The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) and the Great Commandment (Mark 12:28-31) compel us to reach out to our neighbors with the love of Jesus Christ and the message of the gospel. Here are some ways we can intentionally love our neighbors and share Jesus with them.
EVANGELISM & PRAYER--Pray for Our Community. All outreach begins in prayer. Paul repeatedly commands and pleads with believers to pray that he would be strengthened by God’s power and receive open doors for gospel proclamation. Pray for your neighbors by name.
EVANGELISM & SERVICE--Meet and Serve Our Community. Acts of service should be closely combined with verbal testimony that Christ’s love is driving and empowering our service. Service leads to evangelism, evangelism leads to church planting. These constitute one integrated process, not three disconnected activities.
Meet Your Neighbors. This seems simple, but some of us need to take this simple step and actually meet our neighbors. We need to know their names, their children, their jobs, their interests and their needs. The more we know them, the better we can serve them.
To practically start this process you could
Serve Your Neighbors. The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor, those people God has brought into our lives and with whom we regularly interact.
EVANGELISM & STUDY--Invite and Study. Most evangelism happens in the context of ongoing relationships. Our outreach efforts should primarily encourage individuals to share the gospel naturally with their friends and colleagues. From there, we hope to invite our friends to study the Bible.
Bible Study. The Bible teaches that God’s Word is “living and active, sharper than any two edged sword” and that God’s Word “never returns empty.” Studying the Bible is the primary way to know God better.
Small Groups. Groups open to seekers provide a place where they can study the Bible alongside believers, observe the love between believers and witness believers wrestling with the truth of the Bible for their lives.
Q Place. This is a great model for small groups. It allows people to respectfully and inquisitively dialogue about God, each other and what they believe.
EVANGELISM & CHURCH GROWTH--Group Growth. As small groups outside the Wheaton area grow and multiply by the power of the Holy Spirit, these groups could form the nucleus of a new church plant(s).
Gather and Grow through Church Planting. The church planting vision of College Church is to establish three new churches in the next nine years in communities with significant gospel need in the greater Chicago area.
Active Church Plants
Church Planting is an integral part of College Church’s vision. As stated in our initiatives, “[We are] committed to planting churches.” God has blessed College Church with significant resources of people, funding and expertise in order to effectively plant churches.
It positively stretches our congregation to reach outward and depend upward.
Church planting is an effective means of drawing unbelievers into the church.
What can you do?