Christmas can be a disturbing holiday as the challenges of gift giving, card sending, and entertaining weigh heavily on our time, our minds, and our bank accounts. It’s easy to lose sight of the reason we Witnessing Made Easy: Yes, You Can Make a Difference xiii celebrate Christmas: to honor the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I find that if I’m not careful, my Bible reading time diminishes rather than increases just before Christmas, despite my desire to do the opposite. My only remedy has been to devote much of Christmas Day to reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Passing one jammed shopping mall after another during the fall of 2006, I began to wonder why no one ever thinks of giving a gift to God for Christmas. After all, the three magi had presented gifts to Jesus when He was born. Surely, we should continue to give gifts to Him. The more I thought about that omission, the more convinced I became that some people would welcome the idea of enrolling in the contest to lead more souls to the Lord as a Christmas gift to God. Having had some success in the past with putting out press releases, I took this route to share my idea in the usual way.
The response was muted. The secular press just didn’t seem very interested, and the Christian media hadn’t seemed to notice the release. After that disappointing result, I did a little online research and found that there were outlets for press releases that go solely to Christian Testimony media. I rewrote the earlier press release a little and sent it out via some of those services. I was pleased to find out that it was much less expensive to send out such a release solely to Christian media than to all media. The response was very encouraging this time. Many Christian news outlets briefly summarized the contest, and inquiries about the contest rapidly picked up. I was also interviewed for some printed articles and drive-time radio programs. Because of the long lead times involved with some of the stories, I decided to extend the end date for entries from January 31, 2007, to Easter 2007. That also seemed like a logical ending time for finishing a commitment made to God as a Christmas gift in 2006.
I was delighted to find that not only had the quantity of contest inquiries increased, but the quality of the most recent ideas provided some real eye-openers, as well. I was equally impressed that the ideas didn’t duplicate one another; people were finding vastly different, effective ways to reach those who didn’t know and accept Jesus. Preface xiv Not surprisingly, the tools of mass communication appealed to some. If you can televise programs around the world where no one is now seeing Christian messages, you can begin to create fertile furrows in unplowed fields. One report showed that by spending $110 in Kenya to televise an hour-long DVD, eleven people reported that they were saved and five others volunteered to work as Evangelism Tool. That apparently low cost per person contrasted with some e-mails I received that estimated a cost of more than $10,000 per person saved for some major evangelical events in the United States. Radio was also described as a possible answer. One man reported that he had found a way to establish Christian radio stations for less than 1 percent of the usual cost.
He had several stations operating in Canada and planned to expand to about a hundred more around the world. He reported that relatively few of his listeners had ever heard a Christian message before. One man wanted to tap into the tremendous flows of tourists who seek entertainment. His idea was to build a Christian-themed multimedia experience in Branson, Missouri, where believers could bring their friends to learn about God’s promises. But most people had the opposite feeling about employing mass media: They saw energizing the vast numbers of Christians as the best way to help lead more souls to Him. After all, if each Christian would speak to just a few non-Christians, the potential for Him to open unsaved hearts would be tremendous. As you can imagine, there are some amazing individual evangelists: They can walk up to anyone, quickly establish powerful rapport, and talk easily about becoming saved after just a few general sentences. Some of these people contacted me and shared their testimonies. One man even sent a book describing his methods. His approach was so well thought out that it could have been a role model for recruiting sergeants trying to find the next 100,000 U.S. Army troops. Gradually, I began to hear from people who had focused on taking insecure believers and turning them into effective witnesses. What was the lesson? Directing Christians to help lead more souls to Him is an ongoing educational task of the church that deserves to be part of Witnessing Made Easy: Yes, You Can Make a Difference xv every worship service. Yes, that’s right. People need to be reminded to share their faith during each service and to receive practical training in doing so. What’s the biggest hurdle to getting Christians to share their faith? Many Christians are delighted to be saved, but don’t feel like they have an obligation to help anyone else become saved. Without the desire to help the unsaved, there’s little benefit gained by instructing people in how to accomplish that task.
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