How do feel about Christians who present the message of Jesus a little creatively? What is your first reaction to someone proclaiming the Gospel in what you perceive to be an unseemly or undignified manner? Are you happy and excited or embarrassed and ashamed that they are a brother or sister?
There are many different ways to reach people for the Kingdom of God, ways that we may think are kooky, ineffective or weird, but, can advance the cause of Christ further than we ever expected. You may not do it that way, I may not do it that way, but if the Good News is proclaimed accurately, then, it doesn’t matter what we think. We serve a creative God who uses creative people to get his saving agenda done.
What do you think about the cross-walkers? Our fellowship hosted Steve Epp a year ago who’s walking the cross throughout America. Why does he do it that way?
“I’m reaching out to the younger generation who’ve experienced drug abuse and home abuse,” he says. “I took to the street because they are sure not coming to our churches. I tell them that God loves them and I love them. I want to show that living for Jesus is a life of surrender, and I’m trying to show them that by example.”
In 2015 Mitchell Manning carried a 12-foot cross from Florida to California as a way to represent his faith because “the cross is the whole point.” In 2014 Arthur Hollands did it because “I just want to share that people are loved, and you can have peace in your heart.” But the most famous living cross carrier of all is Arthur Blessit, who began his cross-walk in 1969 and still continues to this day. He has been in 324 countries and is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the “Longest Around-the-World
Ongoing Pilgrimage/Walk.”
I met a man named Skipper a few weeks ago in Johnson City as he was biking around the country for Jesus. He was just leaving to pedal back to Sacramento, California, his home.
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Why I Kissed Evangelism Goodbye (Kind of….)
I KISSED EVANGELISM GOODBYE on this day a year ago. Well kind of….
For those who know me, this is an odd confession. On January 1, 2004, I made a commitment to share my every day. Then on July 31st of 2005, I heard “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” after Ray Comfort taught at our church. My eyes were then opened to the most effective way to share my faith.
Soon after, I taught The Way of the Master for seven years at my former church Hope Chapel—and everywhere, even in China! I also led evangelism teams to almost every large event in the L.A. area, including Michael Jackson’s memorial service, (we were outside in the streets), the Academy Awards, The Emmy Awards, the Lakers Championships, the L.A. Kings, and thirteen parades a year. I was quite the zealous Gospel proclaimer over the years, handing out perhaps, hundreds of thousands of tracts, preaching in the open air, and, of course, having hundreds of one-to-one conversations, reminding people how they have broken God’s Law and how they needed a Savior to be forgiven.
Not only that, our teams preached with Ray Comfort regularly in Huntington Beach and I served as a leader for three years with the Ambassadors’ Academy, the training arm of Living Waters Ministries.
I say all this so you will know that I was totally committed to the cause of preaching the Gospel, because, after all, “Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved. But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them? And how will anyone go and tell them without being sent?” (Romans 10:14-15)
Then something changed as I was praying in my bed during my devotional time on that October 22nd Monday, 2018.
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