already being done on social media in making intentional connections with others. We’re not doing social media, don’t misunderstand me. All I’m saying is there’s an analogy here. And what we’ve already learned, the majority of us, what we’ve already learned about connecting with unbelievers on social media or connecting with people, we can translate that into the real world and do it in intentional evangelistic ways.
And so my challenge to you this morning is would you be willing to join us in this effort? In fact, there’s a card in front of you in the pew there, and that card is a way for you to begin to pray about this. It says 20K. 20K. Grab one.
Everybody grab one. Pass them down the row. And what I want to ask you to do is, is to take this and to pray over it. Is to pray over it. And between you and God, ask God to show you what part he wants you to have in this intentional evangelistic connection effort What part is it that he wants you to have?
And our hope and prayers is very simply this: it’s that every person that calls Bridges Community Church family would, as a family member, take this area and say, I’m in, I’m in. I’m gonna ask God to help me in this next year do the work of an evangelist better and than I’m doing it right now. And, you know, I would be surprised if there’s anybody in this room this morning that’s real happy with their work. I think most of us, if not all of us that are sitting here this morning, would say there’s room for progress in this area in my life. And so I want to ask you to make a commitment to jump on board with us in this effort, and then Let’s share it.
Let’s celebrate it. Let’s support each other. And the easiest way for you to do that will either be to go to our website, bcc20k.com, and share progress that you’re making. And there’s a place on there to make comments so that you can share even stories. That would be wonderful.
It would mean so much to others that come to the website and hear the stories of what God has been doing in your life and and how he’s working. And so share them there. Go— if you don’t have a mobile phone that can do that, then go to the website bcc20k.com and share the stories there and, and make the connections there. Yes, I had a like this week. I shared this with my missional community this week, and the next day one of the individuals in the group wrote me by email and said, hey Dave, today I had a like and a share and you know, a couple other things.
And I thought, that’s wonderful. Intentional evangelistic connections. And so, Lord willing, this year we will see 20,000 intentional evangelistic connections be made. For us? No, for the glory of God, for the good of others, for the relationships that people can not only share with each other, but most important, that they can share with God.
So let’s pray. Father, we ask, even as we bring this morning to a close, that what we’ve talked about will not be something that we just leave in this building, but it will be something that we take with us. It will translate into action, that we might do this incredible work that you’ve entrusted us with, this disciple-making adventure, this work of evangelists, incredible opportunity. God, I ask that you’d work in each one of our hearts to help us do that which you’ve commanded us to do in loving and caring and ways that make a difference in, in the lives of people for all eternity. So we commit it to you and we trust you for what you’re yet to do, and we’re excited about the year to come.
May it be to your honor and glory, for we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
