Church Programs for Evangelism?

Oct. 27, 2012

00:00

-02:38

Transcription

Our Lord's last command is our first priority. In the church, in the family, in the city, to the ends of the earth. Join us in October for White Under Harvest. The church needs to be careful that it doesn't become ingrown. In other words, sometimes we want to build our communities and be a very close-knit community that focuses on the love of the brethren.

And after a while, we've developed our relationships and we feel very comfortable with each other. The Bible requires of us a balance between the phileo-delphia and the phileo-xenia. Hebrews 13 says, love the brothers and love the strangers. And that balance has to be carefully maintained all the time by the elders, the pastor, the leaders of that church. And if you get that out of whack, you're going to develop an ingrown church or you may develop a church that isn't a church at all because the love of the brethren isn't there.

You've got a big mega church where all the strangers are coming in and flowing out, but there really is no church at all. Well, you need a church. You need a church that loves the brothers, and you need a church that reaches out all the time. My recommendation is for the pastors, the elders, the leaders, to exemplify that balance constantly. They ought to be opening up their homes all the time to strangers.

And the pastor should bring strangers into the church constantly. Strangers that stayed the night with him. I did that last Sunday, I brought a whole family that stayed the night with me. These were strangers. Our church had never seen these people before, and we embraced them, we brought them in, we brought them to the church, and the church now understands that it's not just our community that matters, It's also the strangers that matter.

So we want to go out and love the strangers. We want to lead a group of 20-25 people on a Friday night down the 16th Street Mall. The brothers are there. The brothers are loving the brothers, But they're also reaching out to strangers at the same time. The pastors should be there, the elders should be there.

They should exemplify their love for evangelism, reaching out to the lost sheep that need to be brought into the fold. You

Kevin Swanson explains in this video that the Church must be careful that it doesn't become negatively impacted by the world. It is important that churches foster a love for those brothers and sisters in the congregation as well as a love for the lost and those outside of the church.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NKJV) - "Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up.
Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And a threefold cord is not quickly broken."

Speaker

KS

Life Story & Testimony

Kevin Swanson is a pastor of Reformation Church in Elizabeth, Colorado. Together with his wife Brenda, they have raised five children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord—Daniel, Emily, Rebekah, Bethany, and Abigail. Kevin is the author and editor for the Family Bible Study Guide Series and the Christian Classics Study Guides. He has served as an elder in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ for twenty-two years. Over the years, he has taken the message of family discipleship to most of the fifty states, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, and Japan.

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