The Unlikely Evangelist

I'm very excited about Vision4Life! (apart from hating the current trend of replacing 'for' with '4' in almost all logo's these days).

Focusing on our core tasks of Bible Study, Prayer and Evangelism is vital to bring life back to our churches.

As I hope my post on 'Bible Study for Every Church?' begins to demonstrate, regular Bible Study can transform a local church. If you haven't read our story, then please do follow the link.

However, this does not mean we have completed the first stage of Vision4Life, the challenge for us at Heald Green United Reformed Church will be, how do we help those who our format of weekly Bible Study hasn't reached, re-connect with the scriptures? How do we help our busy churches, full of tired Martha's, waste a little time with God, learning Mary's better way.

So we're looking forward to the Vision4Life material being produced, hoping it contains lots of varied suggestions and stories from other churches, of how to re-engage people with the Bible. If you have any helpful stories or suggestions, please add your comment to this post.

Also, I need to reflect that Vision4Life is not all about Bible Study, but Prayer and Evangelism too. In these areas I'm by no means as comfortable or confident, (I am an 'unlikely' evangelist after all!) However, I wasn't too confident or convinced about Bible Study not so long ago, and if a better prayer life for our church has a similar effect as regular Bible Study, then try stopping us sharing our/God's story with others after that!

For now, I have two questions.

How do we break the practice in many of our churches of Prayer Meetings/Circles being little more than a sharing of pastoral news/gossip/list of ill people?

How do we encourage the sharing of our faith story with others within the church, let alone beyond?

On this latter question I am grateful to John Campbell of the Vision4Life group for recommending a helpful publication from the Methodist Church, 'Time to Talk of God - Recovering Christian conversation as a way of nurturing discipleship'


I also draw your attention to David Peel's helpful comments in 'Encountering Church' particularly his analysis of the use of the word 'Fellowship' in our churches, which once was used to mean those occasions when Christians met together with the intention of talking about God, not simply for company, friendship and small-talk, or 'Tea and Chat' as David calls it. Once again any comments or stories about successful discussion groups would be most appreciated.

A word of warning!

There is a real danger of all this being very inward looking and church centric, undoing work on the idea of the church equipping disciples to become apostles and go out into the world. After four years if internal restructuring in Catch the Vision, Vison4Life cannot be four years if internal spiritualizing. The Vison4Life process cannot loose steam before the final year concentrating on Evangelism and MUST connect with ongoing work on a national advertising/evangelism stratergy.

For now, local reflection on the scriptures MUST lead to praxis, the 'So What?' question from Heald Green's Bible Study.

So as we approach year one of Vision4Life together, concentrating on the Bible, I'll continue to post here from time to time any wisdom from our Bible Study groups, encourage you again to visit Lawrence Moore's excellent weekly lectionary reflections, 'Disclosing New Worlds', and to post any of your reflections here, or on your own blogs.

Here, I'll simply close with this.

Knowing our Bibles will not suddenly save the URC, but not knowing them is probably what's slowly killing us!

So let's all Catch the Vision4Life!
Mike