Salt & Light Various passages April 17, 2011

Salt & Light Various passages April 17, 2011 Introduction: Talk about my time up at the conference and our visit with Jane. We re taking a break from 1 Corinthians to discuss Salt & Light. Read Matthew 5:13-16 You can either be useful salt/light or useless salt/light. If you are a Christian, you are salt. You are light. But are you useful or useless? I m not sure we ve done too well at this Just a couple of months ago we had to complete a short questionnaire and send it into to the national office of our denomination. One of the questions we were asked was how many conversions took place over the past year. Sadly, I had to give the answer, None. As far as I can remember, not one person came to faith in Christ at our church in 2010, either through a specific ministry of ours or through personal evangelism by our members. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Do you see a problem with that? Can we really call ourselves a faithful, God-pleasing church if we simply rest content with the status quo with little concern that we aren t reaching the lost of our community with the gospel? To that end, the Local Missions Team has put together an evangelistic initiative called Salt & Light. The goal of the Local Missions Team is to help us fulfill the fourth element of our church s Purpose Statement, which is: Grace Brethren Church exists to glorify God through worship, discipleship, service, and mission. Our goal is not to create events by which you can invite your friends to, although we may have some of those from time to time, but rather to encourage you to be more intentional in reaching the lost that God has placed in your life. We are all called to be missionaries to the Cedar Valley area. Each and every one of us has been given the responsibility to make disciples of all nations. Every Christian is called to be salt and light to a dark and decaying world; it is not the job only of your pastor or the elders or those who happen to be on the Local Missions Team: it is for all of us. We are all missionaries whether we see ourselves as one or not: the only question is whether we are effective missionaries. So the Salt & Light initiative is about helping you become more intentional about reaching the lost. As Matt and Anna just pointed out during our Missions Moment, in your bulletin is a brochure we ve created that tells you what it s about. In short, we want to help you identify three unbelievers that you know and then be intentional about talking with them, inviting them into your home, and proclaiming the gospel to them. It s a way for you to have some clear goals of what each of you need to be doing if we re going to be effective missionaries here in the Cedar Valley community. 1

Inside the Salt & Light brochure you have in your bulletin, you ll notice there are four goals we have in regards to evangelism: the first is identification, followed by conversation, then invitation, and finally proclamation. I m going to use those four goals as the four points of my message this morning, in order to help you understand what it is that we hope to have happen in accomplishing each of those goals. So let s being with the first goal in our Salt & Light initiative, which is 1. Identification Like any good missionary, we first need to identify who we re trying to reach with the gospel before we can do anything else. So the first goal of Salt & Light is a simple one: identify three people who are not Christians here in the Cedar Valley area whom you d like to intentionally target to share the love of Christ with. This is important because it can be easy to be vague about our responsibility to be salt and light. We can make general claims about trying to reach the lost without ever being specific about who those lost people are that we re hoping to witness to. God has placed specific people in your life, people with names and faces. They re your co-workers at your job, your neighbors that live down the street from you, or friends you ve known for many years. We need to be specific in identifying who it is God has placed in our path to be witnesses to. No vagueness! Think about who it is that you already know and write down their names as those whom you are going to make a concerted effort to regularly pray for and reach out to. If we don t ever get specific about who we are trying to reach, chances are we ll never take specific actions to reach that individual. Now hopefully for many of you this goal won t be very difficult to achieve. As I m talking, you can easily think of three people you know that aren t Christians. If so, then don t waste any time: write down their names. But perhaps some of you are like me and it s a struggle to come up with the names of three non-christians you have regular contact with. Having moved to Iowa just recently and having my job be at a church, I have to admit that this goal of identifying three unbelievers I have contact with here is a challenge. My life is pretty much defined by relationships with fellow Christians. Maybe some of you are in the same boat. If that s the case, then you and I have some work to do. We need to figure out how to get out of our Christian bubble and interact with unbelievers. If my responsibility as a member of GBC is to bring God glory through mission, by reaching the lost with the gospel, then I need to find a way to make that happen. So if you don t know three unbelievers in the Cedar Valley area, then you need to make some changes in order to start getting to know them. For me and Karen, we re planning on trying to connect with some of the parents of our daughter s friends in school. We re going to be very purposeful over the summer to try to build relationships with them. We know this isn t going to just happen by accident: we need to be intentional about it. So I would encourage you to consider what it is you can do to meet unbelievers if you re in a situation where currently you don t know any. Maybe it means joining a group in the community such as being part of a sports league or a hobby-related group or doing 2

volunteer work somewhere that gives you an opportunity to rub elbows with others. Regardless of what it is, we need to find way to connect with unbelievers if we don t already have relationships with them. So the first goal of the Salt & Light initiative is to identify three unbelievers you know that you are going to commit to reach out to and build a relationship with. Once you know whom God has placed on your heart, then second goal we have is to engage them in conversation. 2. Conversation The goal here is to start engaging the individuals you have indentified in meaningful conversations. Work on getting to know them. Ask questions about their background, their interests, their family, and so on. Maybe that means you go over and sit by them during your lunch break at work and ask them about how their weekend went. Or when you see you neighbor out mowing the lawn you walk over with a cold soda in your hand and offer it to him and begin talking. Once again, the key word here is intentionality. In order to engage in conversation, you may need to intentionally go out of your way to make it happen. Now by conversation we don t mean you should walk up to them with a gospel track in your hand and begin rambling off the plan of salvation. There s a place for proclamation, but it isn t usually at the start of a relationship. By conversation we mean for you to get to know the person by showing genuine interest in their life. It means asking them questions and being willing to listen and learn. Certainly in any good conversation there will be a measure of give and take in sharing about each other s life, but you should be making it a priority to listen to them. People are far more willing to listen to what you have to say if you have shown a willingness to listen to them first. So in your conversations, listen. I can t emphasize that enough. Don t go on and on and on about yourself. Be quick to listen and slow to speak, as the apostle James says. I can t tell you how often people do this miserably. In the vast majority of casual conversations I end up asking all kinds of questions to the other person and they show absolutely no interest in me by returning the favor. Quite frankly, I m completely thrown off balance when someone actually does take genuine interest in me by asking thoughtful questions and really listens to the answers without chomping at the bit to interject their own thoughts. People are attracted to others who listen and show genuine interest in them. Be that kind of person. Demonstrate the selflessness of Christ by doing the humble service of being willing to listen. Furthermore, don t feel the need to correct every theologically incorrect statement they make. Unbelievers are inevitably going to have wrong views about God, sin, Christ, and the church. In time, those are things you ll need to address. But begin by listening. Try to understand what they believe and why. Immediately correcting them for every theological error isn t going to make them want to open up to you. 3

How long would you want to talk to someone who kept correcting you about every little thing you believed? So don t do that to others. Be willing to listen; work at understanding why they believe as they do. Show respectful interest in what they believe and they in turn will be much more like to do the same to you. But we don t only want to engage them in conversation but we also want to be intentional about our third goal which is 3. Invitation By invitation, we re looking for you to make an effort to invite the person you re trying to reach to a meal or an activity or event that can deepen the relationship and open up more opportunities to talk about spiritual things. There s a couple of ways of thinking about this. The first way is personal invitation where you invite the individual over to your home for a meal or another activity. For example, Karen and I frequently invite people over for lunch or supper. Consider the example of Christ who often shared meals with others; food is a natural way for people to sit down and get to know each other. A good meal in your home is a way of saying you care about them and are willing to share your life with them. Also, one can do personal invitations by hosting a party or some kind of fun activity. If you are like me and enjoy movies, hosting a movie night in your home can be a fun way to have unbelievers hang out with you. Of if you have kids you can invite another parent over for a play-date, allow you to talk while the kids are off playing. Big sporting events are another great opportunity to invite others over to spent time with you. Things like the Super Bowl or March Madness are perfect times to give friendly invitations to the unbelievers you re trying to reach. Be creative in finding way to invite others into your home and into your life so you can deepen your friendship with them. The second type of invitation is inviting them to some kind of event or activity that is outside your home, but can lead to spiritual discussions. This can be something as simple as inviting them out for coffee at Starbuck or joining you for a piece of pie at Village Inn. It can also include large social events, such as attending a Christian concert or going together to a local street festival. Or provided you think they would be open to it, you could invite them to come with you to the small group Bible study you attend or to a fun activity at the church. Of course, you ll want to discern what kinds of activities they would be receptive to. Sometimes inviting them to a Bible study in someone s home would be a perfect idea; other times the person may not want anything to do with an activity that even hints of going to a church or opening up a Bible. Use discernment but be intentional about inviting them to activities or over for meals that allow you to deepen the relationship. Doing all of these things identification, conversation, and invitation are important elements of us being effective missionaries to our community. If we are going to be salt and light, then we need to get out of the saltshaker and take out light out from 4

under the basket. But these three elements must eventually lead us to our ultimate goal, which is the proclamation of the gospel. So our fourth point and the final goal we must have in our attempts to reach out to unbelievers concerns 4. Proclamation At some point, you need to move beyond just listening to them and attempting to be a witness of what a transformed, Christ-centered life looks like by your actions: you need to proclaim the gospel. The apostle Paul said in Romans 10:17, Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. We need to tell unbelievers the good news that Christ came to save sinners because it is through the message of the gospel that God brings people to a saving knowledge of him. Now there are a number of ways to go about this: some people like to use tracts like the Four Spiritual Laws or the Romans Road. Others have found methods like the Way of the Master as helping ways of showing people their sin and need for Christ. Still others like to use their testimony as a launching point to tell others about what God has done for them. All of those are fine and well, although you should always use discernment since people tend to become skeptical when they believe you are just railroading them with a canned presentation. The best method to simply know the elements of the gospel message so well that you can naturally talk about it in the normal flow of conversation. I ve spoken on this before in more detail, but for the sake of a quick review, there are four main elements of the gospel message that can be summarized in four words: God, Sin, Christ, and Faith. You need to first establish who God is: that he is holy and just and will judge sin. Next, you must demonstrate that we are all sinners who have been separated from God and deserve God s wrath. This then leads to God s provision for us in Christ. Jesus suffered on the cross in our place as God reckoned our sins to Christ, so that by Christ s death God s wrath against sin was satisfied. But we must not end then because Christ s work is not automatic: we must respond by turning from sin and trusting in Christ by faith. Faith isn t just mental assent that some fact is true but rather it is entrusting your very life to Christ as your resurrected Lord and Savior and being willing to follow him the rest of your days. So as you work at reaching out to the unbelievers you ve identified, you always need to be looking for those opportunities to proclaim the gospel. For many of you, that will mean boldness as you can be gun-shy and you fear rejection. For a few of you, it may mean patience and using some tact. Don t be quick to proclaim the gospel when maybe what you first need to do is build trust and demonstrate the love of Christ in your actions before you speak of the love of Christ with your words. But as missionaries to the Cedar Valley area, proclaim the gospel is what we must do if we are going to be effective salt and light in our community. 5

Conclusion So then, this is what we as the Local Missions Team are encouraging everyone here at Grace Brethren Church to do: be salt and light to our community by identifying three unbelievers you are going to pray for and try to reach out to. Then strive to engage them in conversation and build a relationship with them. Invite them over to your home or to join you in some activity that allows you to deepen your relationship. And finally and most importantly, proclaim the gospel to them that God sent his Son to die for their sin on the cross so that they can have eternal life if they would simply turn from sin and believe in him. Take this Salt & Light brochure, place it in your Bible or someplace else where you will see it on a regular basis, and use it to help spur you on to be intentional about being a missionary here in the Cedar Valley community. But after going to the conference I went to this past week, I got to thinking that there s really one more element that needs to be a part of this Salt & Light initiative to prevent this from being just another task you need to do. In many ways, if this is truly going to be effective, then proclamation needs to be both be beginning and the end goal. We need to proclaim the gospel to ourselves if we re going to truly be motivated to go and be salt and light to our community This sermon was addressed originally to the people at Grace Brethren Church of Waterloo, IA by Pastor Rob Borkowitz. Copyright 2011. 6