Evangelism Series // Week 1
Dive deeper into the conversation of God’s Lost Cause with Dave Ferguson, Aaron Barnett and Hannah Barnett.
• The Need for Reviving the Lost Cause: Problem: Evangelism has become a taboo word. Doing evangelism is seen as culturally inappropriate. Even many Christians feel like evangelism is wrong. But at the same time, it was central to Jesus’ mission. (Luke 19:10) Solution: If we are going to accomplish the mission of Jesus, we must revive evangelism. We must plant new churches that have cultures that prioritize evangelism by creating a safe place for people to belong before they believe. A church with a culture of evangelism will hold the Biblical values of evangelism, share the compelling narratives of evangelism, and live out the white-hot faith behaviors of an evangelistic church.
• God’s Commitment to the Lost Cause: God’s commitment to the Lost Cause is relentless and ultimate. Romans 5:8 tells us that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” While we were still in the process of rejecting him, God was persistently pursuing us in the person of Jesus. He was on mission to restore a broken relationship with us each of us. Lost people matter to God and it is his desire that all of us come to know him (“God is patient … not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance.” -2 Peter 3:9). We are all prodigals that God wants to find their way back to him and our eternal home.
• Our Commitment to God’s Lost Cause: Our commitment to the Lost Cause should be passionate and personal. Our commitment to the Lost Cause begins when we take it personal. We are all lost people! When we let that truth motivate us, we can’t help but be passionate about reaching people far from God. In his book, Movements, Steve Addison reminds us that the movements that change the world are missionary movements of Christ follower with a white-hot faith. The same love that stirred God to sacrifice his son for us should stir inside each of us for a lost world. We should each adopt Jesus’ mission as our own personal mission: “to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) It was because of that mission Jesus goes out of his way to get to know Zacchaeus and ultimately brings salvation to his house. And here is what happens when we have that kind of passion for the Lost Cause: “And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47) As leaders who are passionate about the Lost Cause the only thing that will matter is making sure that the lost are found. As a result of that passion, we will commit to starting new churches with evangelistic cultures, knowing this is the best way to reach a lost world.
Speakers: Dave Ferguson, Aaron Barnett, Hannah Barnett
This podcast is one of several workshops from Exponential’s Global 2023 Conference in Orlando. You can grab the Evangelism Resource Kit for this workshop and more to train you and your team: https://multiplication.org/product/evangelism-2023-orlando-workshops-resource-kit/
To learn more about Exponential events, visit https://exponential.org/events