Church growth, mission, and evangelism

Welcome back! Thanks for joining us today. This has been an exciting week with the launch of our combined blog and podcast. Today I would like to continue talking about the disciples and evangelism:

The important thing was they were honest men willing to confess their need. They had a sincere yearning for God and they were teachable. They were fed up with the hypocrisy of the ruling aristocracy. They represented a cross section of the population and were proof that Jesus could use anyone who wanted to be used! Jesus concentrated on those that he was going to use. You can’t transform the world except as individuals in the world are transformed. The principle is to select a few helpers and at the same time keep the group small enough that you can work with them.

As the number of Jesus’ followers increased, there came a time when Jesus had to select the twelve in order to keep the group manageable. Jesus intended that these men would have special privileges and responsibilities in the Kingdom work. Within the twelve, Peter, James, and John seemed to enjoy even a more special relationship with the Master.

The more concentrated the size of the group being taught, the greater is the opportunity for effective instruction.

Jesus cared deeply for the masses, but he avoided playing to his popular sentiment. Whenever he would heal someone, he would request that that person say nothing about it to anyone. When applauded by the crowd, Jesus would slip away with his disciples and go somewhere else.

Jesus’ purpose was not to impress the crowd, but to usher in a kingdom. He needed people who could lead the masses. It would have done him no good to arouse the masses and then have no trained leaders to lead them. The masses were like sheep without a shepherd. They would have followed anyone. Unless Jesus’ converts were given competent men of God to lead them and protect them in the truth, they would very soon fall into confusion and despair.

Jesus was no dummy! He realized the fickleness of human nature. He knew that he would need leaders inspired by his life to lead them. He devoted himself to a few men so that in the end the masses could be saved. Strangely enough, this method is scarcely comprehended in practice today.

Most of the evangelism efforts of the church today begin with the masses. The result is our emphasis on numbers of converts, candidates for baptism, and more members in church. Little or no concern is manifest for establishing these people in the love and power of God say nothing of continuing the work of Jesus Christ.

If the pattern of the work of Jesus means anything, it teaches us that the responsibility of the church is to lay the foundation on which can be built a continuing evangelistic ministry to the masses. Time and effort spent on a few people does not neglect the rest of the world. In time, a few dedicated people will shake the world for God. Everything that is done for the few is for the salvation of the many.

Thanks again to our sponsor: www.thegreatcommissionchurch.org . Please visit their web page. Please send any comments regarding this blog to: bob@thegreatcommissionchurch.org . Remember-your input is important to us!

Welcome back. Thank-you for joining us. Today I would like to talk about some ideas from Robert Coleman's book-The Master Plan of Evangelism.

Objective and relevance are the crucial issues of evangelism work. Is it worth doing?  Does it get the job done? This is the question that should be continually asked in relation to the evangelistic activity of the church. Are our efforts to keep things going fulfilling the great commission of Christ? Do we see an ever expanding company of dedicated people reaching the world with the gospel as a result of our ministry?

We have to go to the New Testament and the Gospels in particular, to really see the plan of Jesus. They are the only eyewitness account of the Master at work. The Gospels were written to show us Christ and show us that by faith we can have life in his name. The revelation of that life in Christ includes the way he lived and taught others so to live.

We can be sure that the things that were recorded were recorded so that they could teach us how to walk in the way of the Master. That is why the scriptures are our best inerrant textbooks on evangelism. The days of Jesus’ life were but the unfolding of God’s plan to save a people out of the world for himself and to build a church of the Spirit that would never perish.

God wanted all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. Jesus gave himself to provide a salvation from all sin for all men. There was never a distinction between local and foreign missions. Jesus’ life was ordered by his objective. This was the vision governing His behavior. Jesus never lost sight of His goal. He had confidence in the future precisely because he lived the present according to that plan. His plan is so different from the philosophy of the modern church, that it is nothing less than revolutionary.

It all started when Jesus chose a few men to follow him. His concern was not with  programs to reach the multitudes, but with the men whom the multitudes would follow. Jesus started gathering these men before he ever started preaching. Men were His method of winning the world to God. It was John, Andrew, Peter, Phillip, Nathanial, James, and Matthew.

The early efforts of soul winning had little or no immediate effect upon the religious life of Jesus’ day. That was no matter. These early converts of the Lord were to become the leaders of His church. None of these men would impress us as being leaders of men. They were common laboring men. None of them would have been considered well off. They came from the poor section around Galilee. They were impulsive, temperamental, easily offended, and had all of the prejudices of their environment.

That's enough for today. Remember to send your comments to:

bob@thegreatcommissionchurch.org . See you tomorrow! 

Thanks for listening to "Church growth, mission, and evangelism".

Important links for today are:

www.thegreatcommissionchurch.org

bob@thegreatcommissionchurch.org

www.newburghseminary.com

Recommended reading for church growth, mission, and evangelism

The Purpose Driven Life-Warren

The Purpose Driven Church-Warren

When God Builds A Church-Russel

Your Best Life Now-Osteen

Peace With God The Secret Happiness-Graham

Just As I Am-Graham

The Collected Works of Billy Graham

Death And The Life After-Graham

Eating The Elephant:Leading The Established Church To Growth-Rainer

Turn Around Churches-Barna

Suprising Insights From Unchurched-Rainer

Unchurched Next Door-Rainer

Book of Church Growth-Rainer

Thanks again for listening. See you next week. Remember your comments are valuable to us.

email me at: bob@thegreatcommissionchurch.org

Pastor Bob Emery

Welcome back. Thank-you for joining us. We thank thegreatcommissionchurch.org for their sponsorship. Please visit them at: www.thegreatcommissionchurch.org . Their website has a lot of material for everyone. I think that you will find it exciting.

My goal is to be your resource for the study of church growth, mission, and evangelism. We will be studying the writing of award winning authors such as Rick Warren, Billy Graham, Charles Stanley, Bill Hybels, Joel Osteen, Thom Rainer, and Robert Coleman.

I will bring you any breaking news in the fields of church growth, mission, and evangelism and from time to time will highlight schools that have degree programs in this area of study. I will investigate all of the different kinds of school programs that I can find whether they be resident studies or independent studies. Anything that I can do to help you in your faith walk.

Tomorrow I will be posting our first podcast. My first goal will be to get a quality ten minute podcast on each Wednesday. As I get the hang of producing the podcast, I will try to increase the length in five minute increments.

Show notes for Wednesday, April 26, 2006:

Welcome

Introduction

Overview

Recommended textbooks

Seminary recommendation

Wrap up

Thank-you for visiting our blog. I will check for your comments everyday at:

www.bob@thegreatcommissionchurch.org . Your feedback is important in helping us create a program that meets your needs.

This is an exciting day for www.thegreatcommissionchurch.org . Today we begin, “Church growth, mission, and evangelismâ€?, a new weblog (blog)  that will feature a podcast on the same subject. The new link to our blog  is (www.top9eye4.libsyn.com) and it will contain an RSS link to our new podcast at (www.top9eye4.libsyn.com/rss). 

Please note the change in the blog address. We moved our blog because we needed a web server that could host both the blog and the audio file for our podcast. Google’s Blogger is a very fine blogging site, and can link to an audio file, but still requires an external host to store the audio file.  Libsyn gives us a server where we can store our blog and our podcast audio file and produce both programs on the same website. What ever I can do to be more efficient means the more evangelism I can do in a day.

Thank-you for visiting our blog. I am planning to create new posts daily and will check for your comments every day. Your feedback is important in helping us create a program that meets your needs