© St. James’ Church Westgate & Garlinge 2012    

In my conversations with people I noticed my points are as follows:

1. God does not want us to be ignorant of him.

2. We have distanced ourselves from him by ignoring him (sin).

3. Despite our sin, God loves us and sent Jesus to make reconciliation between us and God possible though his death on the cross.

4. Now God calls people everywhere to know Him.

5. We can be sure of all of this because God raised Jesus from the dead and appointed him judge of all humans.

This is not the complete gospel, but it does raise a few of the main points taken from Paul’ speeches in Lystra and Athens (Acts 14 and 17).  When he spoke to these groups of people he only mentioned a few aspects of the gospel and we can learn from this.  We don’t have to say it all to be doing evangelism.

Why not try and include some of these points in your conversations in the weeks ahead?  If you are like me you may find it hard to do the first few times but it does become easier and more natural the more you do it.

What is the Gospel?

What words should we use when we tell people the gospel?  What is the good news?

In the New Testament book of Acts we have a record of various gospel speeches.  One thing you will notice is that none of the speeches are the same.  Some things mentioned in one speech are missing from another.  

We can learn from this that when we do evangelism we don’t have to tell people every detail of the gospel only the bit that is relevant to the person you are speaking to at that moment.  In future conversations you can fill in the bits you may have left out.

What to pray for?

Friday Club:

We are about to take a long summer break but before then we 2 meetings to go.  This will conclude our first year with a Friday Club.  No doubt one of the most fascinating things about the group is that it is made up exclusively of young people whose families don’t come to our church.

Give thanks to God for these lovely children and for bringing them back week after week.  Ask that He will bring new life to all who come along to our Friday Club.

As we look to next year we may run another mid week Bible study group for a short period.

The Youth Service

We have run two of these so far and have one more planned on the 8th July before the school holidays.  The goal of this event is to give our young people a chance to grow in their faith and to use the gifts God has given them.  If this takes off we want to open it to all young people in our area.  

Next year we want to run probably 8 more of the services, we are yet to sit down and plan the details.

Please pray for the future of this event.

Go Group

Please pray for:

1. Our two year programme.

2. That the church family will understand our ethos, that we want people to invite friends, family members, and colleagues to it who are unsure of the Christian faith or who still need questions answered before putting their faith in Jesus.  

3. Pray that people will accept our personal invitations and come to our events.

4. Robin Oakes visit in November.  Pray that people will come and that people will be saved.

Over the next two years the Go group will be hosting a number of outreach events.

Our first event will be on Saturday 12th November when we host Robin Oake to be our speaker.  Details of the event will follow after our next meeting in July but the date is set.

The biggest challenge for Go group members, and for the church family as a whole is to fully understand that these events are organised to bring people to who are still asking questions about Jesus and people who are unsure of the Christian faith.

This means that if you plan to come to one of the events you must bring a person with you who needs to hear the gospel.