“I felt I have lost the ability to bring Christ into the conversations in big groups and felt I must rebuild the momentum of being a witness through my daily lifestyle, my deeds and speech.”

We are now coming out of the Pandemic Times and entering a new phase of opening up, social interactions. Indeed, we have had many gatherings over the past few weeks of Chinese New Year Celebrations.

Do you have loved ones who have not yet received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour? I have, and I am sure you have too!

Growing comfortable with online services, zoom sessions, and fewer large group gatherings for the last 3 years, I felt a new sense of excitement and unease at the same time. I felt I have lost the ability to bring Christ into the conversations in big group settings, and I am convinced that I have to rebuild the momentum of being a witness through my daily lifestyle, my deeds and speech.

To do this, what are some pillars for rebuilding a Post-Pandemic outreach culture?

Pillar #1: Addressing Blocks & Gaps in Members’ Outreach Lifestyle

““A low outreach-quotient today is not due to a lack of desire to share the gospel and win people, but rather due to a fear of rejection, a fear of being irrelevant to the people around us.”

If it was guaranteed that the first 3 persons you met and talked to would come to Christ, would you share the gospel with them?
I am sure the answer is a resounding YES!

A low outreach-quotient today is not due to a lack of desire to share the gospel and win people, but rather due to a fear of rejection, a fear of being irrelevant to the people around us.

To help our people sustain a natural, witnessing lifestyle, we need to identify their fears and gaps and address them.

Some common blocks to our outreach lifestyles are possibly issues of:

1. HEART – our fear of rejection.

This needs to be addressed by understanding that the Holy Spirit is the initiator, and our role is one of followership to God’s prompting. Our deep, heart-felt belief in this enables us to put our trust in following God’s leading.

2. SKILL – our lack of knowledge in leveraging our own God-given style.

Poor outreach quotient is sometimes exacerbated by being forced into styles of outreach which are unnatural to us.

I know someone who was petrified when asked to share the gospel on the street. He often panicked and felt so bad after such a session. Over time, he discovered what came more naturally to him: discussing questions about Christianity. He rejoiced in seeing salvations through his discussion-talks!

I believe God has given all of us an Outreach Style comprising of our: personal testimonies, the roles we prefer to play in an outreach event & the way we bring value-based conversations into our friendships. When we discover and enhance them, we become a unique and Spirit-anointed witness, the way God meant for us to be!

To help our people sustain a natural, witnessing lifestyle, we need to identify their fears and gaps and address them.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes to you. Then you will be my witnesses to testify about me in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8, GWT

I like the God’s Word Translation that emphasizes how we are witnesses to testify about Jesus. Our testimony about how Jesus ministers to our life-situations is personal and unique to us!

““I believe God has given all of us an Outreach Style comprising of our: personal testimonies, the roles we prefer to play in an outreach event & the way we bring value-based conversations into our friendships. When we discover and enhance them, we become a unique and Spirit-anointed witness, the way God meant for us to be!”

3. DISCERNMENT – our compassion for the needs in the lives of our pre-believing loved ones.

When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matthew 9:36-38, NIV)

Compassion for needs was a powerful driving and sustaining force for evangelism in Jesus, and it is, too, for us!

We need to teach our church members to discern how far / close to Christ their loved ones are on their journey and how to move them along towards God. This usually happens by engaging deep needs / blocks in their lives. People don’t usually “jump” to Christ if they are a far-distance from salvation due to blocks in their hearts. We need to encourage our members to persevere in helping their loved ones move on the journey closer toward Christ and have compassion for their blocks / needs in their hearts.

Pillar #2: Leveraging Community to encourage our Members’ Outreach Lifestyle

You are not in this alone…

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:23-25, NIV)

Encouragement makes a significant difference in helping our members sustain an outreach lifestyle as it can be discouraging when loved ones don’t respond to or reject when they reach out with the gospel.

We need the “spurring by others” not to give up, to keep hoping and praying for that breakthrough in our pre-believing loved ones!

Such a community is often found in the Cell-Group / Life-Group or equivalent where this precious community encompasses involvement in one another’s lives. Such a community, when well mobilized, provides an accountability and encouragement for members to persevere in outreach.

““We need the “spurring by others” not to give up, to keep hoping and praying for that breakthrough in our pre-believing loved ones!”

Several things need to be in place to build the CG to be such a community:

1. Reminding the group to pray with and for one another’s pre-believing loved ones.
2. Equipping them to reach out and host CG-based events that uniquely engage the needs of their own pre-believing loved ones.
3. Positioning them to host and welcome member’s pre-believing loved ones when they visit the CG, the Weekend Service or special event.

Someone once said, “Revival is spelt W-O-R-K… work to reach out to win and disciple people!”

Sustaining the above can be a lot of work! This requires thought on how to mobilize a core-group rather than just assume the CG leader can take all responsibility for it. However, when the core-groups of CGs are mobilized, a significant core of the church will engaged in sustaining an outreaching lifestyle through encouragement and loving accountability!

Pillar #3: Leveraging Spiritual Gifts to support our Members’ Outreach Lifestyle

Some members have shared the gospel or reached out to a friend, yet only to discover that pre-believing friend turning them down again and again. It is frustrating to discover some needs are beyond our ability to engage. Ministering to that loved-one’s heart requires prayer as well as specialized giftedness that could speak into that need.

The pre-believing loved one may have blocks such as past bad experiences with religious people, family-marriage-parenting struggles, cognitive questions about God and suffering—a whole plethora of possible issues. No one person or group will have the entire comprehensive giftset needed to engage that variety of issues! The church needs to bring in specialized gifts to support the outreach efforts of our members.

Leverage gifts within our church community through:

• Ministering songs and testimonies in Weekend services could engage some needs.
• Relevant sermon topics or seeker sermons could engage some needs.
• Talks on parenting-marriage could engage some needs.

This, though, requires church and ministry programs to be oriented to inviting newcomers and hosting seekers– an outward-orientation of present existing platforms of the church.

Leverage gifts invited from outside our own church, through:

• Inviting an apologetics expert to speak
• Bringing a person with great life-change and testimony
• Having great evangelists at outreach gatherings

This requires planning for such events and helping members leverage them for reaching their pre-believing loved ones.

No matter how persevering our members are, the lack of experiencing a break-through in reaching their loved-one’s year on year will discourage them even more as time goes by. The church can help by bringing these specialized gifts in the hope of “changing the game” and giving a breakthrough in the outreach life of our members!

We must not give up!

We need that support, to close the gap;

We need that community,

We need that specialized gift—

These are pillars to rebuild an evangelistic culture that may sustain a witnessing lifestyle through the ups and downs of our lives.