Reaching People Groups in the US

By Chad Vandiver

 

Do you have a strategy for reaching people groups in your local community?  Below you will find a great opportunity for local outreach through the People Group Champions Project.  If you already have a strategy in place, look for ways to improve your strategy through the model below.

 

The People Group Champions Project is for college students in churches called to embrace an ethnolinguistic people group in their city and reach them for Christ.  Training and coaching is provided for the church to serve in the role of a missionary to reach that people group both locally and globally.  The project’s emphasis is on people groups of Eastern cultures and religions. 

 

Involvement is possible on four levels:

•       Level 1: Awareness

•        Teaches students how to prayer walk in a people group’s community

•        Provides instruction on how to embrace and identify a people group

•        Gives helpful hints on how to research and begin to understand a people group by asking strategic questions

•        Helps students develop a prayer strategy for a people group’s community

•       Level 2: Engagement

•        Introduces students to a people group’s worldview

•        Teaches students how to begin developing long term relationships within a people group’s community

•        Helps students to discover and develop ministry opportunities amongst a people group

•        Provides students with Biblical methods for implementing contextualized evangelism amongst a people group

•       Level 3: Transformation

•       Gives students Biblical passages that can be used for leading a member of a people group to faith in Jesus Christ

•       Helps students understand how to develop genuine relationships within a people group that facilitate conversion to Christianity

•       Provides students with an introduction to the people group’s history and culture

•       Level 4: Modeling

•       Developing a church planting strategy amongst a people group

•       Expanding a local network of Christians within a people group

•       Expanding an international network of Christians within a people group

•       Teaching other churches and Christians how to practice Biblical outreach amongst a people group

Once a level is implemented and some positive experiences have been gained, the church can decide to move to the next level.  If interested please contact Chad Vandiver at cvandiver@sbtexas.com or 817.552.2500.

 

 

Mark it on your calenders, October 22 - 23 is MI (Missional Intersect) Dallas where college students from the DFW metroplex team up with HIS Bridge Builders to show God's love to the needy in downtown Dallas.  Below is a video of Rodrick, whose life was changed through Bridge Builders and because of Christ.  There are hundreds and thousands more just like Rodrick who need to be exposed to the love of Christ and His good news!!  Join the SBTC this year in an effort to evangelize and reach out to the less fortunate in Dallas.

For more information about registration and MI Dallas, please visit http://sbtexas.com/midallas/ or join our event on facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=135381816505578&ref=ts

Is the personal testimony alone enough for evangelism? (Part II)

by Dan Rieke

How can a testimony be used effectively?

 

1.       It is centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Look at Paul’s testimony in Acts 22. He begins by giving a brief background on his life and then he moves the focus to Jesus and keeps it there. Paul’s story is really Jesus’ story. And so is yours.

 

2.       It is relevant to the hearer.

A long-winded story about how you grew up in a loving Christian home and yet never really trusted in God until years later told to a man who grew up in a rough home without access to the gospel is not going to resonate with him. He can’t relate to your story. It’s not that your testimony isn’t a “good testimony;” it’s that it just doesn’t make sense in his world. However, the gospel is relevant to every living human being on the planet, regardless of their background, because “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”

 

3.       It is evidence of God’s power to transform.

People love to see transformation. We have TV shows transforming tiny houses into mansions, nerds into models, and coffee shop singers into Grammy winners. The gospel has the ability to transform not just the external, but everything about a person: chains of addiction removed, affections and desires altered, lifestyles radically reshaped, and despair replaced by joy. A personal testimony that demonstrates God’s power to change can provide hope to the hearer that transformation is possible. However, the testimony should never lose Jesus as its central focus or it could open the door to viewing God as a means to an end rather than as the ultimate prize.

Come back tomorrow for the last installment of this three part series which focuses on the question: How can a testimony be used incorrectly?

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices

Is the personal testimony alone enough for evangelism? (Part I)

By Dan Rieke

 

Since we know the ultimate hope of evangelism is salvation for the hearer, I think the root level question that undergirds that question is what does it take for someone to obtain salvation?

 

Personal testimonies are great for demonstrating how someone’s life changed as a result of Jesus, but on their own, they have no power for salvation.

 

In Romans 1:16 Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” [emphasis added].

 

Notice Paul doesn’t say, “I am not ashamed of my testimony, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” This is because his testimony only has power if it is enveloped in the gospel. A testimony void of the gospel is just a “neat story.”

 

What are the aspects of the gospel that a testimony needs to point to?

 

1.       The universal sinfulness of man

·         Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s standard (Rom. 3:23) and no one is good or righteous or truly seeks after God (Rom. 3:10-12). A person must recognize this (about the world in general and about themselves personally) or they can never respond to the gospel because they will not see their need for God’s forgiveness.

 

2.       God’s love and mercy balanced with God’s holiness and justice

·         There is a saying that most heresies in the history of the Church have stemmed from an overemphasis on God’s love or on God’s holiness and an under-emphasis on the other. We want to avoid either extreme and be certain to explain that God is loving and doesn’t want us to die in our sin (John 3:16) and that God is a just judge who cannot leave the guilty unpunished (Exod. 34:7).

 

3.       Jesus’ life, death, burial, and resurrection

·         In order for someone to put their faith in Jesus, they must first know who he is, what he did, and why they should trust in him. Jesus must be identified as God the Son who lived a sinless life on earth, died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, rose from the dead three days later, and that faith in him is the only way to be saved from eternal separation from God (1 Cor. 15:1-4, Rom. 10:9-10, John 3:16, 6:47, 14:6).

 

4.       Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone

·         Ephesians 2:8-9 sums this up perfectly: “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

·         Although good works are important and a necessary fruit of salvation, they cannot save us from the penalty of our sin because even our “good” deeds are like polluted garments before God (Is. 64:6). We must point to the necessity of faith in Jesus’ work to count for us rather than faith in our own efforts to make us right before God.

·         Our increasingly postmodern world makes absolute statements a taboo, but scripture is clear that Jesus is the only way to the Father and the only way to be saved from Hell (John 14:6). We cannot avoid this fact regardless of our culture’s affinity for “tolerance” and relative truth.

Come back tomorrow to read Part II of the three part series which answers the question; How can a testimony be used effectively?

The intent of the team blog website and format is to aid collegiate/young adult leaders in their ministry to college age students in Texas.  The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention does not necessarily agree with or condone all of the thoughts in every blog written by ministers, they simply are providing a platform for resources and thoughts to be shared through this blogging opportunity.  If you have any questions contact our offices.

Students Disconnecting from the Local Church…

 

Why do college students so often seem to disconnect themselves from the local church?  What are some things that college ministers can implement in their ministry to effectively minister to college students?  These are questions that no doubt keep college ministers all over the world up all night. 

 

Whitney Hopler wrote a good article HERE regarding these questions and provides practical applications of Reggie Joyner, Chuck Bomar, and Abbie Smith’s book, The Slow Fade, that she contends will help ministers to keep students from fading out of church.  As we start the new school year, it would behoove us to take these suggestions to heart.