In what areas of your life is excellence most important to you? We had a presidential debate last week. How important is it to you that we have excellent governance?
Think about how all that impacts our lives on a practical level. How about your doctor. Do you want excellent healthcare, or someone who knows a bunch of good old wives tales. What about excellence in food preparation? Its one of those areas that it may not seem so bad until the food poisoning sets in. Certainly excellence in transportation is critically important. Our lives and the lives of our loved ones are in the hands of that pilot, bus driver, or in our own hands on the wheel. How about educators- we want to make sure we and our children are learning the facts. How about desiring excellent preaching? How important is it to you that the Bible is accurately presented and explained?
One area where excellence is often overlooked is in our evangelism. How important is it to us that we represent Christ well when we share the Gospel? And that the Gospel is clearly presented so that the hearer understands? This is a critically important task- perhaps the most important task we have on earth- to be used by the LORD to share about God’s rescue offer through Jesus Christ to save us from sin and grant eternal life. And yet, you’ve probably seen some pretty terrible Gospel presentations, and maybe even stumbled through some yourself.
Why do we so often lack excellence in evangelism? The general trend is to leave evangelism to the paid experts. But this is crazy because that’s like reducing the Christian evangelistic workforce by 99% right off the bat. There is a lot of fear in evangelism- of rejection, or loss of respect. There’s also the fear that if we do it poorly, we may push people away from Christ. I’d like to try to set aside these fears, and simply take a close look at a master evangelist this weekend: the Apostle Paul.
In Acts 17, Paul gives an infamous speech in front of the Areopagus, a group of the brightest and most influential minds in Athens in the 1st century. Unlike preaching in the Synagogues, as he so often did, here he was evangelizing to people who had no background knowledge of God’s Word. Yet he was able to connect the dots for these pagan philosophers so that some in influential positions became believers. How did he do that?
I invite you to join with us this weekend as we walk through Paul’s excellent evangelism in Athens. Our service Saturday is at 3:30 in the afternoon, and our Sunday morning service is at 10:15, where you can join us in person or online.