Taking advantage of a mission field close to home
Posted by The Skyliner on December 2nd, 2009Amy Skaggs
Staff Writer
Picture this: an opportunity to share the love of Jesus Christ one-on-one with a very large community of people. Not many people would turn that down. Now imagine if it were completely free. Does that sound too good to be true? No way!
The opportunity is right in front of you, right down your own street. It is very possible to do mission work within your own community. We hear that all the time from our classes, church and chapel services. But how applicable can that really be? Is it possible to reach people by smacking them in the face with the truth? Probably not.
The best way to go about this is simply by loving people. The community all around you right now is lost, and not enough people feel the need that is there. Far too many people die everyday without realizing that they are loved and cared about. The United States has plenty of lost people that need to be shown the love that Christ fills His people with and they need to hear how they can be saved.
I had the opportunity to meet a man named Vick while I was filming a movie for one of my classes with a friend of mine. We weren’t meaning to speak to anyone, let alone pray with him. We were in downtown Greenville, not paying attention to the people around us.
A man with a shaved head, tattered clothing and an odd odor approached us with his friend, curious as to what we were doing. We explained to him that we were filming a movie based on a Bible verse, and he asked what the verse was. It was Romans 12:1-2, which says, “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”
Through that opportunity, we were able to hear his story, speak to him and eventually pray with him. It was nerve-wracking, without a doubt. We did not know this man or what he was capable of. He had nervous twitches and was drinking some kind of alcohol out of a Mello-Yello bottle. Our nerves were calmed as we were talking to him, though. It was easy to speak to this man and we felt as if we really got through to him. These feelings of fear did not set in until we were already halfway to the car and recapping our experience.
We did not go up to this man and smack him in the face with the truth. We didn’t stand on the sidewalk yelling that everyone we could see was a sinner.
It is difficult to reach the people in America these days through those ways because there is a vast likelihood that they already have heard the Gospel, and have made the decision to not follow through with it. The only way to reach these people is to prove that you are trying to be like Christ, not like the Christians that have already turned them off.
The best evangelizing technique is just to love them. It is best to not treat them like charity, but to do nice things for them just as you would do nice things for your family. Listen to their stories and tell them about yourself. Plug into their lives and find out how you can cater to their needs. They will see something different in you if you humble yourself. The most common problem that nonbelievers have with Christians is that they do not act on what they believe. Going out into the lost community will prove that stereotype wrong. It will change both your life and theirs.
Tags: Fall 2009, Vol. 109 - Issue 11