Ideas For Evangelism - Way of Life Literature

Consider the following statements by house churchleaders:“We spend so much time building nice barns withpadded pews, air-conditioned halls, and state-of-theartsound systems, yet we have neglected the fields.We are as foolish as the farmer who builds a barnand then stands in the doorway calling all the cropsto come in and make themselves at home. It is timefor the Church to get her hands dirty in the soil oflost people’s lives” (Neil Cole, Organic Church,Kindle location 613).“The great commission is not a ‘take it or leave it’option for Christians. Many of us live in self-madeChristian ghettos, never developing meaningfulrelationships with unbelievers. We believe thatfriendship with people in the world will somehowcontaminate us. We avoid relationships of any depthwith people outside the church and often are sobusy with Christian activities that we have no timefor others. It gets to the stage where we don’t knowhow to relate with non-Christians other than invitingthem to a meeting” (Felicity Dale, An Army ofOrdinary People, Kindle location 1026).By no means do we recommend Neil Cole or FelicityDale or their writings or their movement, but they andtheir house church friends are right in this matter, at leastas a general principle. Bible-believing churches do needto get their hands dirty in the soil of lost people’s lives,not in the sense of sinning with lost people or putting ourown children in danger of being negatively influenced,but in the sense of building relationships with spiritualwisdom and in the sense of loving our neighbors asChrist taught us so that we can be light and salt in thisneedy world.At the same time, we should be fearful of“contamination” because the Bible teaches us to havesuch a fear (1 Cor. 15:33). The emerging church often124