Part of our vision is equipping churches to do the work of evangelism.
Here in Panama, there is a mission institute that is focused on helping churches move from an attraction only methodology (based on personal invitation to church and member retention work) to a missional focus of both local community service AND global missions.
PAAM (Panama Alcanzado Al Mundo – Panama reaching the world) has developed a fixed course of study. Churches send members to the school where they learn through several Saturday seminars and other conferences when they become available.
On this given Saturday, I had about 10 students from many different churches.
Part of the missional work of the church is to share our faith while we are serving the community.
Historically, this is where many churches have missed the mark. Either the church is not serving the community, or it IS serving the community but not proclaiming their faith. They are just another social service group no different than other non-profits.
I taught a Saturday seminar on personal evangelism while serving the commnunity, stressing
- The personal journey to faith
- God’s sovereignty over this process
- How to recognize the prompting of the Holy Spirit
- How this can be used in various different models of evangliesm.
The class lasted about 4 hours.
The comments I received all indicated to me that while some of my concepts were not new (like the process of relationship evangelism), how they applied to the missional work of the church was new.
Join us in prayer that this will lead to follow up workshops next year.
(There are no photos of the class. . . )
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