A Summer of Evangelism
What is your summer going to be of?
Is it going to be a summer of video games? Or perhaps a summer of hanging with friends? I guess it could be a summer of video games, movies, hanging with friends, service projects, missions trips, camps, shopping, sleeping, snacking and/or reading.
I want to challenge you to have a summer of evangelism.
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When I was in middle school my friend Art and I decided we were going to have this kind of summer. Because we both went to the same Christian school, other than our neighborhood friends, we didn’t have a lot of unreached teens to reach. So we decided to focus on The Westminster Mall. We went there day after day and engaged the teenagers we met there in conversation. If they weren’t open to talk we would wish them a nice day. If they were open to talk (which most of them were) we shared the gospel with them in the clearest way we knew how.
Now “cold turkey” is not the best way to make disciples who make disciples (check out my article “Does Street Evangelism Really Work?“) But amidst all the cold turkey we had some pretty warm conversations with tons of needy teenagers. Some teens trusted in Jesus. Some did not. Others were nudged down the journey toward Jesus a bit. Who knows how many of those teenagers ended up plugged into a church later on?
God does!
All I know is that our “summer of evangelism” turned into “summers of evangelism” all the way through our high school years. Art, I and a growing group of Christian friends used our summers to advance the message of the gospel in tons of ways. We went door to door, held carnivals, had pick-up games of basketball, anything and everything to engage others with the good news of Jesus.
Here’s the deal, a third of a century later, there are more relational ways of being relentless about the gospel than mall crashing or going door-to-door. You can text your classmates. You can engage them online. You can use Skype to have a virtual “face-to-face” conversation. You can do service projects together and share the gospel along the way.
But, however you choose to live out your summer of evangelism, choose to do it in a relational and relentless way. Speak the truth in love to friends and strangers alike. And get a group of friends to go on this quest with you.
Don’t waste your summer. Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste the opportunities God will put in front of you every single day this summer.
I dare you to make this summer a summer of evangelism. Who will join me?
