Working through Acts 16-19 at FNC, we’ve been doing a bunch of thinking about Paul’s gospel work of planting and establishing churches.
I got to wondering how Paul would broached the whole issue of Jesus and the gospel when he first arrived in a town or city. Picture the situation. Here’s a town with loads of gentile religious people worshipping all kinds of pagan gods, and a bunch of traditional Jews meeting week by week in their synagogue.
None of them were likely to have even heard of Jesus and what he has done.

How does Paul open the door to speak about the gospel?

Truth is, no one really knows. Luke doesn’t record that kind of detail in Acts.
But I reckon I have a fairly good idea. I think it’s a good bet that Paul started by telling his story. His story of how God came into his life and changed it forever. The story of his personal encounter with the risen Jesus.
I can imagine the conversation that he opens with, starting with how God has worked in his life. It’s natural, and with Paul’s particular story, it’s compelling.

We are committing more time and energy to the initiative called Connect 09. It’s a fantastic approach to evangelism because it’s profoundly relational. It less about technique and much more about people. But that’s a lot harder too. It means investing serious time and energy into building genuine relationships with people. Not superficial, shallow efforts to suck up to people in order to smack them over the head with the gospel at the first opportunity.
Significant, fair-dinkum relationships motivated by our love for the other person.

But that brings us to a similar question that Paul would have had: ‘How do we start?’ Tools like our neighbourhood survey are great. They can break the ice with the people in our street, and give us a ‘foot in the door’ (in the nicest possible way). But then what? Where to do we go from there?
Tell them your story.
You probably don’t have the drama that Paul’s story has, but that doesn’t matter. If you are a follower of Jesus, God has worked a miracle in your life! He has changed you from being dead in your sins to being alive in Christ!
He has taken your sin-riddled life and taken them away through Jesus’ death.
You have a story. And we happen to live in a culture that loves stories!

So this Sunday, October 19th FNC will be given over to workshopping our stories. Working up an easy to recall, God-focussed thumbnail of God’s wonderful work in your life.
Everyone at church this week will have the chance to go away with their story of God at work in them, ready to go when the next opportunity presents itself.
In the weeks following, I hope we will hear lots of those stories shared at FNC, and here on this site. Stories that honour and glorify God and point people to His saving work in Jesus.

Make sure you are part of the fun!