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.
