Hello. The following recording is from a Sunday school class taught at Crossroads Bible Church in the fall of 2022. We are using for this class a study guide book called Reaching the Lost Evangelism that's put out by Crossway Books and Nine Marks Ministry. And so I'd highly encourage you to check out both crossway.org and ninemarks.org. That's the number ninemarks.org. for other helpful resources as well as this study guide. As always with the Sunday school class, when we record it, we won't always pick up all the discussion that happens among the students, but we hope this will be for the benefit of the members of our church who are not able to attend the Sunday school class, but still want to get the content, and others, friends and distant people that we want to try to serve. So may God bless you, and I hope you benefit and are edified from this conversation. Well, let's go ahead and get started. Let me pray. God, we thank you that we can be here, we can gather together, to even study together, to grow together. I pray that this would be a fruitful class, a fruitful time, both here and on Wednesday nights, that we would spur one another on towards love and good deeds. I ask in Jesus' name, amen. Well, welcome to Sunday School, the first Sunday School at Crossroads Bible Church since March of 2020. You all remember what happened in March of 2020 when we abruptly canceled Sunday School and all of the above there for a little bit, and it took us a while to get back in our groove. But, as I'm sure you all know very well, we're going to be studying evangelism. And the course that we're going to be working through this year is to actually try to equip our church members with tools, with knowledge and hopefully with some desire to really reach people with the gospel. And so my hope is that, though I have a plan in my mind that takes us from now, September, all the way through May, the end of May, of working through both sort of an introductory course And then we'll study the book of Acts and how the first Christians shared the good news of Jesus Christ and how that teaches us. And then we'll study, we'll learn some tools, things that you can use as you talk with people about Christ. And then we'll do a little bit of work on apologetics in the sense of how do you engage people in conversation? How do you, especially people who perhaps disagree with you, and I think how do you engage people that agree with you? Because that's just as hard. But how do we have meaningful conversations? learning some of that so that's my that's our course of plan but what I really is is very helpful along the way is to hear from you guys feedback hey here's some things I need here's some help I need some so I have these questions I have these challenges so that we can really really grow together so since this will be a whole school year long endeavor on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights we will I think we'll be able to grow in different ways together. So, let's say we're going to start with a very basic study. It actually comes with a little study guide, workbooks, that you guys are welcome to keep and write in. Make sure you write your name in because everybody's looks exactly the same. And I encourage you to bring these, or if you want, you can even leave them here so that you don't forget them next week, but you might find it fruitful to go back and revisit this. I want to start in week one, which is on page 13, and it starts with two discussion questions. What really makes Sunday School fun is that everybody engages to some level in conversation here. So the first two questions they have are, what drew you to this study on evangelism? And what are you hoping to get out of these six weeks? Sorry, six sessions on evangelism. And we're actually gonna do these in probably anywhere from six to 10. It depends on how diligent we are. We don't have a deadline. Morning, Tim. Morning. Come on in. So we, yeah, we don't, I don't have like a, we must finish this course by this date. If our discussion fills up a lot of time, we have room to adjust the schedule. So, um, so yeah, that's what I thought. Let's start with that discussion is what excites you about it, about studying evangelism and what intimidates you some combination of those. I know, you spring a question on you guys and then nobody's ready to answer it yet. You don't like the gospel? Yeah. an individual, a loved one, a family member, a friend, in a warm and loving way that doesn't threaten that friendship, that doesn't, you know, and so on, and be able to talk to them freely about things is definitely an area I'd like to grow in, but again, evangelism is something that, you know, put my cards on the table, you know, it's out of the comfort zone. Yeah, so evangelism's out of the comfort zone. And I see some heads nodding, is that an agreeable statement? Yeah, I think that's, that seems to be, and this I should figure out a way to describe this, that seems to be kind of a number one thing for a lot of people is there's a barrier to this, to talking with people about Christ. And it's not all fear, and it's not all I don't know, there's just, it's really a difficult step to take. And so yeah, that's reasonable. Anything else that excites or intimidates you? What to say. Because I'm not one with my words, I'm not... So just talk to me in a conversation, you'll see the words that I stumble on in just a basic thought. So try to have a formulated plan of salvation communicated in a way that... So, you know, if God comes up, it's like, okay, God. I really need your help. Yeah. Yeah, so the just the not knowing what to say and or sometimes knowing what to say but not knowing how to get it out of my mouth and into something that someone can understand. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and coming from so much exposure throughout my life so that what I say doesn't come out as trite or Yeah, we want to have meaningful conversation not just like let me preach a sermon to you That you won't understand And he always carried these little books of John He had lots of them. And when he was filling up gas and the gas attendant was there, he would whip out the book of John. Hey, have you ever read this before? And get involved in a conversation with him right there at the counter in front of the cash register and leave the book of John with him. And somehow he was able to do that. And people loved him more when he left than when he came. They didn't think ill of him or he's some wackadoodle or something like that. People loved him. And I inherited all of his little books of John. And I've got a big old stack of them. And I haven't used a single one yet. I don't know how to do that. But I would love to get to the point where I would be so comfortable and it would be such a warm thing to say, hey, have you ever read this? And then make a connection with the person rather than by doing that instantly making a wall in front of them. How did he do that? I don't know. So how many of you guys know people who are like that, who just, or have had people in your lives who seem to just have that ability to engage anybody in conversation about Christ? I think I've known people like that, we've all known people like that. It's so strange, and I think a lot of us think, that's not me. And I'm not sure that I could become that person, or that necessarily I should. God gifts people differently. And so I think a lot of what can intimidate us about evangelism is that the people we've seen who aren't us, who do evangelism, who think, I can't do it like that. And somehow or another, that puts us in a place where we think, therefore, I can't do this. And praise God for all those people who have great articulate abilities, who are great and persuasive, who are bold in different ways. But at the core of it, if God has commissioned all of us to be his witnesses in this earth, then that means he's going to use us as he has made us, and in who we are, and that we can grow in that. And so I love the ideas of saying, hey, we've seen these examples, I'd like to be like that. I'd like to learn how to speak better. I'd like to learn how to be more confident and courageous. And I hope we'll get into all of that during our study on evangelism. But where we have to start is by laying a really good, solid foundation. The principle being that you can't give away what you do not already own. And so if you don't know and love the gospel, you will find that you cannot share the gospel. Which, you know, is always an intimidating thing for me when I think, one time I got asked to speak at some event where there was going to be parents of children there and the assumption was a lot of these parents were not Christians. And they said, you just have five minutes to just share the gospel. I said, okay. And I thought, and I really stressed, like, what am I going to say? And I was very, very stressed out about this and trying to prepare something. Then I kind of paused and went, wait a second, how can I, like, why am I overthinking this? Do I really love the Lord Jesus? Do I really know the good news of the gospel? And the answer was yes. So I could, I can speak from what I know, right? Instead of trying to craft this perfect little five minute sermonette thing, let me just simply speak what I know. And so I kind of shoved all my notes aside, blank piece of paper, and just wrote some things down. And I was like, okay, that's what I'm gonna share. And I want that, and that's, I think, true for all of you. You know Christ, you love Christ, and so we want to share from what we already have. You can't give away what you don't already own. If you own the gospel, you are now equipped to give it away. So, the main idea in this study is going to lay the foundations of what evangelism is, how we do it at kind of very basic, basic levels. This is our introduction to evangelism over the next many weeks. So I'll just read the main idea here from this first chapter, is that the Bible calls all Christians to share the good news about Jesus's death and resurrection with those who don't believe in Christ. So the very first lesson they're going to push, this is for all of us. You don't get a stage of your Christian life where you get a free pass on this. It's not just for pastors or those who are uniquely gifted. It's for all of us. So he starts though with saying, what is evangelism? Getting a detailed look at what is evangelism. And he gives a really basic definition here in this little digging in section. that evangelism is telling others the good news about what Jesus has done to save sinners and calling them to repent of their sins and believe in Christ. So I think of it in two phases. It's telling and calling. So, to evangelize, and you'll notice they'll use this language, telling and calling, there's a speaking of words, something that is told, but it's not just mere communication, it's also persuasion, it's calling people to believe in something. So. He gets then into what the basics of the gospel are, and this would be a good category to put in your mind, is what are the most essential facts to communicate? So maybe, you don't have to close your books, but without doing too much peeking, in your mind, if we were to share with people the good news about Jesus Christ, if we were to tell them the good news and call people to believe, what basic truths would we want to make sure we communicate to them? Can you guys toss out your basic truths when we want to communicate? The concept of double imputation. That's a pretty big concept to communicate. So double imputation, what do you mean by that? Well, this is something that's been on my mind. is that when you look at the nature of different churches, you see that some really emphasize, you know, God's grace, which is wonderful. But some, to the point of excluding punishment and wrath for sin. And other churches that will emphasize wrath and punish, you know, and so on, without ever bringing in imputation of Christ's righteousness placed on us. And then at the cross, His righteousness, that alien righteousness, the righteousness of God, was accounted to us, imputed to us. Our sin was imputed to Christ, and Christ experienced a couple of God's wrath on Him while we experienced Christ's righteousness placed on us. So an essential truth to communicate is, we might say, both sin and righteousness. right, that sin is something that needs to be dealt with, and righteousness is what we need, and Christ fulfills both of those. He deals with our sin and he gives us his righteousness. The miscommunication that's out there is that when we call people to be Christians, we're telling them you need to be righteous enough to get to heaven. That's what everyone who doesn't know the gospel believes. They have to believe in the imputation of Christ's righteousness on us to be able to really understand the nature of Christianity. And they also, in a culture that is not open to wrath and punishment, they have to understand the depth of our depravity and God's wrath that is justly due to us that Christ bore on our behalf. You can't understand the depth of His grace unless you understand the depth of the wrath and the depravity of sin. We've got to communicate sin and grace. And I think, so what you're saying, and this is, I like to use this question when I talk to people and they say, oh yeah, yeah, I grew up going to church or whatever and I'm talking to somebody and they'll say, I grew up going to church or my grandma took me to church or whatever, I used to go to youth group. I'll say, so like, can you just in a nutshell, give me like, how did you understand the Christian message? Like, what did you think that it was? What did you hear? And a lot of times they'll say something like, yeah, God wants us to, you know, obey him and to be good, to do what is right, and we'll go to heaven. And of course then I'll walk them through like, Well, you know, no, because we're sinners and we need forgiveness, and so how does God provide forgiveness? And they can echo, well, by Jesus dying on the cross, and they'll say, but why did you say then that the central Christian message is to be good? It is, God does want us to be good, he wants us to obey him, this is absolutely true, but you're misunderstanding, you can parrot the The message of the gospel, but you don't really understand the substance of it, and that is that you aren't good, you are a sinner, and what you need is not only forgiveness, but you need Christ to make you good, and that's exactly what he does, covers you in his righteousness. So yeah, double imputation is a really fancy way of saying that, but at a basic level, we need to communicate sin and grace, both from Christ. Sin and righteousness, both from Christ. Well, at some point, don't we have to have conviction And aren't we kind of partnered with the Holy Spirit in some of this in that, I mean, if an individual hasn't been convicted of their sins, they're not going to receive Christ. They're going to stay out in the wilderness, if you will. But at what point does this happen? Does this happen before? or when we evangelize. I don't think there's an answer to that. But in my mind, it seems like we're kind of wasting our time on people that are just staunch in their convictions of not believing in paradise. It can be. So like to say that we conviction, and good thing you brought the Holy Spirit to him, because that is what the Holy Spirit does. He makes us new. The Bible says he actually causes us to be born again. And we all know that it's, no one comes to the Father unless he draws them to him. So there's a work of God to bring someone who is in darkness to light, who is dead in their sins to be alive in Christ. So we absolutely, we will highlight the work of God in that. When he tells us that we're the messengers, part of our responsibility is to tell people, you need this. You need to respond to this. And now, how they respond is up to God. But we do need that conviction. I'll put this in the category, and these guys will use this language too, of response. We communicate truth about Christ, but we call for response. But the response is not our responsibility. So we're not gonna try to twist people's arms and like, let me just convince you to be a Christian and feel really good if I get that done and feel really bad if I don't. But to say, no, you have to respond to this. There's a responsibility that you have. And at the same time, trusting that it's the Holy Spirit that really changes people's convictions. where people are at. Do you believe in Christ, or don't you? Do you believe in the gospel, or don't you? If they say, yeah, I do, but I strayed, I got away from it, well, then you've got somebody that's got some knowledge. Some people don't have. So you've got to take baby steps with them. You've got to start off slow. Well, let me give you guys four categories of essential information. And these are what they have here in the books, these little bullet points. They don't label them like this. This is page 13. They have little bullet points here, and they don't put these little titles on these, but this is what they're getting at. So the first category is that God is holy, and we should crack our Bibles for sure. Let's go to Genesis, or sorry, 1 John 1, 5. Would somebody turn there and give us a second here to all get there to 1 John 1, 5. All the way back towards the end. of the Bible. So the first bullet point, I would put the title over that as God. We're going to communicate to people the gospel. We want to tell them about God. So would somebody read that 1 John 1.5? This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. Excellent. God is light and there is no darkness at all. Holy. So we want to communicate to people that there is a God, He is real, He is righteous, He is good. So one basic fact that we need to communicate is the existence of God. That's our starting place for all things. The second truth that we would want to emphasize, kind of essential truth that we need to communicate in telling about Jesus, is the truth about man. So we have God and then man. And that truth, as we see here, is that all people are sinners who deserve God's righteous wrath, righteous and eternal wrath. So that's part of what you were emphasizing, Pat, is we need to communicate to people that we as people have an issue with this God. It's called sin. We deserve, therefore, God's judgment. So we'll talk, we'll do quite a bit of study later on about how to go about telling people that they're sinners. Because we all know that doesn't land really well if you just walk up to people randomly and say, I just want you to know you're a dirty, retin-rotten sinner. And I've got good news for you. if you're willing to now listen to any more that I have to say, but nonetheless, we aren't really telling people the gospel if we aren't telling people about the problem of sin, and that God as our righteous judge will judge sin. And that needs to be communicated, even if the cost is great, right? So, we will try to be nice, we will try to be winsome, we will try to be persuasive, but nonetheless, Jesus, Paul, millions of Christians ever since who have been persecuted have always been faithful to tell people that what they're doing is sinful and deserves wrath, even if it costs them their lives. So we've got God, man. The next truth is the truth about Christ. And oh my goodness, you can see all the Bible verses that we have here. So many good Bible verses. Let me, let's read one. This is Romans chapter three. Can we go back to Romans chapter three? Would somebody read 21 through 26 of Romans three? But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned, all short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood. to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and a justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Now that paragraph is packed with a lot of that language that you were concerned about, LaRonda, that it might speak over the heads of people who aren't familiar with it. But it also condenses down, for those of us who do know and understand the gospel, a lot of the essential truths about Christ. You aren't sharing the gospel if you aren't talking about death and resurrection, if you're not talking about judgment of God and the righteousness of God given to us, if you're not talking about faith in Jesus Christ. And so notice all of these and in redemption, I think one of the most powerful things we can do is help people understand why Jesus died on the cross. What did that, was that like some sort of magical formula that God's like, I know how to save the world, I'll make somebody die, and that'll save people, give them life, and being able to explain what's going on here, why death, and why a death for sin, how does that work? And so that really gets to the message of Christ. So again, just keeping this very, very simple, the message that we want to communicate for evangelism is God, man, Christ. Those are our first three steps. Who is God? Who are we? Who is Christ? Answering basic questions. These are kind of basic essential truths. And then the last one is response. Acts 20, 21, Paul went from house to house preaching repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ. So we want to communicate to people, how do you rightly respond to this truth? repentance towards God, faith in Jesus Christ. And I think it is particularly important in our day to communicate to people the costly nature of that. This is not just like, oh, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll sign off on the Christian thing and occasionally show up at a church and I can call myself a Christian because I'm a pretty decent moral person and I live in America. We wanna really call people to understand, no, following Jesus is not just something you do on the side. It's a radical commitment that will cause you to live a life that is different than many of the people that you live around. It means turning from sin. It means abandoning things that your hearts naturally love. It means learning righteousness. It means learning to love people that you didn't previously love. It's a change of your life. And so we want to call people to respond. And so those essential truths, God, man, Christ response is just a great little thing to ingrain in your mind. God, man, Christ response. Just categories that we'll use often as we learn how to communicate to people and the truth of the gospel. So evangelism is basically telling people the good news about Jesus. We can then kind of break that down, sub points A, B, C, and D. Here's our, and E, or A, B, C, and D. Here's our sub points. Here's what the good news is about. It's good news about God. It's good news about us. It's good news about Jesus. It's good news about our response. So there's your basic, basic, basic explanation of what evangelism is. And of course, we'll dive deeper into that. But again, we can't give away what we don't already possess. And it is the truths of the gospel that we're then going to go and communicate. And as we all know from reading the scripture, from Listening to preaching of the gospel There are hundreds of facets to this all sorts of different Illustrations that God gives us in his word all sorts of points that God makes things that we can use to communicate to people Who Christ is there's lots of lots of different? angles in the gospel presentation, but there's kind of a central point, which is God, man, Christ response. Here's who God is, here's who we are, here's the problem, Christ is the solution, and here's how you respond with repentance and faith. So we'll highlight a lot of the facets of the gospel, but basically, evangelism, what we're trying to learn is how to tell and to call, how to tell people the gospel, how to call people to response. in the gospel, so that will be the goal of the next nine months. And we will chip away at that from different angles, how to tell, how to call. But before we go too deep, we have to make sure we clarify what the evangelism is not. And he gives us four points here. And I'm gonna go through these four points quickly, and then I wanna have a little discussion about who told you the gospel. So you can share very briefly, who are different people in your life, doesn't have to be one person, who communicated to you the truth about God, man, Christ, and the right response to that. And that doesn't have to be all before you were a Christian. It can be after you were a Christian. Who told you the gospel? So I'd love to hear kind of all your experiences of being evangelized, if you will. So here's what evangelism is not, though. It is not personal testimony. Great idea to tell people what God has done in your life. But that is not, to go to somebody and say, let me tell you all the good things God has done in my life, and then walk away, is not to have shared the gospel with them. It's to testify to God's goodness to you. But we wanna make sure that if we're sharing the gospel, we're telling people truth for them to respond to. And yes, your personal experience of that can be a powerful tool that you can use. But if we're not communicating God, man, Christ response, we're not communicating the gospel, we're really not, even our testimony isn't really evangelism. Neither is social action. Caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, all great things that we should do. I like one preacher who says, we should care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. So yeah, let's go ahead and relieve suffering, but let's make sure that our main goal is to relieve eternal suffering through the preaching of the gospel. And so we should take social action, absolutely, but, you know, that silly saying, preach the gospel at all times, if necessary, use words, is a contradictory statement. It's not really a biblical statement. Sharing the gospel is always telling. The words that the Bible uses are always words like preaching and proclaiming and declaring and speaking. Those all involve words. And so we need to tell. We need to tell. Even as we do good. Also, apologetics is not evangelism. That is, like, defending the faith. And so, it is wise to be well-equipped to defend faith, and the Bible would tell us to do that, but that's not necessarily evangelism. And I see this as a common barrier for some people. I was talking to a friend even this week who said, you know, I just feel like I don't have all the answers to every objection. And I said, well, you don't need to. I mean, there are people who are very skilled at that. But, like, your job is to tell, to call people, tell people the truth about Jesus, call them to repentance. And if they have some objection that you can't answer, that's okay. You can at least tell them about his death and resurrection for sin and for their salvation. They need to believe this. and they have some sort of objection that you can't answer, oh, okay, like, can I have a day or two to think about that and get back to you? Like, there's nothing wrong with saying those sorts of things. And yet, at the same time, we can think, well, in order to reach everybody, we must know everything about everybody before we can reach them. And sometimes that's how apologetics can take us down. Now we're gonna use apologetics, we're gonna learn it, but we're gonna learn a different sort of apologetics. It won't be like, how to evangelize a Mormon, how to evangelize a Jehovah's Witness, how to evangelize a Muslim. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna teach you how to have conversations with people that lead to Christ, wherever they're coming from. That's a better evangelistic apologetic. And also evangelism is not the results of evangelism. You can kind of lock this in your mind. God calls us to faithfulness, whether or not we are fruitful. It's faithful, not fruitful. We all hope for fruit, and we all would love to see revival. I don't know if you guys ever read about revivals, where all of a sudden there's just a move of the Spirit of God. reading one on like a prayer revival where they had an hour-long prayer meeting every day at the church building, full, in New York City, in like every church in New York City, this is in like the mid-1800s, amazing. Or, you know, all of a sudden there's a church gathering every day for people who want to come and hear the preaching of God's word and are being converted and, you know, all of a sudden in these towns where revivals break out that every church is packed Monday through Sunday, like, and And you think about, wow, what an experience that would be. We'd love to have that, but just because that does or doesn't happen doesn't mean we've done evangelism. Evangelism is about faithfulness. It's about telling and calling. And the fruit we give all glory to God for, whether people believe or deny. And so our job, our responsibility is to tell and to call. We leave the results up to God. Yeah, Pat. when he says, you know, I, Paul says, I planted, you know, others watered. All this water, yeah. Causes the growth. Yeah. And the person who plants puts the seed, I mean, you put the seed in the ground and then stand there and go, nothing happened, you know? No, you just planted the seed, it's gonna be a season. And Paul is talking about it more as a corporate activity, that multiple, Believers are taking a role in causing that garden to grow, causing that plant to sprout and produce the vegetable-produced fruit. That's something I tend to think of evangelism as something that Pat Mooney does on his own at a gas station, and not thinking of it in terms of this is something we do together. Yeah, we do. And that was a great emphasis, if you guys got to read that little red book, is The idea of a culture of evangelism, something that we are in pursuit of together as we sow seeds, and it might be through, you know, you having one conversation with a neighbor who then comes to church and has a deep conversation with somebody after. after our worship service, or it could be, I was telling somebody about, I met a couple at one point, and I had said something about street preaching. I said something negative about street preaching. And this gentleman said to me, he said, now I understand the point you're trying to make, this was in a sermon a long time ago, and he said, I understand the point you're trying to make, but I want you to know that my wife and I went to Hawaii to party. That's all we, we went to like some party resort. And there was a street preacher there, and we were both converted because of his confronting our sin at this party resort and calling us to faith in Christ. And I was telling a friend of mine this story, and he said, I bet that street preacher has no idea. I said, I bet you're right. I bet he walked away that day thinking nobody heard today, all these pagan people just doing their pagan thing, and he walked away, and we'll never know, but by God's grace, and these folks, it had been years, decades, since that event. And so we just don't ever know. Like what God calls us to be faithful in, telling people, calling people to faith and repentance, the fruit that it may bear, we may never see, but God knows. So, just to be very clear, evangelism is telling and calling people, telling people the truth about Jesus, calling them to believe and repent. And we are going to, so we're gonna break there for the day, so we're gonna actually do all the discussion. We've got a good reduction, but I would love to hear, we've got five minutes left, love to hear from you guys. Who are the people who have evangelized you? Parents, yeah. I saw a bunch of heads nodding. You guys had parents that told you the gospel, other people? your sister. Well for me it had to be the Holy Spirit. I mean I had godly parents but they weren't real. professing to us about the gospel. I kind of had a deep calling. I can't really put my finger on it, but I knew that something was awry in my life. And I truly believed that the Holy Spirit had come to me and said, this is the way you have to live. So it wasn't sometimes easy for me. I was kind of self-taught in a way, you know, not that there were other people involved, but there maybe was a Lutheran minister that had something to do with it. Yeah, hopefully you're hearing the gospel from your pastor. I hope I'm preaching the gospel to you guys, but I hope, too, you guys have all had other pastors other than me, right? But it's never completed. It's an ongoing process until the day you go to the grave. And like you said, the Holy Spirit, and let's not neglect that at all, the Holy Spirit does speak the Gospel to us at the depths of our heart and mind, and the Word of God, too. I was talking to a guy just this week who came to faith in Christ, and I said, oh, like, you know, wow, and he's like, really, just by reading the Bible, I had nothing and no hope, and someone gave me a Bible. I knew I needed, like he said, that inner pull. I needed something, and he came to faith in Christ just through reading God's word. Sunday school teachers, I had a Sunday school teacher faithfully tell me the gospel. Were you gonna say something? What's that? Christian camps, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Big one for me, too. Christian camps. Okay? Yeah. That was a big, like, Gord used Billy Graham and other kind of big production gospel presentations in Uniclass. Yeah, I just recently, on YouTube, was watching some of Billy Graham's revival, and it's, I don't know, it touches my heart. He was good. He was a natural. Sunday school, I should say youth workers because it was a Wednesday night program at our church. Flannel board. Flannel board, yeah. Oh yes. Oh man, I love some flannel board. I do too. I do too. I love it. I love it. Well, and don't necessarily come out in all of our sharing, but don't ever underestimate just the friends who tell the truth of the gospel. I remember Laura Smith, if you ever heard her testimony, it was about the time that Jason first got cancer, and there was some neighbor or some friend that they had who just was faithful to come over and pray with her and read her scripture. Just a friend who knew she was in crisis and cared, and came to share. And so I just think, you know, those are sweet little things. God uses people just that you know, who are voices, you know, I like the idea of John the Baptist, he's a voice in the wilderness. And if people who are lost in their sins are wandering dead and dark in a wilderness, we all want to be voices that they can hear, that are calling and calling and calling, You know, it may be that somebody hears the gospel from you, and they say, wow. And the Holy Spirit makes them alive, and they believe. But you might be the first of a hundred voices, and we can be content with that. We wanna be tellers and callers, and that's ultimately the goal of our evangelism, is, you know, we're not, I heard from a lot of people, and I'm all aboard, like, we don't wanna shift to where, like, this is a program. This is like a, you know, we're gonna have this big evangelistic production, or, We're going to force you to do one thing. We're all going to do the same thing. We don't want that kind of thing. See, I don't want that either. Or even to where we start to change everything about who we are as a church body, to be focused on people who are outside of our church, when in fact the Bible calls us to build one another up, to love one another. So we don't want to stray from biblical principles, but I really liked that language that he used in the book of a culture of evangelism. of helping encourage each other just to be the voices in people's lives, and to learn to grow in that, to sometimes get some boldness to speak up, learn some strategies about how to engage people that you do know and love so that we can be telling, and so hopefully that will be the fruit of this. I'm going to pray, and we've ended on time. And what we're gonna do, and you guys are welcome to visit. So we canceled our prayer meeting, because it used to be at 9.15, which is right during Sunday school. But if you'd like to, just pray before the service. We'll gather up in the study for anybody who wants to, and you don't have to. We won't look down on you if you don't gather for prayer, but if you'd like to pray for the service, we'll get together and pray for a little bit. So let me pray. God, thank you so much for this discussion. This is fruitful. I pray that the many weeks ahead, as we get past some of the introductory things and dive deeper into what it means to share the gospel, how we do it, and to help encourage each other, that you would strengthen us by your word and your spirit, God, please also give us open doors to declare the mystery of the word. Give us opportunities, help us to see them, and give us the courage and boldness and wisdom to be telling people the good news of Jesus. And God, we do pray that you would bless us with the fruit, that we could see people coming out of darkness into light, out of death and into life. that our church body would be able to witness the movement of your spirit in people's lives and your wonderful work of salvation, because, God, that would increase our thanksgiving. And so, God, we ask that you would do the heavy lifting, the hard work of bringing sinners to faith in Christ and new life in Christ. And as you do that, we will give you all the glory and praise. And so help us. It's in Jesus' name we pray.