Two weeks after I received Christ I was invited by my new Christians friends to attend a Saturday seminar on evangelism. To be honest, at that time, I didn’t even know what evangelism was or even meant. I was just excited to be with my new friends. By the end of the day I discovered that evangelism was just sharing what Jesus has done for me with the people who come into my life.
At the end of that training the leaders gave us an opportunity to practice what we had just learned. My friends asked me if I wanted to go with them to a local college campus and live out the principles we all discovered that day. I did not knowing what I was getting myself into…that next Saturday I was engaging spiritual conversations with college students! The leader and myself would walk up to a group of college students, he would initiate the conversation and at some point he would say, “Gary, tell them what Jesus has done for you.”
Three weeks after trusting Jesus as Lord and Savior I was completely immersed in evangelism. It was life changing. Every time I shared my faith that day the gospel was deepened into my life and I gained confidence in what I was communicating. This is why my life verse is, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” (Philemon 1:6)
When we deny our church members opportunities to get outside the church walls and touch the world with the love of the gospel we deny them faith stretching moments, the ability to see God at work and the blessing of understanding the richness of the gospel in deep ways. (Philemon 1:6)
Jesus Created Missional Immersion Experiences
Jesus used immersion experiences to train his disciples; first, the Apostles (Luke 9:1-6,10-11) and then the Seventy (Luke 10:1-24).
- Jesus did a quick orientation
- Jesus sent them out on a specific mission
- The disciples reported back what happened
- Jesus debriefed and celebrated them
Five Key Ingredients for Creating Missional Immersion Experiences
- Leadership: Leaders who live, breathe and exemplify the behaviors they want to be lived out in their people.
- Orientation: A short motivational instruction that reviews the why’s and how’s of the outreach activity you are doing. This is a time to go over the do’s and don’ts as you send the team out.
- Multi-Sensory: This experience must touch a person’s heart (move people deeply), their soul (force a deeper sense of faith), their mind (stretch then intellectually) and their strength (involves physical activity).
- Reproducible: This must be a behavior that a person could do without the leader or the team. It must involve something that they can take with them for the rest of their lives.
- Celebration: A time for the group to report, debrief, and celebrate with the leader.
Take Aways
- Study the Gospels and look for other immersion experiences that Jesus used in training the disciples.
- View the Webinar on Equipping Your People in Evangelism.
- First take you leaders and staff through and evangelistic immersion experience
- Prayer walking
- Servant Evangelism
- Door to Door Visitation Check out Ed Stetzer’s research
- Plan a sermon series on evangelism with a church wide evangelistic immersion experience at the end of it.
