“Can you help me with some evangelism strategies? We are youth pastors who lead a group in Caracas and we want to reach people for Christ.”
After the end of the first session at the Evangelism Training and Cross Cultural missions class in Maracay Venezuela, these two young youth pastors approached me with their question.
They were eager to discuss specifics to their situation.
Further conversations with me revealed a frustration with current methodologies they were using, particularly focused on random contact street evangelism using a gospel script.
Their young adults were not showing up. Those who did seemed to make a half-hearted effort to reach out to strangers.
After every class, they kept asking me about evangelism strategies. The class context (with pastors from all over Venezuela) was not the right place to address their particular local concern.
So as classes continued, they kept waiting and asking when I’d address their topic. I had to keep asking them to wait, so that I could more teaching out there for them to interact with.
Finally, during some free time one afternoon, we sat down and talked. They had listened to the content and found ways to apply my content to their situation.
Two things in particular caught their attention:
- the persistence of relational evangelism
- the stickyness of relational conversions.
They started brainstorming about ways to encourage their youth group to reach their existing relationships of school peers.
They began brainstorming ways to help their existing group develop those relationship with evangelistic influence in a genuine way.
What excited me the most was to their passion and energy get reignited in the face of the obstacles they faced. Watching those “a-ha” moments gave me a sense of deep satisfaction that we are living out our calling.
Based on my prior experiences, I know these youth pastors will return and work at implementing some of the ideas they generated. As a result of some teaching and some evangelistic coaching, they renewed in their vision.
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