Relationships are the key to effective witnessing: sharing God stories.
However, sometimes, a spontaneous witnessing opportunity occurs: on an airplane, in a grocery store, at a restaurant, with the person sitting at the next table.
You don’t have to be an outgoing person to start a conversation. Just ask a question or make a comment and see if the person responds: “It’s really cold out there today!” If they are open to talk, they will!
Your primary “mission field” for witnessing is your social network: friends, relatives, neighbors, people where you work, or, those who are fellow students at school. After a while, these are no longer casual relationships but your primary mission field.
If you expand this thinking to your church’s primary mission field, it is not:
Five miles around your church.
Or
Your town
Or
This area of the city.
The primary, personal mission field of your church is: the sum total of unbelievers in the social networks of every person in your church, all added together!
So, if you are praying for witnesses to those who are most receptive to the God stories of those in your church:
- Develop a sociogram.
- Ask everyone to take an 8 ½ X 11² sheet of paper, turn it on its side.
- Draw a circle in the middle and put your name there.
- In the upper left, list your unchurched friends.
- In the lower left, list your unchurched relatives.
- In the upper right, list your neighbors, (including the bank teller or waiter you see regularly).
- In the lower right, list those at work or at school.
- Post this sheet on your bathroom mirror and pray for these people every day.
- Watch how God opens opportunities to share your God story!
If you would like to know more, you can also subscribe to my podcast on Apple Podcast and Google Play. We will expand on this theme further in our series beginning on March 6, 2018.
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