Dear brethren, I'm beginning a series of posts on this blog that will contain short snippets on the theme, "Keys for Effective Evangelism". I do not claim to be an expert on the subject, nor to have learned everything there is to learn about evangelism. However, I do have a burden to share with the Body of Christ what I perceive to be some foundational, biblical keys to evangelizing the lost effectively for the glory of God. It is my prayer that the Lord would be pleased to make these posts a blessing to the brethren who frequent this blog.
I intend to share with you things that I've learned by experience, to expose and correct errors I have seen in evangelizing with other brethren, and to give you helpful keys and tips about sharpening your evangelistic endeavors and honing your gifting (for those of you who are called to more concentrated efforts of evangelism) for the sake of reaching the lost with the saving truth of God.
Please suffer me to share a little about my experience in evangelism, not for the sake of tooting my own horn, but for the sake of illustration and practicality. These posts are not designed to be scholastic essays, but personal blurbs with much practical application.
To let you know a little of my background, the Lord first called me out to the streets to hand out tracts, engage people in conversation about the Gospel, and open air preach in 2005. By His mercy and grace, I've been doing it ever since and as long as His hand is with me, and He permits me to continue, I don't plan on stopping. Over these past 6 short years, I've met a lot of brethren who evangelize on the streets and have encountered a lot of things, both good and bad. Out of this limited experience, I want to share with you my convictions about biblical evangelism.
By God's evident hand and sovereign grace, He has been pleased to permit us to plant a local church in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, a region where Catholicism is extremely strong and influential and where it is said that the evangelical population is as little as 2%. The congregation on Sundays at this time averages at perhaps about 15 people (give or take). When we started to hold meetings, we did not start with a team of brethren. At first, it was just my wife and I, and another brother who set out to plant a church hoping in the blessing of God. We immediately faced a wall of opposition as we quickly discovered that it is extremely difficult to get Catholics to come to our meetings or consider the biblical Gospel. Our main method of outreach was open air preaching and evangelism on the streets. By God's grace, He saw fit to establish the core group of this church plant from the fruits of open air preaching and street evangelism. There is now a small body of believers who form a core group of members in this church plant, and it is owing to God's grace in evangelistic ministry on the streets.
So although my experience is very limited, by the undeserved favor of the Most High, it is not without the blessing of God. To deny this would be to engage in false humility and to deny God, and I think false humility is worse than outright stinking pride. I want to share with you what I perceive to be some of the keys which have resulted in some of the fruit the Lord has been pleased to grant for the sake of His glory.
If you're interested in hearing what this "babbler of strange doctrines" has to say, stay tuned.
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