I stumbled across an article today written by Moishe Rosen back in November of 2000 (A link to the full article is at the end of this post). Rosen is the founder of Jews for Jesus, and desires that the gospel of Jesus Christ will be preached to all man-kind. I feel that his outlook on lifestyle evangelism (or friendship evangelism) is brief, Biblical, and balanced, and I’ll share a few paragraphs of the article below.
Rosen begins by addressing a question that may come from someone trying to do lifestyle evangelism:

How soon after meeting Jewish people (or anyone else) should one mention Jesus? “The answer is simple: it depends on how important Jesus is to you. Friends talk to one another about what they regard as important. If you seek God’s face daily in prayer, believe that He answers prayer and that one’s personal salvation is the most important thing in life, you will mention Jesus fairly soon and your faith will often figure into your conversation.”

Later in the article he does mention the need for being a good friend, showing kindness and doing good works, but not as a pre-curser to preaching the gospel:

“Yes, we should reflect the fruit of His Spirit in our lives to attract people to Him. But we do not have to earn the right to tell anyone about God’s wonderful plan of salvation. It is our obligation and our privilege to tell what God has done. The gospel is not how nice I am, but how Jesus is the sin-bearer and how He died according to Scripture and rose again from the dead.”

Closing the article, Rosen re-defines lifestyle evangelism to his liking and includes a prayer request that we all should have:

“If lifestyle evangelism means having the courage to let people know what Jesus has done for us in the course of everyday life, I hope you will pray with us that we will always have the heart to maintain that kind of lifestyle.”

Click here to go to the the full article.

As I desire to be effective as a witness and preacher of my savior Jesus Christ, I can’t ignore the vast amount of people who “live” on the internet.  How do we reach these people?  I don’t know.  I do know that faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ.  I’ll be the first to admit that a majority of my reading, studying, research, and communication is done online, but I still maintain an active “off-line” life.  I started thinking about this when I came across the chart below.  Consider with me how to reach this group of people.

Created by Online Education

I wrote this poem today.  Enjoy!

Light of the World

By: Ezra Paul Roark III

I hope this rhyme will bring to mind

The One True Light and how He shined

Through creation and virgin birth

Light of the World was seen on earth

Our sin is great with death the cost

But with the Lord all is not lost

Though man is lost, Christ seeks and saves

Freedom from sin, no longer slaves

Peace to the world through sacrifice

Christ lived and died to pay the price

How can you seize this hopeful claim?

Receive, believe in Jesus name

This Google map “mashup” appears to be an overview of many of the Grace Brethren Churches in the United States.  It is a great motivation to pray for the fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches.  Depending on how you’re gifted, you may be led to pray in different ways; a shepherd/pastor may pray for the establishment of these churches; an evangelist may pray that these churches would be better at preaching the gospel in their cities; but apostles and missionaries like us are praying that more Grace Brethren Churches will be planted.

View Grace Brethren Churches in a larger map

I don’t know who put this map together, and I cannot vouch for the accuracy or completeness of it, but I do appreciate the effort they put into it!  If you zoom in on New York state you’ll find they even included our church plant!

We will periodically post information here including thoughts, events, and news that are relevant to Syracuse Grace Brethren Church.  We hope this will be another way to connect us with the community in Syracuse, and have a wider audience as well.  Let us know if you have any suggestions!