I get it. But the lost need a way to contact me.
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Making disciples
- Thread starter evangelist6589
- Start date
I get it. But the lost need a way to contact me.
A general? You esteem progressive pastors?
No - You contact them. You pick up conversations with people that you meet as you go about your day. You see someone numerous times and then you say "Hey! Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?" Or maybe you go over and help your neighbor as they are raking their leaves and you pick up a conversation while you're doing it and then you ask questions. Think of it as you would with dating. You don't just walk up to someone and say "Let's get married!" You instead meet people, get to know them, get to know them more, realize someone is special and you spend more time with them and then BAM, you're discipling them.
It MIGHT even be a young person from church who is struggling (doesn't always have to be an unbeliever). There are lots of ways to find people to disciple.
No - You contact them. You pick up conversations with people that you meet as you go about your day. You see someone numerous times and then you say "Hey! Do you want to grab a cup of coffee?" Or maybe you go over and help your neighbor as they are raking their leaves and you pick up a conversation while you're doing it and then you ask questions. Think of it as you would with dating. You don't just walk up to someone and say "Let's get married!" You instead meet people, get to know them, get to know them more, realize someone is special and you spend more time with them and then BAM, you're discipling them.
With dating one needs a bridge to a conversation such as a dating site, or a dance group. Walking up to complete strangers at work and other areas does not always work. However on the streets I do it all the time because I am witnessing.
I once was in a WOTM church and there on Tuesday nights we had two ministries that were sent out. One for evangelism on the streets and one for discipleship to the YMCA or rescue mission. I am more gifted at evangelism than discipleship.
No. You don't get it. The lost will not beat a path to your door. They hate you because they first hated Christ.
You have to contact, and have contact, with them! That is what we have been trying to tell you for about 300 posts now.
I am beginning to suspect there may be something seriously wrong with your ability to comprehend.
They are the same thing. Two sides of the same coin. And it has become obvious you are not gifted, as you are fruitless, and God's gifts are never fruitless.
Well I have a BA Degree and can comprehend just fine. Perhaps we just have a different way of looking at things. But regardless if the lost want to be discipled they will contact me as I can't force myself on them. This is why it's such a good idea to post contact info on my chic tracts just encase they need to contact me. This is what I have been advised to do by a pro street evangelist who even wrote a book.
They don't. That is the point. You have to MAKE them, just as the bible says, "Go and MAKE disciples."
Go mow their lawn for free
I will need to be more in prayer on this one.
Then your prayer should be "Lord help me be obedient to your word in the great commission." Otherwise there is nothing left to do except do it.
No it should be "Lord help me to make disciples and please bring some my way."
Not to be contrary but it should be "Lord send me wherever you want me to go." There is no command in the word of God for sinners to come into the church. There is a command for us to "GO".
That would be another way to word it.
John 4:37. "For in this the saying is true, 'One sows and another reaps.'" Brother, do not be discouraged. So long as you are doing open-air evangelism, it will be hard to make disciples. But Mark 16:15 is as true as Matthew 28:19. You are doing a work commanded by the Lord Jesus. Every tract that you give out may be used by God to save someone, but you may never know about it. You are sowing; someone else is reaping.
Most of my evangelistic work is done with the Gideons. In Britain, we are allowed into schools (with the teachers' permission) to take an assembly, speak to the children and offer the New Testaments. We are not allowed to preach to the children, but we can tell them some of what it says, tell them what it means to us and encourage them to take one. More than 90% do so. One of the schools I visit with my colleagues is in a small town called Uffculme.
A while ago, a friend of mine visited Uffculme Baptist Church. on a Lord's Day. There was a young chap of about 19 being baptized. In his testimony, he said that he had received a Gideon Testament at school at the age of 12. He had not looked at it but thrown it into a draw and forgotten about it. A while later, his parents got divorced, he failed his exams and his girl-friend dumped him. He remembered the Testament in the draw, looked it out and began to read it. He was convicted by what he read and felt he ought to go to a church, and there he was, being baptized, seven years after receiving the Testament. Now I didn't save the lad; clearly my words had no impression on him save that he didn't actually refuse to take the book. But if the Gideons had not visited that school that year, the lad, humanly speaking, might never have been saved. If my friend had not visited that particular church on that particular day, I would never have heard of this. Who knows what effect your words and your tracts may have had on people over the years?
Next week, I and my Gideon Colleagues are going to the local University to speak to the students and hand out Testaments. I would absolutely love it if a youngster stayed long enough for me to explain the Gospel to him and lead him to Christ. that would be wonderful! But mostly the students are hurrying to lectures, and all I have time to do is show them the helps at the front of the Testament and encourage them to read it. Sometimes I can get a bit of a conversation going, but I've never led anyone to Christ in those circumstances. BUT last year, the University Christian Union had more than 50 new people turning up to their meeting the week after we were there. We are sowing; the C.U. is reaping, and God is giving the increase.
If you want to get involved with reaping, then why not hold an evangelistic Bible Study series in your home and invite your neighbours? Get your church's agreement first and maybe it will provide some help and lay on some food.
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Thanks Martin. Actually I want to be involved where I am called and that is to sowing. I just felt guilty and discouraged due to the critics and judgmental types that post on this board that make all effort to make me feel bad because I have not won a soul to Christ. Its not in my power anyways to win souls. Speaking with a street evangelism friend of mine today for breakfast he agrees that the people on this board are very judgmental and do not even know DT Denver.
So you will disregard what the Bible says? The Great Commission is telling us to make disciples. That means we need to have relationships. You struggle with relationships and that is fine but that doesn't give you a pass. Be faithful in preaching but be ready to actually get down and dirty and into people's lives. NO one come to Christ in a vacuum. Be prepared to lead a person not just to faith in Christ but also a life walking with Him.
And no, we don't know downtown Denver but we do know our own communities and Denver is no worse than any other place including New York, Long Island, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, LA, Las Vegas or Hicksville, NY (yes, an actual town). The unsaved are everywhere. They all need Jesus and they are equally hostile to the Gospel.
When I was in Colorado Springs, our church was 4 blocks away from a same-sex bar. Talk about a rough neighborhood. We always had homeless people sleeping in the church bus. One of our bus kids came in crying one morning; we asked him what was up, and he said his little brother had found their dad's crack pipe, and burned down their house, and now he didn't know where they were going to live. That was Colorado Springs; then there was Biloxi, where my son and I witnessed to a man on his doorstep, surrounded by Buddha and Mary statues in his neighbors' yards. Or just these past few months, a group of men in our church has been going out on Monday evenings, only for an hour at a time, to ask people in the neighborhood around our church if there's anything we could pray about for them. Several of those have started coming on Wednesday evenings. One young man came to our men's meeting a couple of Fridays ago, and (in his words) was so blown away by how we just hang out and fellowship before and after the devotions, that he was convicted and asked how to be saved.
And yes, everywhere I've been, we've had a discipleship plan; although, in my current church, it needs some work. But we're working on it.
Just a few stories of oh-so-many that ALL of us could tell.
Just a quick point, a person cannot disciple another until the person has been discipled. First learn, then teach. For example, in the military, first you take orders, before you can give orders. And to be discipled means you submit to the authority of your discipler. I remember a line from Ben Franklin, concerning his progress and improving his humility. He said he never made much progress, but that was just as well, because if he had, he was sure he would have been proud of it.