Out Into the World
Church is finished. Hopefully you are challenged by and engaged with God’s Word and ready to walk it out into the week. But the moment the service ends is not the moment to put your car keys in your hand - rather, it’s the moment to get to work.
Here’s five things to do after church that will help make church great and build the Kingdom.
Discuss God's word.
Many of us are uncomfortable starting up ‘spiritual’ conversations but if you get the ball rolling, others will pick it up. Asking “What did you think of the sermon?” will usually put people into a coma, but making a specific comment like “I don’t think I have thought much about ‘doing’ God’s Word recently; I have been going more with the vibe. How about you?”, may generate a fruitful conversation. This is particularly important with unbelievers who will see that church is life shaping and not just about the moment.
Pray with others.
Chat with others and find out their concerns and pray quietly with them. This may look a bit strange, but is a great expression of the reality that we love each other and trust God's providence.
Look for newcomers.
Newcomers tend to leave fairly quickly so we have to move fast by identifying the visitor and offering them conversation immediately the service ends. You may have to postpone catching your friends until after the newcomers have been cared for.
Stay late.
Once you realise that you come to church to work, you are always the last to leave because the opportunities to minister don't end until the last person leaves.
Prepare for mission.
As you have heard already this year, we are moving mission to be at the centre of our church calendar. We want to equip you, enthuse you, encourage you and enable you to take the life-transforming Gospel you hear in church out into the world. You can help with this by going back to point 1 and after church discussing with others how you might be able to take what you learnt in church and use that to start a conversation with a friend who is not yet a believer.
As Elliot has said this week, our key strategy for getting going in mission this term is to listen. That might not feel very missional but in my experience, you cannot share the Gospel well without knowing a little of the background and mindset of people. It is fascinating how often Jesus invites people into the Kingdom through the lens of their concerns about life but also, listening to people to just loving. More often lately I have also had the experience of finding that people will politely hear me out but reject everything about Jesus because of bad experiences with Christians.
Lovingly seeking some insight into a friend’s life is easy when you listen and gives you the best chance to nuance the gospel message in a way that engages with their skepticism and creates a trajectory for the conversation.
We want to help you do this so have prepared some questions for you to use to begin a conversation with a friend. You can ask them to fill it in or use the questions to start the conversation yourself and fill it out later.
The focus of the questions is the disruptive but clarifying experience of the last few years. We’ve all had to pause our weekly routines and rebuild our daily habits. Many of us have discovered that what we care about and what we spend our time doing don’t always match up. Many are working on closing the gap between what we love and what we do but we want to help use that moment to point to Jesus.
Find the questions and learn more
This little series is finished but the work has just started. I am praying for you—please do pray for me.
Amen!
