Everything that has to do with communication runs into some hurdles. Bringing a message of hope can even have hurdles it must face. When trying to nudge someone into Jesus’ arms there are five obstacles to evangelism you should be aware of. One: What options will I give up? People are smart they know in [...]
I’m not sure when the term ‘servant evangelism’ first came into play. In the early days of the Vineyard movement, Steve Sjogren was the first voice I heard talking about focusing an entire church community around the idea of serving outsiders through practical, applicable acts of kindness. My Vineyard church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa has [...]
It seemed I had tried it all! From dropping thousands of eggs from a helicopter to sending out what seemed like millions of postcards, but our church was not getting the “results” that everyone else had gotten. I hired coaches and mentors who told me “how” to plant the church. I did everything by the [...]
John Chapman, aka the legendary “Johnny Appleseed” was a missionary who reached out to native Americans in the Ohio Valley in the early 1800s. He Had Simple Tools His primary planting tool was a stick! Do you have a stick? When his current stick wore out he found a new stick. I heard recently through [...]
I have to admit that I used to hate cats. I never understood why someone would want an animal that hides 20 hours of the day and hisses at you the other 4 hours when it decides to grace you with its presence. I see all the “cute” kitten pictures girls post on Facebook and [...]
I’ve been deeply challenged by the tireless efforts of the men and women that advance the cause of the “new atheism” into the empty hearts of postmodern westerners. Nature abhors a vacuum so in the absence of faith, unbelief or atheism becomes the anti-cause. The mission of these atheist crusaders is to rid the world (especially the [...]
I don’t want to sound heretical but I have an observation to make. My friend Fred was prolific at leading people to Christ in the first few years of his Christian life as he came out of the music scene in Los Angeles and pointed something out to me I thought was interesting. He noticed [...]
Church plants need to find creative ways to connect with the non-believing culture around them. If you pray for not-yet Believers to show up they will. But how do you lead them into relationship with Christ? Usually there is a process involved in leading them to Christ. When my wife Janie was seeking to know [...]
Or “You don’t have to know a drowning person to save their life.” There has been enormous emphasis placed on the need for relationship with people as the prerequisite for evangelism. So much so that some go as far as saying that relationship with others should be the only motive and not the hidden agenda of evangelism. Relationship-Relationship-Relationship…This [...]
We tend to associate Cornelius’ conversion in Acts 10 solely with his coming to Christ, but sometimes Scripture gives more diverse examples of the notion of conversion. The life of this Italian cohort in Acts 10 is one such example.Cornelius was influenced by the Spirit of God for a time prior to his conversion to [...]