It was February 15, 1921 in New York City. The operating room of the Kane Summit Hospital. A doctor is performing an appendectomy. In many ways the events leading to the surgery are uneventful. The patient has complained of severe abdominal pain. The diagnosis is clear: an inflamed appendix.
Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane is performing the surgery. In his distinguished thirty-seven-year medical career, he has performed nearly four thousand appendectomies, so this surgery will be uneventful in all ways except two. The first novelty of this operation? The use of local anaesthesia in major surgery.
Dr. Kane is a crusader against the hazards of general anaesthesia. He contends that a local application is far safer. Many of his colleagues agree with him in principle, but in order for them to agree in practice, they will have to see the theory applied. Dr. Kane searches for a volunteer, a patient who is willing to undergo surgery while under local anaesthesia. A volunteer is not easily found. Many are squeamish at the thought of being awake during their own surgery. Others are fearful that the anaesthesia might wear off too soon.
Eventually, however, Dr. Kane finds a candidate. On Tuesday morning, February 15, the historic operation occurs. The patient is prepped and wheeled into the operating room. A local anaesthetic is applied. As he has done thousands of times, Dr. Kane dissects the superficial tissues and locates the appendix. He skilfully excises it and concludes the surgery. During the procedure, the patient complains of only minor discomfort. The volunteer is taken into post-op, and then placed in a hospital ward. He recovers quickly and is dismissed two days later. Dr. Kane had proven his theory. Thanks to the willingness of a brave volunteer, Kane demonstrated that local anaesthesia was a viable, and even preferable, alternative.
But I said there were two facts that made the surgery unique. I’ve told you the first: the use of local anaesthesia. The second is the patient. The courageous candidate for surgery by Dr. Kane was Dr. Kane. To prove his point, Dr. Kane operated on himself! A wise move. The doctor became a patient in order to convince the patients to trust the doctor. Now that’s commitment! This doctor was so committed to his work and his theory that he was willing to put himself on the operating table to prove it. We need to have that same kind of commitment as Christians when it comes to reaching our lost peers for Christ. We need to have a “whatever it takes” mentality.
This morning we come to the final part of our series titled “The Great Adventure: Reaching our lost peers for Christ.” We have already looked at the call, the challenge and the conditions. This morning we come to the commitment. My goal this morning is that we will commit ourselves to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle. In order to accomplish this goal we will be looking at three commitments that we need to make in order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle.
First, in order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle we must commit to making new relationships with our unbelieving peers. We need to build bridges of friendship with spiritually lost peers by prioritizing time to spend with them. We see this in the life of Jesus. Jesus was known as a friend of sinners. Jesus interacted with the spiritually lost so frequently that He was mistakenly accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. Matthew 11:19 says,
“The Son of Man, on the other hand, feasts and drinks, and you say, ‘He’s a glutton and a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and other sinners!’ But wisdom is shown to be right by its results.”
Here’s a tragic truth – the typical Christ-follower, after having known Christ for three years, has no spiritually lost friends.
Jesus strategy for identifying spiritually lost peers is this – open your eyes! In John 4:35 Jesus said,
“You know the saying, ‘Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest.”
There are spiritually lost people who cross the natural path of our lives everyday.
Here are some ways that we make choices, almost daily, as to whether or not we’re going to initiate contacts with the spiritually starved:
- We can choose to hang around a few extra moments and talk with the cashier at the mall or we can dash on to the next item on our “to do” list.
- We can stop and talk to a neighbour we see washing their car or we can stroll on by.
How many times do we rush past opportunities to build relational bridges with the spiritually lost that cross our path?
On a regular basis, we’ve got to leave the huddle of close Christian fellowship, take some risks, and get to know some unchurched people. This will mean reaching out in the neighbourhood, inviting neighbours over for dinner, golfing with people who are outside of the family of God, spending lunch hours at work with people who don’t know Christ. We’ve got to build relational bridges over to these people. When we do, their defence mechanisms will relax a bit, and matters of the heart can be discussed.
I don’t know about you, but when strangers approach me, my walls go up. I say, “What’s your angle? What do you want? What are you trying to sell me?” But when a friend wants to talk to me about something that’s important, my walls go down, and I say, “Talk to me.” I’m open to it, because I know and trust them. When we look through the pages of Scripture, we see this in the life of Jesus. He notices a seeker named Zacchaeus sitting in a tree, and they arrange a dinner get-together. It’s in the context of a relationship, after Jesus has dinner with Zacchaeus and establishes rapport with him, that He brings transformational truth his way, and life change happens.
I want you to think about this for a moment: do you have three unchurched people in your life with whom you are trying to establish rapport right now? When was the last time you built a fresh relationship with a non-churched person? If you are having troubles answering those questions don’t get discouraged. What you need to do is commit yourself right now to building relationships with spiritually lost people. It might mean that you need to rearrange your schedule so that this is possible. So, in order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle we need to commit to building new relationships with our unbelieving peers.
Secondly, in order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle we need to commit to sharing a verbal witness with our spiritually lost peers. After we have built a relationship we need to share a verbal witness. As we discuss this section we must first understand a few things. We must first understand our job in evangelism and God’s job in evangelism. Our job in the reaping process of evangelism is: (1) To clearly and concisely share the message of the Gospel and (2) To call people to respond to that message. God’s job in the reaping process of evangelism is: (1) To convict the spiritually lost of sin and convince them of their need for right living and (2) To draw the spiritually lost to Himself. This “partnership with God” calls for bold proclamation with prayerful dependence John 15:5 reminds us that apart from God we can do nothing. Now that we understand God’s job and our job let’s now turn our attention to how do we start a conversation about the gospel.
Let’s look at some biblical examples:
- In John 4:3-10 we see that Jesus began His gospel presentation to the women at the well with some casual conversation – He asked for some water.
- In Acts 8:30-35 we see the “evangelist” Philip begin his conversation about the gospel by asking a question – He asked if the Ethiopian eunuch if he understood what he was reading.
- In Acts 17:22-31 we see the Apostle Paul observing the internal questions of the “Men of Athens” were asking.
In all these situations we see that they went from the known to the unknown. So to start a spiritual conversation we need to start with creative initiation. We initiate a Gospel presentation by asking or answering a question that relates to the significance of the Gospel. We need to ask “conversation opening” questions like: “Do you think that it is possible to know God personally?” or “Have you ever attended church?” or “Where do you think people go when they die?” In order to answer the questions people are asking internally takes creative observation Jesus is the answer! . . . What are the questions?
The purpose of planting a seed of truth is to surface our spiritually lost peer’s need for knowing God personally through a relationship with Christ. Most of us are not sure how to turn an everyday conversation toward spiritual topics in a natural way. Here is an everyday example of how you can begin to speak the truth about your relationship with God in a very natural way. In this example we see the need to move from playing it safe to planting a seed.
If your lost peer has verbalized doubts about their self-worth and confidence, you can plant a seed by saying, “I get down on myself sometimes, too, but you know what? A while back I found out something that changed my whole attitude about myself. If you want to hear about it sometime, I’d be glad to talk to you about it.”
When we share a verbal witness we need to be prepared for questions about our relationship with God. We should have our testimony thought out so that it can be given in a simplified manner. We should have a gospel presentation memorized so that we can give it clearly and effectively. 1 Peter 3:15-16 tells us that we should always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have and we are to do that with gentleness and respect. So, in order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle we need to commit to sharing a verbal witness with our spiritually lost peers.
Finally, in order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle we need to commit to inviting friends to outreach events. When we follow a strategy that combines individual efforts with well-executed outreach events, we’ll see powerful results. For example, Billy Graham crusades work best when churches teach and practice the principles presented in their “Operation Andrew” training, which emphasizes relationships and personal communication of the gospel to friends The North American Ministries director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Sterling Huston, wrote in his book “Crusade Evangelism and the local church” that
“effective evangelism is built on relationships . . . One person who has found new life, meaning, and forgiveness through an encounter with Jesus Christ is motivated by love to bring another to experience that same relationship with the Saviour . . . This is what must happen in all evangelism methods, from person to person to city-wide Crusades.”
The Billy Graham crusade team knows there must be a marriage between relational evangelism and high-quality outreach events in order to have maximum impact.
In John 4 we see Jesus using this combination. The woman at that well, having talked to Jesus, ran up to her town in Samaria and declared to her friends that she had met the Messiah. She explained to them how he had supernatural insights into her life and had told her of everything she had done. It’s not surprising that this kind of testimony – especially from someone with a colourful background like hers – had a huge impact. In fact, verse 39 tells us that many people from that town believed because of her words. The townspeople appreciated the women’s invitation to come and hear Jesus for themselves. They went to the well and listened to what he had to say.
The combination of their friendship with this woman (step 1: relationship), her verbal witness (step 2), and this experience of a larger “outreach event” (step 3) hearing Jesus talk to the whole group down by the well resulted in even more of them coming to faith. John 4:42 reports that the people later told the woman,
“Now we believe, not just because of what you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves. Now we know that he is indeed the Saviour of the world.””
Starting sometime in January, we will be doing “Christianity Explored” again. This video series is designed for us to invite our spiritually lost peers to. This video series is a great non-threatening way to expose our lost friends to Christ. As a church we need to be planning regular quality outreach events that we can bring our lost friends to so that they can be exposed to Christ’s love. Another great opportunity that is coming up is our Christmas Eve service. This is an excellent chance to expose people to Jesus! In order to make reaching our lost peers for Christ a lifestyle we need to commit ourselves to making new relationships, to sharing a verbal witness with them and to inviting them to outreach events.
I want to conclude with some final thoughts on our series:
- First, as followers of Christ we have been called to reach the lost for Christ and specifically the people who naturally cross our path. This is our mandate and our purpose.
- Second, we need to take to heart the truth that people matter to God and because of this they should matter to us. Truth be told, evangelism often fails because in our innermost being we don’t really care much about people who are outside of God’s family. We see them as a nuisance, a bad influence, or even as the enemy. We need to let God change our minds and warm our hearts toward those He loves so much.
- Three, we need to be praying for our spiritually lost peers. Remember 3 people for 1 minute every day and then we trust God with the results.
- Fourth, we also need to be light to those around us. We need to be reflecting Christ in all that we do.
- Finally, in order to do all this it is going to take commitment. Without commitment we will not follow through on doing anything that we talked about this last number of weeks.
As we leave from here this morning, let’s commit ourselves to reaching our lost peers for Christ.
