RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Evangelism – 13
Sammy Tippit: I want to welcome you back to our conversation about how to share Christ with other people. I’ve been visiting with Wayne Jenkins. Wayne, this is our last session in this mentoring process. We’re calling it a mentoring process, because now you’re not only growing in Christ, but now you’re beginning to share Christ with others and what Christ has done in your life. We’re glad you’re back with this.

In the last session, we discussed what needs to be in a conversation about sharing the gospel, leading someone to a personal faith in Jesus Christ. So we finished there. We got those four things. There were four things we talked about: God’s purpose for your life, our problem, God’s provision, and then the response, how we’re supposed to respond. From there, once we’ve shared that with them, what happens next?
Wayne Jenkins: I think at that point, when you get to the end of sharing those passages, you ask what we would consider a qualifying question to make sure we’ve communicated. “Does this make sense to you?” At that point, they may say, “Yes, it does.” They may say, “No, it doesn’t.” Don’t ask, “What doesn’t make sense?” because that gives an open door for Satan to come in. “It doesn’t make sense that God would let somebody die,” and we get into some discussion.  Go back over each one of those points. “Does it make sense to you that God has a purpose for your life? Does it make sense to you that we have a problem, that all of us are sinners? Does it make sense to you that God provided a way? Does it make sense to you that you need to trust in Christ?” At any one of those points, if they say, “I don’t understand that,” then you go back to that point.
Then again you say, “Now does it make sense to you?” If they say, “Yes, it makes sense to me,” at any point, whether it’s after going back or the other, then you ask, “Would you like to pray to receive Christ? I can lead you in prayer. You can ask him to come into your life here today and know for sure that if you die you’d go to heaven to be with him. Would you like to do that?”
Then if they say yes, the prayer we’ve given, our sample prayer… There’s no magic prayer. That’s our way of talking to God. You have to ask him to come into your life and to control your life. Well, how do we do that? We do that through prayer. So it’s just a prayer of asking him to come in and take control of your life and be the Lord of your life.
Sammy: The Bible says you believe in your heart and you confess with your mouth, and it also says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” We’re just bringing them to that place of doing what the Bible says, of calling on the name of the Lord.
I want to encourage people to really take this and just get it down in their hearts and lives to where at an opportune time that they might have… We’ve shared with them how to develop some things where they would have those opportune times to be able to just share Christ with other people, and I believe God would take this and use it.
There’s something we have done, and it’s a part of this app here. In your resource center, you will find three messages by me that are evangelistic in nature. If you’ll go to the resource center, you can take those messages. They’re in your language, and you can use those to actually share with other people and have them listen to it. It’ll be a guide.
There’s a fourth message we call “The Journey.” It’s a video, a music message sort of combination that’s a creative thing, and I think the Lord would use that. I want to encourage everyone to use that.
Wayne: It’s almost like a gospel pamphlet in a video form.
Sammy: Yep, that’s right. In a digital format, which is more contemporary. It’s the same message. Nothing is changed. In fact, it’s the Peace with God message. Nothing is changed with that, but it’s in a contemporary format. One of the exciting things for me is that this brings great potential for multiplication, as people begin to lead others to Christ, and then they begin to teach them how to lead others to Christ. Let’s talk a little bit about that in closing.
Wayne: We have responsibility. Again, back to what the Scripture says. That which is entrusted to us we are to share with other people. Second Timothy, chapter 2, verse 2. About 45 years ago, I had a professor who said something to me. He said, “It’s more important to train soul winners than to win a soul.” I had to give that a lot of thought, but I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s right. Let me give an illustration.
We have two pastors or two leaders, and they’re both burdened about their city. Here’s pastor number one and pastor number two. You go out and win a person to Christ. I go out and win a person to Christ. We come back. We’ve doubled our attendance and doubled the membership of our church. Then you go out again, and you reach another person. Now you have three.
Instead of me going out, this new person and I go out. I’ve taught him how to share his faith. He goes out, and we both bring back one. We have four. You have three. It begins to multiply really fast. You go back out, and now you have four. Now I have four going out. Now we have eight that we’ve won. You see the multiplication process as you continue to equip everyone who comes with the ability to share their faith as well.
Sammy: By the way, this is really biblical, because in the book of Acts you find that on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people, the Bible says, were added unto the church. You keep getting farther into the book of Acts, and it begins to say, “And the Word was multiplied.” There’s this process that takes place.
For them, it was coming to Jesus and growing in Christ to the place where you could share Christ with others. Then those who came to Christ, you helped them to grow to where they could share Christ with others. It’s a certain point. I think we’ve lost this, and we need to see that, yes, it’s exciting for me to share Christ with others, but what’s really exciting is when I help someone else to do that.
Wayne: Yeah, that person is not fully equipped and the process is not complete until you’ve equipped them to share the gospel and train other people to share the gospel. That way you’re multiplying. You’re not only going to take this person and help him to be able to share his faith, but you’re going to help him to be able to share with other people.
Sammy: When I was in Germany as a pastor… Most of my ministry has been as an evangelist, but there was a short period of time when I was a pastor, and our church exploded in growth. I can tell you it was not because of my preaching. I have a friend who was influential in a large conference of pastors in America. He asked me to send him some of my messages to see if I might be one of the speakers. He listened to it and said, “No, thank you.”
So it wasn’t my great preaching that made it grow. What made the church explode in growth was I began to teach people to pray, have a time alone with God. They came alive. Then when they came alive, I taught them how to share Christ. Things like we’ve talked about, the testimony, how to share a gospel presentation. Then they began to lead people to Christ.
So then what I said was, “Okay, now I want you to do what I’ve done with you with these you’ve led to Christ.” The church all of a sudden started multiplying, and we saw this incredible growth, this whole multiplication process. We started off this whole thing saying, “If you don’t have a burden, it’s going to be hard for the people who are coming behind you to have a burden.”
Wayne: If you don’t model it.
Sammy: That’s right. We have to be able to do that. I want to just encourage you to be a multiplier. I hope you will go to the next level. That next level is the level of multiplication. God will use you. God wants to use you to continue to grow in your faith, to come to the place where you’re leading others to Christ, and then help them to grow in their faith where the same thing happens.
We want to help you to do that. We want to help you to be a multiplier of the Word of God, of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Wayne, this is exciting. Thank you so much, my brother, for taking the time to come and do this and be a part of this with us. It has been so helpful. I just believe that some of you… I hope many of you, most of you, maybe even all of you will be leading someone to Christ and helping them to grow to where they can do the same thing.
Wayne: Amen.