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By John Mathis Jr.
As anyone who has read my past writings knows, I grew up in church. Anytime the doors were open we were there and if we weren’t at our home church we were singing or evangelizing somewhere. One thing about growing up in the church culture of America is that you can tend to become acclimated to it and possibly take it granted. You become accustomed to the routine of it all but often times lose sight or don’t realize the very foundation of what you’re a part of.
In essence, if you grow up in church in this country you become familiar with the process and aren’t mindful of the purpose. It can become a routine gathering that you’re “supposed” to do. Even the very nature of our outreach can become routine. In this day and time we are accustomed to witnessing to others by ”inviting them” to our church. There’s nothing wrong with that. Church is a great place to be if you’re searching, hurting or realize something is missing in your life. But in some ways, it’s as if the church has become the main vehicle for “witnessing.” Perhaps we feel people would “get” the whole “Christian thing” and it would be better explained if they could visit our church. If we read the early evangelizing of the church in the book of Acts it wasn’t geared quite that way. Evangelizing happened one on one, door to door or right out in the streets. The “church” assembling was more of a gathering of believers, most often in homes, to worship, instruct, teach, and to equip and disciple those that were converted. As Christianity grew, we have built church buildings and gathering places and over time those buildings have become the focal point of much of our evangelism. And that obviously works, but we can’t forget that the best method and most opportune is still that personal, one-on-one presentation of the Gospel.
Several years ago my wife and I felt we were being placed at a church on the outskirts of Nashville, TN (Bethel World Outreach). I’ve personally been through a lot of life transitions and seasons in the past five years and being led to this church has been a big part of a healing and waiting-for-the-next-step process for me. I used to pick my churches according to the worship, the worship band or the music program (ok, I’ve been a music-oriented guy all my life) but this time was different. I was drawn to Bethel’s focus on sharing the Gospel, making disciples, building the foundation of believers in their personal daily lives, and focus on personal attentiveness to God’s Word and growing knowledge of Him. They have a great focus on challenging one-on-one, personal witness to others.
Another appealing aspect of the church is their focus on missions. Oh not like I grew up, where you put your offering in on the fourth Sunday of every month to support international mission efforts on “mission Sunday” but they challenge people each year to leave the country and go BE a missionary for about 10 days. They have a program at Bethel called Ten Days Missions. They invite people to travel to all areas of the world with a missions team and one particular trip was to Baja, Mexico. When my wife Angie heard about this, she was the catalyst for us taking a mission trip! We both felt like we should go, so we signed up and began to raise our money.
As we began to wind down the months and weeks before the trip, making plans and preparations, raising the remainder of our funds and getting our passports we were also challenged with the thought “what are we going to say when we get there?” My friend George asked me when he found out we were going, “is this one of those mission trips where ya’ll get off the plane and look at the poor people as you drive by on the way to the resort where you’re going to sit in the hot tub and suffer for Jesus?” That still makes me laugh today, and no, it wasn’t that kind of trip. The reason we were challenged with what to say is we knew ahead of time how Ten Days operated. When you weren’t building a church building, you were hitting the poverty laden streets of the villages and inviting people to meet in five minutes to hear a special message which included you sharing your personal testimony for two minutes.
Okay, we live in America, even our poorest live better than 2/3rds of the world. We tend to not stop and think when we invite someone to church about what the enticement is for that. It’s church. It’s a good thing to do, right? We live in America. There is the hope of better jobs and better status and going to church is a good habit to have and it does help and instruct us to live a better life. But when you are faced with telling someone in a foreign country, who has nothing and probably will have nothing tomorrow and the next week and the next month; why they should listen to what you have to say, well, it made me think long and hard about what to say.
It was a good thing, though. It made me realize how we can feel the need to “dress up” the Gospel or depend on a church setting for the overall presentation. Perhaps it’s our American society and how we’ve been trained; we’re used to getting a list of amenities with whatever we’re presented. From our cars, to our technological devices, to our neighborhoods, schools and even our jobs we want to know all “the perks”or the “extras” or the “bells and whistles” that are going to come with it. So naturally we might be conditioned to feel the need to package the Gospel and put some nice shiny things and additional enticements around it. The thought of facing very poor people who live with no running water, no jobs, sometimes no food and hanging sheets for doors without providing some additional promises can make you think long and hard about the subject of “what do I say?”
The time came and we made the trip to Baja, Mexico where worked in a little community about two hours south of Tijuana. We would get up and travel there from our lodging each day and our group would rotate between building on a church building, visiting the kids in school or going out into the street, knocking on doors and asking people to gather at a designated location near their home.
That first time we hit the street and started knocking on doors we began to invite people to meet in five minutes near a certain building that had been picked out as our meeting spot. By the way, five minutes in Mexico actually means 30-45 minutes, they don’t have the same hectic, urgent, go-go-go sense of time we have here in America. We’d canvass the neighborhood and return to our meeting spot about 30-45 minutes later and people would begin to trickle down the streets to wait for our little meeting to start.
I was so curious for that first meeting to take place. We were standing on a dirt street, it was hot and dusty, there wasn’t a nice air conditioned building to meet in, no padded pews to sit on (everyone stood), no PA system, no worship band or instruments….nothing . Here we were, waiting for the main speaker, Bob Sanders, to begin to speak.
Ten Days Missions partners with Baja Christian Ministries (BCM) for these mission trips and BCM was founded by Bob who began serving the poor in Mexico in 1984 before starting BCM in 1991. Let me say that Bob is pretty much your average white guy. He’s a humble man with a gentle spirit, nothing really stands out about him, well, except for the fact he has spent over two decades working in Mexico and his Spanish is … let’s just say, not good. So he speaks through an interpreter. He doesn’t really do anything special when he speaks, no “preacher voice”, he’s not overly animated and he has old jokes he throws in….very old jokes. So to sum all that up, he’s no Billy Graham! But when you’re doing what God has called you to do, you don’t have to be Billy Graham! Probably another one of our perceptions in presenting the Gospel is our focus on the messenger and not the message.
I have told you all of that to set up what I witnessed on that first meeting and each day following. Bob took 10 minutes to share the Gospel with that group of people that day. Remember, no amenities, no worship band to get the crowd warmed up, no nice building, no programs to hand out, nothing but a simple, heart-felt presentation of the Gospel. As he spoke, an amazing thing happened. I watched the faces of some of the people listening and their countenance began to change! Their expressions told that they there were being drawn into what was being said, it was hitting a place in their heart that we all have. He stood there and gave them the basic Gospel message, “God loves you,” “He wants to know you and for you to know Him,” “He sent His son Jesus to live on this earth, be crucified and resurrected again so that we could have the relationship with God that He wishes for us to have.” And it was powerful! Many were moved to tears!
There was no piano playing softly, there was no altar or altar call, there was no ambient lighting, none of that. Just plain broad daylight in the dusty streets and people given the chance to accept Jesus Christ! And they did! We’d gather with them individually at the end of the meeting and pray with them as they made a life-changing decision. Then the Baja Christian Ministries team would gather their name and information in order to continue to follow up and train and disciple the new believers over the course of coming months and years on the foundations of being a follower of Christ.
That trip was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in my life! It was eye-opening for me in regard to the true power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It reminded me that regardless of whether a person is rich or poor we all have that part inside of us that desires to know God, every man and woman in every country around this world, and there just needs to be someone to make the introduction.
It heightened my awareness to not judge the outside of a person and determine whether they would be interested in the Gospel, we do not have the ability to see the heart. It also raised my awareness as to just how POWERFUL the Gospel is….all by itself! God doesn’t require or need us to spruce it up or try to make it appealing, or to even spruce ourselves up or be a Billy Graham. He just asks us to share it with someone and He does the rest.
If you ever have the chance to make such a mission trip, I would tell you it’s one of the greatest experiences you can have. We all may not get the opportunity to make such a trip, but I’m pretty sure we all will get the opportunity to introduce Jesus to someone in our regular everyday lives. Always remember when you get that opportunity, and you will, that the Gospel is more POWERFUL than we can ever truly imagine! Don’t underestimate its power and others desire and NEED to hear it! God bless!
John Mathis
www.themansionentertainment.comhttp://www.themansionentertainment.com/
Email: jmathis@themansionentertainment.com
First published by SGN Scoops digital magazine in November 2012.