Evangelism Class Summary: Session 1

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

How great a promise for all of us to rely on: God has put eternity into man’s heart. When we read that God has made us in His own image, the essence that God was, is, and always will be, is put into our souls. Yet, as the second half of the verse says, we are unable to fully comprehend this. The writer of Ecclesiastes thus realizes that both his desire to understand all of life, as well as the limitations on his ability to do so, have been ordained by God. With this heart, we are teaching a class on evangelism at All Souls. Something we pray that all of us would come to realize more is that God has created people as spiritual beings. Therefore, life is a spiritual journey. Some may be moving towards God, some may be moving away. Some may not even be aware that they are on a spiritual journey. Some may be moving towards other so-called Gods, or stuck in a spiritual quagmire. But everyone is on a spiritual journey, and we don’t always recognize it in others. If this reality is true, as we are all called to be making disciples, we need to learn how to be people where spiritual conversations happen naturally, regardless if we are amongst Christians or not-yet Christians. The evangelism class is meant to help equip people in how to have spiritual conversations, but also to prayerfully walk with God in knowing where people are on their spiritual journey. We are all still on a spiritual journey, even is we are Christians, and what we always need most is the gospel, but there are different ways of communicating the gospel based upon where people are with God. The fact of the matter is that no matter what you do for a living, where you live, and how you spend your time, you know numerous amounts of people who are on a spiritual journey, and some of which don’t know God personally, and yet we all have the opportunity to be agents of God’s grace to a broken world.

I think the number one killer of spiritual conversations is unbelief. Many may read that statement and think that I am talking about the unbelief in God, the Bible, or Jesus Christ as the incarnate God. Contrarily, the unbelief I am talking about is not on the part of not-yet Christians, but rather the unbelief of Christians that those in their Monday-Saturday world truly are on a spiritual journey. I think if we all asked God for us to grow in the belief that everyone has eternity written on their hearts, spiritual conversations would become the norm, not the exception. So the questions beg:

Do you really believe that people in your Monday through Saturday world want to talk about spiritual things? Do you really believe that God can use to to engage in those around you on their journey of spirituality?