In the movie Forrest Gump the lovable main character overcomes a childhood physical disorder and goes on to find himself at the centre of many political and social phenomenon of the 20th Century. Across varied turns of life Forrest makes a habit of impacting people in profound ways. Did you know he taught Elvis how to dance, wrote Imagine for John Lennon, broke the Watergate Scandal and was and All-American football star at Alabama. And then he goes off to Vietnam to fight Communism. One of the relationships he develops is with a fellow soldier named Bubba. In one bad skirmish his platoon comes under serious fire. He tries to find his friend Bubba but continually comes across other platoon mates and his leader and one by one carries them to safety. Against all sense he returns one more time into the jungle, surrounded by enemy fire and with an impending air strike, Forest charges ahead whilst screaming, “I gotta find Bubba!” His actions revealed just how much Forrest cared for his friend, Bubba. Forrest loved him enough to take massive risks. What Forrest tried to do for Bubba is what Jesus has done for us. One by one, Jesus chased us down in his perfect love and sacrifice. As the bible says, we love because he first loved us. We love him and we love others. One way that we love others is to share with them the truth of Christ, one by one rescue missions if necessary.
So how is your mission going? If we are honest, evangelism is one of the major areas of Christian discouragement. We get motivated or excited by stories of effective evangelism, only to find our own efforts coming up woefully short. All too often we are motivated by guilt rather than love. This summer Pastor Andrew and I are going to take several of the e-bulletins to make book recommendations. Some of mine will be in the area of evangelism.
One book on evangelism that I highly recommend is Rico Tice’s most recent offering. It is called Honest Evangelism. Rico is the writer and presenter of the course called Christianity Explored that we recently ran in the church. The premise of the book is to offer Christians help in talking about Jesus when it is tough to do so – and it is almost always difficult within our cultural context. The book is straightforward and clear and an easy read clocking in at just over 100 pages. He offers very useful hooks to aid conversations and work in the gospel message. You will come away from the book seeing again, or perhaps for the first time, how easy it is to communicate the gospel – it is simply beautiful and beautifully simple. Rico is a good storyteller and includes many examples from his decades of experience in personal witnessing.
Please consider adding this to your summer reading list, I know you will be encouraged!
Much love,
Pastor Gary