The focus of our October First Wednesday Service was evangelism training. It is important for every follower of Jesus Christ to learn how to share your faith. While your faith may be personal, it was never meant to be private.
In today’s culture, you have to earn trust, build bridges, and build relationships. In Bill Hybel’s book, Just Walk Across the Room, Hybels shares the three main steps to sharing your faith.
- Develop Friendships
- Discover Their Stories
- Discern Next Steps
Develop Friendships
Developing a friendship allows you to earn the trust of another person. The average person hears the Gospel seven times before they respond. Evangelism is more than an event or a presentation, it is a lifestyle. Unfortunately many Christians live in a Christian bubble. They don’t interact and intentionally develop friendships with non-Christians. If we want to reach our community for Christ, we cannot be afraid to make friends with people who are different from us. This is also a great reason for serving in our community. At Cornerstone, our goal in doing service projects is to build friendships with people in our community.
Discover Their Stories
The Gospel is not a sales pitch. We must truly care about those we are trying to reach with the Gospel. When we listen to the stories of others, we learn more about them. We also learn how we can connect God’s Story into their story. There is a difference between a Gospel presentation and a Gospel conversation. Your job is to be a storyteller, by connecting your story and God’s story into the life of others.
Discern Next Steps
What keeps you from sharing your faith? It is typically fear; fear of rejection, fear of not knowing enough, fear of offending someone, or fear of looking foolish. Our job is to keep pointing people towards Christ. We cannot save anyone, but God can! Know God’s story, and know how to help lead people to a relationship with Christ.
The Gospel is not complicated. Romans 10:9-10 is clear – Simply confess Jesus as Lord and Believe. John 3:16 also tells us that we must believe.
We need to help people understand the Gospel.
- Admitting your need for God
- Asking God to forgive you and to help you turn from your sin
- Trusting in Christ alone to rescue you
- Following Jesus Christ in faith from this day forward
So that you will understand the Gospel better, in our First Wednesday service we shared two videos. The first is the story of the Bible. We need to understand the brokenness in our world, and we need to understand why Jesus came to rescue us. The second video is a great way to share Christ through the pain and hurt we all experience in life.
The Story of the Bible: Genesis to Revelation in 7 minutes