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Re-focus on your outreach

National Outreach Convention is an annual conference that helps inspire, equip, train and network church leaders in evangelism and outreach.

Refocus is the theme for this year, with the sub  catch cry ‘don’t let distractions get in your way’….

This helps raise important questions whether you are a church leader or not :

  • What distracts you from doing evangelism and outreach?
  • How can you re-focus on evangelism and renew your commitment to outreach in your church and personal life?

 

 

6 tips to share your God story

  1. Pray | Ask God to help you think what bits of your life are best to share with which friends.
  2. Keep it personal | Think about who you want to share your story with. Which particular groups or individuals do you have in mind? This will help keep it personable and relevant. Opening yourself up will allow people to ask questions & build integrity.
  3. Keep it short | Under 3 minutes or no more than an A4 page typed. Practice it.
  4. Keep it simple | You don’t need to prove God or the gospel. You are sharing the hope you have with a friend not trying to win public debate. You also don’t need to tell them every different thought and facet of your story.
  5. Keep it real | Don’t imply that life is now perfect… be honest about the life that you are now living and speak boldly about Jesus – he should be the focus.
  6. Keep it natural | Try not to use Christian jargon or words that too easily describe the situation in a vague way. Use words you normally would use and speak in a natural and relaxed way.

New Video & iPhone ‘Way of the Master’ resources…

This video was released this week by Living Waters Ministries. Its a fun cartoon version of the famous Way of the Master evangelism method.

Way of the Master have also released and iPhone app to help you explain the gospel through their method – its called GM2:8 – Let the whole world hear.

Features:

  • Questionnaire | 2mins | this is a guide to the way of the master questions.

+ve – It comes with audio which is great if you are trying to share the gospel with someone with little English. It will present the questions to you in one of 10 languages.

-ve – It is a little impersonal to have the recorded voice telling you the gospel. Especially if you speak English and you are speaking to someone in English. My recommendation is to turn your volume down and speak through it yourself. And the second feature on the app addresses this.

  • Preaching Mate | you are encouraged to pop your headphones in one ear, to help guide you to speak by repeat the phrases in the other language. So it actually helps you preach. The English is always listed on the same screen.
  • Gospel Presentation  | shares the gospel story in full.
  • 10 different languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish Castillian, Spanish Neutral)

I am also not 100% convinced of the Way of the Master method. It is a little abrupt. Unless, the person repents right there and then Way of the Master I think creates more enemies than friends. If I was doing this in my local area and wanted to do some gospelling with people I hope to see again, I don’t think I would use this method. Perhaps it could be suited more for university contexts, where people are more willing to have healthy debate?

I find this iPhone resource a little cringe worthy and I am not convinced by the last sales pitch on the video on the website “you don’t  have to preach, you just have to hit a button, and let them hear the gospel and you leave”.

Get @pagecxvi’s Hymns album FREE…

Check out some new music.

For a limited time… you can download free Hymns Page CXVI Album.

The guys who have put this album together want people to experience the theologically rich hymns that have lead us to so strongly pursue music as a way of spreading the gospel. They want to see hymns be sung and known again.

The slightly odd thing about this is that Page CXVI is an anonymous project and so as much as we may all like to know they won’t be able to answer any questions about who we are or provide band photos.

Click the link below and the album is sitting there waiting for you and anyone else who wants to download it. Feel free to re-blog this, email the link, or tweet about this while the album is still free.

The promotion runs from April 27th to May 4th.

The new hymns album will be available for a pre-order or instant digital download as well.

Easter @ Hillsong London

On Easter Monday, the Australian Christian Channel (ACC) screened SONrise, J John Live at Hillsong London.

I had the channel flickering on in the background, J John started preaching and I couldn’t look around.I have never heard of the preacher but found him to be so faithful, engaging and hilarious. Lots of  jokes and illustrations and tricks for us to think about using in our preaching.

Check out this 8 minute clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPJwb4ymZoI

Or check out his website PhiloTrust

And if you have Friday 9th free… He happens to be here in Sydney this week.

Why not go see him LIVE (and free) at C3′s Presence Conference at Darling Harbour.

Reasons to believe…

If the gap between Christianity & Science is a concern for you… perhaps this website will prove to be a good resource. It covers hot topics, current debates, latest media…

Reason to Believe” – view on Creation

We believe that the physical universe, the realm of nature, is the visible creation of God. It declares God’s existence and gives a trustworthy revelation of God’s character and purpose. In Scripture, God declares that through His creation all humanity recognizes His existence, power, glory, and wisdom. An honest study of nature — its physical, biological, and social aspects — can prove useful in a person’s search for truth. Properly understood, God’s Word (Scripture) and God’s world (nature), as two revelations (one verbal, one physical) from the same God, will never contradict each other.

———-

Perhaps science isn’t a massive concern for you personally but you know that science apologetics is important and wish some of the literature out there is aim more at  you-an average person (by “average” I mean nonexpert in apologetics, and especially in science). Why not check out Reason to Believe‘s  Average Joe Blog

Pastors Conference… on evangelism

This is a great sermon series of talks on evangelism – Commending Christ: The Pastor, the Church, and the Perishing
Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors

Have a listen:

The Need for Evangelism by Mark Dever

A Shepherd and His Unregenerate Sheep by Matt Chandler

The Pastor and Evangelism by Mark Dever

“I Will Not Be a Velvet-Mouthed Preacher!” by John Piper

The Church and Evangelism by Mark Dever

Missions as Fasting by Michael Oh

Commending Christ, Q & A by various

Creative Gospel… 36 Parables

Picture 19

36 Parables… short films for your [youth group] [bible study] [family] [church] [small group]

Great free and accessible resource for you to use for your ministries. I have come across a similar concept Modern Parables and bought the DVD from Koorong. Modern Parables is an expensive resource (1 parable = $24.95 – I think I paid more like $39.95 when I purchased it) and has too much teaching embedded in the film. It would be great if they had just the retelling of the parable that allows your small group to discuss and interpret with our bibles open.

36 Parables is great creative initiative trying to make the gospel more accessible and relevant to our media saturated generation. This resource is in some ways a product I see rectifying “internal churning”... it would be great to perhaps link to videos like these on our church websites and also make sure that organisations like 36 parables have good search keywords tied to its website title and content. They even come with a free downloadable study guide.

Yet again, my challenge still stands to web/film/theologians/evangelists gurus: Jesus is worthy of a good website to explain who he is and the life he has on offer to all. If you have the technical know-how, I’d be happy to consider putting a team together to develop the content…

Let’s be like Jesus go hang where the sinners are: in our generation its on on the web!

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