The encounter I had last night was a CLASSIC example.

I had a meeting with someone at 6pm in a certain location. Without going into all the details, I got the meeting place completely wrong.  I sent him a text and we agree to meet the next day in the right location.

I hadn’t given the gospel to anyone that day so I looked around. I wanted to make the most of the time I had wasted getting the appointment wrong.

Outside Burger King on Lincoln Road in Henderson Auckland was an Indian having a smoke.

So, I got out of my car and walked towards Him, and broke the ice in the usual way. After getting eye contact I said…

“Hi, can ask you a question?”

“Sure!”

“What’s the world’s best selling book?”

“Um…I don’t know”

“It’s the bible. Do you know how old that book is?”

“Errr…No.”

“It’s cover’s 4000 years of history, and we have just made a video which summarises the whole book in 11 minutes.”

“No way!”

“Yep. Here, it’s on my iphone.”

He began watching the video, ear phones in. After the law was presented on the presentation, I stopped it, and asked him the question about lying, thieving and murdering.

Here’s an interesting thing that I am discovering more often. When I asked him if he’d ever stolen anything he replied “No”.

I listed a few things and he still said “No”

I couldn’t believe it.

Then I asked this question “Have you ever downloaded something off the internet that you shouldn’t have?”

“Yes!”

It seems most young people are doing this.

So, if you find yourself going through “the Law” with someone and they are struggling to admit they have ever stolen something, try this question.

It works!

Anyway, we got through the rest of the presentation, and I asked him the final question.

“If everything you have just seen here is true, where would you go?”

“Hell.”

This is where it got really interesting.

I took him through an over view of the follow up booklet called “How to Be Sure Of Going To Heaven When You Die”

He wanted to study this before making decision.

I am thrilled about this response because I think it’s best people make informed thoughtful decisions.

Then he told me his journey.

He and his whole family came from India a year ago.

Recently, he went to the trouble of finding a Bible and started to read it.

“What prompted you to do that” I asked.

“I don’t know” he said “I just had this strong desire in me to find out about Jesus”

“You mean, no one invited you to do this?”

“No.”

“Are all your family Hindu?”

“Yes”

“Are there any Christians in your family”

“No”

“Not even back in India?”

“No”

“Any where?”

“No”

“Do you have any Christian friends?”

“No”

“Ever watched Christian TV or listened to Christian radio?”

“No”

“Every looked at anything on the internet about Jesus?”

“No”

“So how come Jesus has picked you out from all your family to find out about Him?”

“I don’t know. But I am so glad you came along tonight. This is just what I needed to hear. Can we keep in touch?”

We then proceeded to exchange cell phone numbers.

You know what? I am so glad we have the follow up booklet “HOW TO BE SURE OF GOING TO HEAVEN WHEN WE DIE’

In my opinion, it’s an incredible little booklet to introduce people like “RC” (that’s his nick name) to the whole concept of Christianity.

Recently I was emailed from someone in the states – a seasoned, mature, balanced, full on Christian. He wanted to know where he could get more of these booklets because, in his words, “This is the best little booklet I have ever seen to explain what Christianity is all about”

Here’s a suggestion? Why don’t you get some of these booklets, and put them into letter boxes in your neighbourhood?

Before the booklet was written, I was SO frustrated that I couldn’t find a LITTLE booklet anywhere which explained conceptually how Christianity works in simple language, and with easy to follow logic.

In my opinion, and coming to this conclusion after reaching thousands of non-Christians one on one, we in the Church make a great mistake.

We completely UNDERESTIMATE how much non-Christians want to know.

Sadly, much of our literature and hand outs are intellectually insulting, trivialising our faith.

OR, at the other extreme, we put out literature which is way too complicated, and full of Christian jargon.

It’s hard to find a balance, but I think this little booklet achieves this balance.

Please pray for RC.  I am planning on taking him to a good church tomorrow which has an Indian pastor.

LESSON FROM THIS ENCOUNTER?

1) God is working all the time in the hearts of non-Christians to draw them to himself. This is why it’s critical to obey Jesus by going with the gospel. We are a vital part of God’s plan! God, as it were, partners with us to save people. Our bit is simply to present the gospel. He does all the hard stuff like sovereignly working in the hearts before we get there, drawing them, and eventually convicting them of the truth in the gospel we present, and eventually saving them.

2) Extreme Calvinists take this too far, and there are many ‘out there’ who think like this. They would argue RC would have been eventually saved without me getting to him with the gospel.  They sit in their churches disobedient to the Great Commission because they believe God will sovereignly save all His elect without us going to them with the gospel. It’s a complete lie to believe we don’t have to go to all people with the gospel.  How the inter play between our going with the gospel and God’s sovereignty works with the elect, we’ll never really know this side of death. All I know is this – if Jesus commanded us to go to the lost with the gospel, there must have been a good reason. God draws the elect, but it’s up to us to inform them who it is who is drawing them and what the drawing is all about (Romans 10:13-15). Who are we to argue with God and say we are not going? He is omniscient and we are not. End of story. If you want to read about the interplay between the sovereignty of God and the free will of man, click here.

2) Be deliberate about evangelism. Decide to go and reach someone. Then actually go and do it.

3) Have all your equipment ready. iphone cued, ready, and fully charged, volume settings right, follow up booklets in your pocket etc.

4) Ask good questions at the end. Often this “post presentation” interview can reveal some amazing things about people and how  God is working, which in turns will help us help them on their journey. For example, right at the end, RC told me he thought all religions led to the same God i.e. universalism. We talked about this and I was able to clarify for him that Jesus was the one and only true God and that no one could get to God except through Jesus (John 14:6).

To read more about how this banner and the ideas behind it can get your church fizzing, click here.

To make the picture larger, just click here.

What the investment? $475 plus p&p.

Click here to go straight to our Facebook page then click the “like” button at the top.

Thanks a million.

For example, if people are lonely, offer friendship; if hungry, food; if hopeless, give hope; if sick, offer healing, etc.

The thought this person was conveying to me was that evangelism (i.e. proclaiming the gospel to someone) didn’t scratch where people itch because people were not looking for God or desiring Him.

He told me that the most effective way to win the lost was to discover their felt need and meet that need.

What should we make of this? There is truth and error here, which is always how darkness tries to infiltrate the Church. The devil includes just enough truth to ensure we swallow the error.

The truth is we ought to meet the physical and emotional needs of people.  To do so is critically important in the process of drawing non-Christians to Christ.  To meet their needs is to love people in a practical way.

To meet their felt need is to plough the soil of their heart to make it ready to receive the seed of the gospel.

Jesus talked a lot about the importance of this. e.g. Matthew 25:41-45.  When we do this, we certainly scratch where people itch.

(Don’t forget though – many non-Christians and secular agencies want to (and are) meeting the felt needs of people.  Doing good works does not distinguish us from everyone else. Hold onto this point. I am going to refer to it later.)

Unfortunately, there are several errors in Joe’s argument.

First, meeting someone’s felt need doesn’t communicate the basic content of the gospel which is:

• Why we must be saved
• How Jesus can save us
• What we must do to be saved
• The cost of being a disciple

Second, engaging in social action without giving the gospel message inevitably leads people wondering who we are and why we are doing what we are doing. Don’t forget, every other religious group in the world engages in good works. How will non-Christians know were are not one of the others?

Third, not proclaiming the gospel as we go about doing good can and does give non-Christians a false impression of Christianity. They come to see us as simply ‘do gooders’.

Next they reason “Well, I do good so I must already be a Christian. I don’t need to go to church to do good so I won’t waste Sunday mornings going there. When I die I will go to heaven because I have been doing good all my life.” And so on and so on.

Fourth, it is a grave error to think that people are not looking for God.  In my experience, they all are. Deep down, everyone on the planet, either consciously or sub-conciously is seeking God.

This is because God has made people with eternity in their hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  Furthermore, through conscience and creation, God is constantly speaking to people (Romans 1:20).

Yes, some people are anti God but usually this is because of bad experiences with the church or Christianity or they have been conditioned through the media to think as such.

Atheists like Christopher Hitchens (right) and Richard Dawkins are fighting what deep down inside them they know to be true : there is a God.

There is yet another flaw in Joe’s argument.

If we insist on focussing on meeting people’s felt needs through good works, we can quickly forget their spiritual need. This is their greatest need.

Ultimately, according to Jesus, meeting a person’s spiritual need (i.e. their need to be reconciled to Jesus through repentance and faith) is much more important than meeting the physical or  emotional needs.

For example, he said that if we lose our soul we’ve lost something more valuable than the value of the whole world (Mark 8:36).

He said that if something causes is us to sin, chop it off, for in retaining the cause, we might forfeit eternal life (Mark 9:47).

What’s really interesting is that a certain percentage of non-Christians (say 20%) know they have a spiritual need. They are consciously thinking about it a lot.

As I have been out giving the gospel to non-christians over the last 25 years, reaching now thousands one-on-one, I am literally amazing how people have an in-built understanding of heaven and hell, and of the existence of God.

Here’s the thing though. For the majority of non-Christians, their need for God is sub-conscious. It’s there deep within them, but they are not thinking about it all the time. If you like, it’s dormant.

Therefore, it needs to be brought from the sub-consious to the conscious. It needs to be awakened.

How does this happen? God works through the gospel message to do this. This message was designed by God to do this. When non-Christians hear this message, they start to itch for God. In other words, we need to create the itch.

This is a bit like bringing a sunken ship to the surface.

Sure, the bible says of the lost they are ‘dead in their trespasses and sins’(Ephesians 2:1).

Through the gospel, He “calls up” their need for Himself from their sub-conscious to their conscious minds, like He called Lazarus up from the dead.

The Holy Spirit scratches the itch to bring people to faith.  Often conversion doesn’t happen immediately.  But when we proclaim the gospel, and the person listening understands it conceptually, their journey towards salvation is put on turbo.

People who share the gospel are God’s itch creators. This is essentially what the Great Commission is all about.

It’s about the whole Church going into the world and creating an itch for Jesus in everyone they meet.

God has formulated the gospel in such a way that it creates an almighty itch (Romans 1:16).

And where do people with an almighty itch run? Straight to the doctor for a remedy. You get the idea.

The bottom line is this – if we only meet the intellectual, physical and emotional needs of people, and they end in hell, then really, what’s the point?

Ultimately, we will have failed (Luke 19:10).  Jesus didn’t come just to seek the lost.

He specifically said He came to seek them for a purpose – to save them.

This is what separates us from all the non-Christian agencies who are running around doing charity work and good works.  They couldn’t care a toss about reconciling men to God.

This is why to evangelise the earth is the priority of the Church.  No one else on the planet but us has any desire or interest in creating this itch.

To put it another way, non-Christians want to feel the itch, and we need to be the ones creating it.

Please think about this. It’s a crucial truth.

How much of our time, and the time of our church, is dedicated to:

• funding
• promoting
• walking in
• preaching about
• exercising this great truth?

When was the last time to went to a non-Christian to create in a non-Christian an almighty itch for Jesus through proclaiming the gospel?

Application: Find out what the message of the gospel is, learn how to communicate it, and make a start.  The people in whom you create the itch will be eternally grateful for the love and care you showed them.

And most important of all, you’ll put an almighty smile on the face of Jesus.

Now there’s a challenge……

It was so easy to turn the conversation onto spiritual things and hand them a biblein11.com card.

I said “How’s your day going?” as they processed our baggage and we chatted in reply.

Then I said “I am going to Wellington to work with a church. Have you guys had any church background?”

He said yes, she no.

“Let me ask you a question. What’s the best selling book in the world?”

They didn’t know.

I explained that it was the bible and that we’d made a 11 minute video which summarised its message.

She said “Wow. This is a sign! My mum has been wanting me to read the Koran! But I wanted to find out about Christianity and have been wondering what the difference is. This is an answer to my prayers.”

He didn’t say much because he already attends church.

I gave each of them a www.biblein11.com card.

The Lesson? Learn how to gently turn the conversation onto spiritual things and have your www.biblein11.com cards ready.

The guy in front of me at check out was asked by the teller if he had a ‘One Card’.  If you have one of these loyalty cards, the supermarket gives a small discount on purchases.

He replied he didn’t have one.

I was listening to the conversation so I said ‘Do you want to use my one?’

His eyes lit up and jumped at the idea.

I saved him 70 cents. Whoopee!

He was happy. Smiling, he thanked me. I knew what I had done was ploughed his heart with a good work.

Perfect!

Then I went to give him a www.biblein11.com card in my wallet…but there was none there! Grrrrrrr……

What a waste of a great opportunity.

What’s the lesson? Be prepared!

I have since filled up my wallet again with cards ready for these spontaneous opportunities to further the Great Commission.

1 Peter 3:15 says ‘Be ready….’

HOW GOD DREW US TOGETHER

We have been close friends since first grade but drifted a part over the years while raising our families and living in different states.

Kristi currently resides in Birmingham, Alabama where she is a cardiac nurse at UAB Hospital, wife and mother of two teenage children.

Nena currently resides in Charleston, SC with her husband and is Discipleship Coordinator at Church of Our Saviour on Johns Island.

God reunited us in December 2010 to combine efforts in bringing people to Christ.

We are on a passionate pursuit to fulfill God’s mighty and specific ministry calling on our lives.

This ministry calling involves leading people to Christ who are following two unique but surprisingly popular belief systems.

1).  BELIEF ONE: “The Law of Attraction” which is promoted by the book The Secret

2).  BELIEF TWO:  The number 11, which is seen by millions of New Age people around the world as hugely spiritually significant.

NENA’S MINISTRY:

Nena received her ministry calling in 2009 when she was a banking technology executive in Columbus, Ohio.

She had strayed from God and was struggling through the economic crisis.

She read the book, The Secret, and sensed God strongly speaking to her that millions of people were following the teachings in this book and the Law of Attraction as a quick answer to life’s questions, instead of looking to Christ as their answer.

She turned her life back over to Christ after this revelation and wrote a book, Toes in the Sand, that tells the story of what God taught her about having faith in Him instead of the Law of Attraction.

God has called Nena into a ministry to reach Law of Attraction followers and point them to Christ, the true ANSWER.

She has been astonished at how many people are living their lives believing that they have all the power to bring everything to themselves without God’s help.

These people are putting all their desires (houses, cars, money, relationships, etc) out to the Universe and having faith that the Universe will simply bring their desires to them.

KRISTI’S MINISTRY:

Kristi received her ministry calling in 2010 while listening to Mac Powell (left) singing, Salvation is Calling.

This occurred moments after her grandfather passed away, concluding a three-year season of ‘end of life’ care giving to her father, grandmother and grandfather.

During this season the Lord touched her life through, of all things, the number eleven.

• God’s first touch - Kristi and her husband helped a couple restore their shambled marriage, a marriage marred by much heartache, even suicide attempts. The turning point in the restoration of the marriage came at exactly 11:11 pm one night.
• Kristi’s atheist father accepted Christ 11 days before he died from cancer. He died on 4/11/08
• Kristi and her husband received a large monetary gift (an amount that exactly covered all their debt) 11 days after bringing their full tithes into the storehouse.
• Kristi randomly texted Nena on her time zone at 11:11 twice on 1/22/11 – the day that Nena first spoke publicly about her Law of Attraction ministry and also Kristi’s father’s birthday.
• Kristi’s daughter, Brianna, saw 11:11 while pouring out her heart to God about a classmate who collapsed due to bleeding on the brain and was fighting for his life.
• God has directed Kristi at numerous key moments to sermons and devotions on Hebrews 11. This chapter is known as the ‘Faith Hall of Fame’ Chapter in the Bible and is a key part of Nena’s ministry.

She could not understand why this number was so prevalent in her walk with Christ and prayed diligently that God would reveal it’s purpose.

In 2011, while researching Biblical references to the number eleven she amazingly discovered there were millions of people looking to the number eleven for guidance in life.

Unlike the Law of Attraction followers these people had more questions than answers but had drawn bizarre conclusions to the significance of the number eleven.

God has called Kristi into a ministry to reach the number eleven followers and point them to Christ, the true ANSWER.

Unbeknownst to Kristi, in November 2011 Nena heard God speaking that she was supposed to join in ministry with one of several Christian women in her life.

A few weeks later Kristi had the most impactful experience with the number eleven to date that involved watching a documentary called I Am.

This experience actually connected the number eleven to the Law of Attraction, thereby revealing to her that our ministries were joined.

We also know you are connected to what God is calling us to do to reach these millions of people that are so lost and confused.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD IS TRULY AMAZING!

We had been praying for God to show us how to deliver Jesus to these followers as the answer to all of life’s questions.

A YouTube video that lasts eleven minutes was something we felt God nudging us to produce.

On the morning of February 2, 2012 we prayed together for God to show us if this eleven-minute video was truly what he wanted us to do.

Later that day Nena went to a local meeting in Charleston, SC to meet Julian Batchelor, an evangelist from New Zealand and learn more about his ministry.

During this meeting Julian handed everyone a small card that had the URL address for a YouTube video he had produced to share the Gospel.

The URL address was www.Biblein11.com. Underneath the URL address it said, “The whole Bible summarized in 11 minutes”. Nena almost fell off her chair.

Praise God! God had delivered His ‘left hook’ through Julian, an Evangelist from New Zealand, 8332 miles away from Charleston, SC and answered a question Kristi had been asking Him for five years!

“How does the number eleven tie to Christ in a way that cannot be debated?”

God, who created this Universe, had answered in a dramatic fashion!! We are now carrying our own specially designed www.Biblein11.com cards so we can share the Gospel with whomever God puts in our path.

On the other side of the cards we have written “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places?”, because we believe that the followers of the number eleven and the Law of Attraction are basically trying to find love that can only be found at the foot of the cross.

God is up to something extraordinary…that we know! We are impressed that the ‘something’ involves Julian and Evangelism Strategies International.

So, was this meeting on February 2 2012 a miracle? You know the answer….

Kristi Smith

klsmithhoover@bellsouth.net

(205) 541-5647

Nena Jackson

nenawjackson@gmail.com

(843) 693-4989

Our Vision

We believe we are called to

Reveal the glory of God’s Kingdom

This vision is based on a conviction that God’s purpose, in and through Jesus, is to restore His entire creation to its original glorious perfection, where His reign is universally accepted and acknowledged. The mission of His people is to demonstrate here and now what that looks like helping others see and experience and marvel at what God’s reign, God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, is like.

Expressed more fully

Our vision is to reveal the Kingdom of God on earth – to be a safe “sanctuary”, welcoming all people, and providing nurture and training, so that we are becoming courageous people who are making a Kingdom difference in our homes and neighbourhoods, in schools, universities, workplaces, businesses, clubs, community organisations, local and national government, and at the margins of society bringing the transforming blessing, beauty and life of the Kingdom of God to these settings.

Believe it or not, this kind of “vision” is appearing increasingly frequently on church web sites in New Zealand.

I have enormous problems with it.

First up, can anyone please tell me what any of this vision actually means? What would all this actually look like? I read this vision over and over and each time I became more perplexed and asked more questions. For example:

1. Can secular sports clubs, pubs and associations provide all that is promised here – training, a haven, a sanctuary etc? Answer: yes. Non-Christians go to these places / join these clubs for these reasons. They are a safe place. They are havens. What’s more, they are a lot of fun.  I come from a non-Christain background. I was saved at 22. Prior to my conversion I would go to the pub, have a few drinks, get ‘oiled’ and start sharing my deepest thoughts and feelings with others.  We laughed, we were transparent, we were brutally honest, and there was an atmosphere of acceptance and love, even if all of this was stimulated by the effects of alcohol.   My point is this – what this church wants to provide for people is already being provided by many non-Christians.  One doesn’t need to be a christian to provide training, a haven, a sanctuary etc.
2. What does “The mission of His people is to demonstrate here and now what that looks like helping others” mean? Again, many non-Christians actually outshine Christians when it comes to kindness, love, and good works. Again, one doesn’t need God in the mix to demonstrate all this. There are literally thousands of secular organisations which are going about doing good. So what makes the good these organisations are doing any different from the good this church wants it’s people to demonstrate? I could see no difference at all.
3. This church wants to demonstrate the Kingdom of God. What does the Kingdom of God look like? William Barclay would say that anywhere God’s will is being done and God is being glorified, here the Kingdom is. The key to this is the glory of God. When non-Christians do good, no glory is going to God because their motivation is not so.  When Christians do good, our prayer is that those watching or on the other end of the good work connect the goodness not with us, but with Jesus Christ, otherwise we get the glory.  Where in this church vision is there any mention of wanting to glorify Jesus Christ?  Any church vision statement which doesn’t say ‘We exist to glorify Jesus Christ’ is missing the mark. Furthermore, it’s a great mistake to think we can glorify Jesus without saying anything. For example, if such a such a church does good works, and doesn’t use words to connect the good works to Jesus Christ, those looking on might think we are good atheists, buddhists, hindus or whatever.  The greatest and surest way of connecting our good works with Jesus Christ is to proclaim the gospel as we go. This has always been what God intended to happen.  Research shows 98% of the modern church has dropped the words. Hence, non-christians see us as just a bunch of do gooders on a par with any other secular do good organisation. Then they reason ‘if being a Christian is just about doing good, I must already be one because I am doing lots of good to people all the time.’   It’s easy to see how disastrous it is to disconnect gospel proclamation from good works.
4. This leads to other crucial questions. Where is the Cross in this church vision?  Why did Jesus die on the cross? The answer? It was to make a way for human beings to be reconciled to God, not for the physical world to be redeemed. Greenpeace and a myriad of other secular organisations are trying to preserve the earth, and we applaud this. But to bring the earth back to it’s to “its original glorious perfection?”  Really? Does this mean “back to the garden of Eden pre-fall?”  You mean no more pests, thorns, diseases, pain in child birth etc – all the curses of the fall reversed? Impossible outside of the Second Coming of Christ and the new earth. Conclusion? This church vision statement is at this point giving people a vision for the sheer impossible, the ridiculous.  What’s the point of that?
5. What on earth is the church doing trying to compete with people like Greenpeace?  Why are we drifting from the one thing that the church was commissioned and commanded to do that NO ONE ELSE  does?  Our core business ought to focus upon only what we can do, surely? And what is this? It’s the evangelisation of the world i.e. making sure every person on the earth hears the gospel message clearly and it’s delivered with love and grace.  John 3:16 summarises the gospel message beautifully. Here’s the point – we in the church can do all the good in the world and demonstrate this that and the other thing and in the end the people looking on will be cast into hell at the end of life if they are not reconciled to God. Or is this church who wrote the vision statement thinking that if they can be incredibly nice people, abounding in good works, non-Christians will become so interested they will want to reconcile to God? Is this what is meant by “where His reign is universally accepted and acknowledged?”. There is no record of the 5000 giving their lives to Christ after that miracle. By contrast 3000 were saved when Peter preached the gospel in Acts 2. What’s the point? Unless people are confronted with their sin through the power of the Holy Spirit they will never desire God. God works through the gospel message (Romans 1:16) to do this. Conclusion? This church vision statement is unwittingly leading people AWAY from the Great Commission. This is a serious charge, given that the whole crux of the Christian life is ultimately about obedience to this commission.
6. What does “Reveal the glory of God’s Kingdom” actually mean? Where will it be revealed? What would it look like? What would be the point of this revelation? Does it mean that the Christians from this church will glow when they walk down the street? That the church will be glowing as people drive by? Or does it mean that when people go to a church service in this church they will experience the presence and power of God? I can see the latter happening, but how are we going to get all the non-Christians into the church service in the first place? And even if they do make it to church, what’s the point of the experience?  Is it not to lead to the cross, and then to personal salvation? Where is ‘the point’ mentioned in the vision of this church? You’d have to conclude there is not one.
7. Finally, I agree that we need to demonstrate the love and compassion of God, look after the earth, provide havens, sanctuaries etc etc. But biblically, these are peripheral. They are not the main thing. They miss the central point of the mission of Christianity – the bull’s eye.  Jesus came to earth to reconcile man to God  - to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).  And the chief instrument given to the church to do this is the gospel message. The mission of the Church therefore is to evangelise the world. No one else on the face of the earth can do this work or has the remotest desire to. To the lost this work is foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18).

Having said all this, we dare not minimise the place of good works, social action, and being people who carry the presence of God. These things are absolutely vital in the process of drawing non-Christians to God. To watch a short video about this process, please click here.

My final questions to you are these – are the people who wrote the vision statement of this church themselves lost? Is this a case of the blind leading the blind? When the message of the cross and reconciling men to God becomes foolishness to people inside Church (and by the absence of any mention of this in their vision statement, surely this is what is being conveyed), what does this say about the people who formulated it?  You know the answer…(hence the title of this blog)

I truly feel sorry for the people in this church which has this vision statement. They are working, tithing, giving, serving etc – and all for what? To chase a rainbow? The vision statement is loaded with ideas, phrases and concepts which are hard to imagine, let alone justify biblically. As such, it is fuzzy and vague in the extreme. In fact, this vision statement is SO fuzzy, it’s virtually meaningless.The final vision Jesus gave His disciples was, by contrast, so clear – since called the Great Commission.

P.S If the cornerstone of the vision of this church is to demonstrate “God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven” then what’s the will of God? Answer: It’s His commands, as found in the bible. Can these commands be placed in a hierarchy? Answer: Yes. What’s the priority? Answer: the evangelisation of the world. What does evangelisation mean? Answer: that every person on the face of the earth hears and understands a clear gospel message.  Who says this is the priority? Answer: click here to find out.

P.P.S. Watchman Nee said this:  ”Christ is the Son of God. He died to atone for men’s sin, and after three days rose again. This is the most important fact in the universe. I die believing in Christ.” –Watchman Nee, (note found under his pillow, in prison, at his death).

The further any church moves from the Cross, the deeper into the jungle of the lost it moves.

The following email arrived today. What’s the lesson here? If we plan to evangelise, we will.

If we don’t, we won’t.

Many people would have missed these opportunities, but Maryna “saw” them, even created them, because she had prepared her heart to create them before she left home.

This is the secret.

Heart preparation, and definite intention. Daily.

This is something Jesus modeled so beautifully. God bless you Maryna. You set out on your day like Jesus set out from Heaven. You are a shining example for us all my friend!

___________________________________________________________________________________________

“Before I left home this morning I prayed over the stack of bible in 11.com evangelism cards I took with me and I asked the Lord to give me the opportunities and people to give them to.

First of all my handbag’s buckle got stuck between the seats of the bus and I had to ask the driver to wait for me to get off, and the lady who waited with me was the one, we got off and laughed together and she said the zip of my bag is still open, I said, yes, and there are some very important things in here too, here, this one is a gift to you.

As I was sitting on the free shuttle after that reading my Kindle the maori man behind me said, excuse me, is that a book you are reading?

I said yes, you can download 9000 books on this thing, and then I gave him a card as a gift. “Thank you ma’m”  he said, as he got off the bus.

Two heaven sent moments.

O how faithful our Lord is!

Love

Maryna”