One means of outreach that we have begun to try is going door-to-door. The church has tried some of this in the past, and, like virtually all door-to-door ministry with which I have ever been involved, it has met with limited visible success. But, as uncreative and uncomfortable as it can be, it still is a decent way to at least make some kind of contact with every home in your area. We've done it twice now on Saturday mornings. The first time out, we reached our chosen neighborhood only to discover that it was swarming with Watchtower people (“Jehovah's Witnesses” is somewhat of a misnomer in my opinion). Honestly, my first reaction was to fear that the whole town was going to lump us in with the “JW's”, and I should have know this was going to happen, and going door-to-door is just a bad idea, and people are going to hate us now even before we can talk to them, etc. But we tried a different neighborhood and made a couple decent contacts. This past Saturday we tried another neighborhood and found an even better reception with people – not necessarily a warm reception – but at least a couple of folks that I think would be open to us returning. And, not to be mercenary or callously opportunistic, but we did learn of one family on the street in which there had been death just hours earlier, and we plan to bring flowers and a card by later this week.
Now, I mentioned providence in the title of this post because we are learning (or maybe re-learning) about the importance of the sovereignty of God in gospel outreach. No method – be it sophisticated or simplistic, brand new or old fashioned – will be effective apart from God orchestrating things for a gracious result. I've been harping lately on the importance of patiently building relationships naturally with people for the sake of the gospel – somewhat the opposite method to something like door-to-door – but you can't manipulate relationship-building either. God must work on our behalf both in our circumstances and in the hearts of our friends if there is to be a result. And so we're brought back around to the absolute necessity of prayer. WE MUST PRAY FOR THE PROGRESS OF THE GOSPEL.
31 March 2009
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