Nick Hageman shares his heart for outreach with us.
When we think of outreach, we often have extravagant thoughts that run through our heads, right?!
Thoughts of Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish for not bringing God to Nineveh, or Isaiah and Jeremiah being persecuted while prophesying, or Paul preaching to thousands of people as he traveled around the area. “That’s not me,” we think to ourselves. And for a lot of us, we’d be right.
Some of us may have the gift of prophesying, and some the gift of preaching; but that is not the entirety of what outreach looks like. Jesus shows us what outreach looks like in different ways – he talks to thousands of people in John 6, but back in John 4 he talks to a woman at a well and asks her for a drink.
As their simple conversation wound its way from drinking water, to work, to race, then emotional pain, came a breakthrough in her spirit that led her closer to God. No question, God’s Word can be shared to large groups through prophesying and preaching. But we mostly share God’s love in our day-to-day interactions with those around us.
How did you come to accept that God loved you unconditionally? Was it a prophet warning you of what life without God looks like? Was it a preacher that taught on God’s love or wrath? Or was it your mom, dad, sibling, friend, co-worker, or any other person who through regular discussion caused you to stop and think a bit harder than you usually did?
My bet is that most of us don’t fall in the prophet or preacher buckets, and even if we did, it was because someone around us invited us to see said prophet or preacher. And why would we go? Because that person that is talking to us touched a part of our soul that we didn’t know about. They poked at the hole we have within us that only the Spirit of God can fill. Who better to point a person to their need for God’s love than those around them who already know it, feel it, live within it?
Like C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” We are those with eyes that are telling others, “Open your eyes!”
So before, we were positive that outreach had nothing to do with us since we do not prophesy and we do not preach. But now that Jesus has showed us that outreach happens through regular conversation, how do we escape the fear of outreach that we often feel? Try thinking of it this way.
We have no issue letting people know of how a relative gave us the perfect Christmas gift, or how so-and-so is a wonderful mentor, or inviting a friend to a concert because you both love the same music. It’s no different when talking about God’s blessing that he has given you, or how God has guided you through difficulties, or inviting a friend to talk to God because you both need unconditional love. It really is that simple. The fear goes away when you take the focus off of how to share the gospel and shift it to adding Christ to your regular dialogue like He was any other person you were talking about.
With that my friends, I invite you to do two things: first and foremost, insert God into your regular conversations. That’s the easy ask.
The second would be to take a leap and join us for an outreach outing into a neighborhood. (We’ll be offering a couple of opportunities for this in November.) This one is a bit harder, but only because you’re focusing on how that happens. You know you can talk to the stranger ringing you up at the store, or the stranger in the elevator, or even the stranger in the house across the way whose kids play with yours. But now you are willingly going to someone’s house to invite them to join you in community with God.
Yes, hard, but those fumbling in the dark because they don’t know they have eyes are the ones we need to reach. Not the people who already have their eyes open that you talk to constantly. Pity these souls that have not had the holes filled by God’s love, and then do something about it.
All that something has to be is a short conversation, with the potential of (like Jesus at the well) being able to bring someone closer to God.