Here’s one more way to help you share the gospel this year! Learn more about how you and your church can Share the Good News of Easter.
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Archive for January, 2011
Inviting Nampa to Hear the Gospel
Guest Post by Jonathan Griffiths
The first time my wife and I heard of Crossway’s Share the Good News of Christmas program we were interested in the idea, but it was too close to Christmas for us to really consider adopting it as an outreach in 2009. This year, equipped well advanced with awareness, we decided to take a leap and try it out.
Our church (Cornerstone Worship Center) in Nampa, ID, has been working for the last couple of years to develop a more missional way of living within our community. Without discarding the traditional model of the church gathering on Sunday for worship, teaching and preaching, we also hungered for a more relational way of living with the life of the church spilling into everything we do, and that has been a major focus for us. With that in mind, handing out bags with invites and New Testaments, replete with Bible tracts, seemed almost counter-intuitive—wouldn’t this be perceived as an impersonal sales pitch? Still, we were sure that this is what God had for us to do and so we spent a happy evening with our home church handwriting the invitations, filling bags, and praying over the people we knew we were going to invite. This was the blending of the two worlds—the relationships we had been forging were now an avenue for a gift and an invitation to join with the church in celebrating the birth of Jesus.
We had a couple of nights of delivery, one of which was with our youth group in very snowy weather, as we carol sung our way around a few blocks of downtown Nampa. The other night was on my own street. Let’s say that night was not a rip-roaring success as not one person opened their door to us, but we left the bag hanging on the doorknob and retired for hot chocolate with our own army of children (three families, six adults, eight children).
It seems that we had an exodus this Christmas, out of Idaho to other states, and our own congregation was somewhat depleted for our Christmas Eve service. And yet, amongst the regular faces of our church family, there were visitors, and almost every one of those visitors was someone who had received an invitation, in a pretty bag, with a New Testament and a warm greeting. Those were people who got to hear the true story of God’s coming to rescue us, and celebrated the incarnation with the church on Christmas Eve!
With Easter a few months off, I am already thinking about how we can put the new Crossway Share the Good News of Easter program into action, and how we can incorporate more of our own congregation in the hearty welcome to come and hear the Gospel news!
Guest post by Jonathan Griffiths, pastor at Cornerstone Worship Center.
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Crossway’s new ESV Grow! Bible is for kids ages 8–12 and will be published this October. We’re in the process of finalizing a cover design and we’d like your help!
Please take a minute to vote on which cover you think would work best.
How Ought We to Pray?
Piper encouraged us to pray as we prepare to share the gospel. But how ought we to pray? Jerram Barrs gives a handful of specific suggestions:
- For the work of the Spirit in our friends. We pray, first, for the work of the Spirit in the hearts and minds of those around us. We know that He can reach the parts of them, the inner workings of their minds and hearts, that we cannot reach. He can soften the hard heart, bend the stubborn will, open the closed mind, challenge the long-held prejudices, and heal the painful memories that are inaccessible to us. (See 2 Corinthians 4:6 and John 6:44).
- For open doors for the gospel. We are to pray for open doors in our relationships so we will have opportunities to make the Gospel known. (See Colossians 4:3).
- For yourself, for courage. Pray for yourself in all your relationships. (See Ephesians 6:19-20).
- For clarity and that God would give you words to say. Paul also struggled with being clear in his presentation of the Gospel and requested prayer in this area too. (See Colossians 4:4; Eph 6:19; and John 12:49-50).
Excerpt adapted from The Heart of Evangelism by Jerram Barrs.
How the Great Commission Gets Done
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20 ESV)
Commissioned:
Jesus’ final demand is that we never lose sight of the global scope of his claim on the human race. He is not a tribal deity. He is the Lord of the universe. Every knee will one day bow either willingly or unwillingly (Matt. 25:31-32). All judgment is given to him (John 5:22). The demand is that his followers reach the nations with “all that he has commanded.” This is what it means to make disciples—not just that they make a profession of faith, but that they “observe all that I have commanded you.”
Guaranteed Success:
The sovereign promise of Jesus stands firm: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). There is no maybe here. The mission that he gives to his followers to go and make disciples of all nations will come to pass. “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. 
I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice” (John 10:16). “Thus it is written [and cannot be broken!], that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:46). The mission to make disciples of all nations will succeed.
How the Great Commission Gets Done:
The certainty of success is guaranteed (Matt. 24:14). Jesus will see that it gets done. But it is in our hands to do it.
- By Prayer: We must earnestly pray that God will do what he promised he would do. Promises do not make prayer superfluous; they make the answer certain. (Luke 10:2)
- By Word: Then we must open our mouths and speak the truth of Jesus to all nations. (Matt. 10:27; Matt. 10:32-33; Luke 14:23; Luke 15:7)
- By Suffering: In all our prayer and speaking, we must be ready to suffer. (John 20:21; Mark 8:34).
Excerpt adapted from What Jesus Demands from the World by John Piper, now available in paperback.
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