Evangelism (Part 4)

Evangelism — Steve Gregg

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Evangelism (Part 4)

EvangelismSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg explores strategies for cultural penetration in evangelism, emphasizing the need for Christians to remain true to their values while engaging with the world. He encourages individuals to carefully choose their line of employment, considering opportunities for ministry outreach. Gregg also discusses the importance of reaching out to different cultural groups, such as children and older adults, in order to make a lasting impact. He suggests creative approaches, such as hosting Bible studies for non-Christian neighbors or engaging with people during special occasions and events.

Transcript

In this class I'd like to speak to the matter of what I call cultural penetration. Yesterday, or in our last lecture, I mentioned certain hindrances to evangelism in our lives, and one of them is apathy, one of them would be fear, and another is cultural isolation. It's like there's a cultural barrier that denotes as we become more and more intertwined in our relationships with Christians only, we become more and more in step with the protocol of church life or Christian community life, and our speech changes, our thought processes change, our behavior patterns change, the places we go often changes, and eventually we just don't have an awful lot in common with the unbelievers we used to live among.

Now part of that is good. Christians should not be imitating the world, and there's an awful lot of things in the world that they participated in before being Christians that they ought to get rid of when they become Christians. And we're not describing the case of a Pharisee or a prude, we're describing the case of the normal Christian who's really following God.

Following Jesus Christ takes you further and further and further away from thinking and acting like the world. But that's only in terms of the moral conduct of the world, and the values of the world. It should not take us further and further geographically away from the world, or socially to the point where we have no way of contacting the world anymore.

The extreme of this, of persons who wanted to be holy in medieval times and even up to this time, is the monastic movement, where people actually, in order not to be tainted by the world, would move into monasteries where they lived under strict asceticism, with only other people who were living the same way, and with great walls to separate them between the outside corrupt world and the Christian environment within. Well, I would say that the environment that was within these monasteries was often far from genuinely Christian. It was just an extreme example of how making choices to be a Christian can lead you further and further away from cultural involvement in the world.

Now, that, as I said, is good on the one hand. When we do come into the world, as it were, when we do evangelize, when we try to reach the world, we have to penetrate that culture again. It's good that we live in a sense above it.

I mean morally above it, ethically we're above it, in terms of our understanding of spiritual things we're on a totally different plane than people in the world. But we need to visit this planet once in a while, and do so in a meaningful, redemptive way. And by that I mean not just come into the world once in a while, obviously we live in the world all the time.

A person doing this right may well live in the midst of a ghetto, or someplace where they're ministering all the time, day and night. They may run a rescue mission. They may be living with worldly people all the time, but they still, in their own values and their own choices for their life and their own direction, are definitely going a different direction than those derelicts are.

And that's why they can help them. If Christians are going in the same direction that the people who are trying to help are going, they have no alternative to offer. If a man's drowning in the ocean, he needs help from somebody standing on the deck of a ship, not someone who's also drowning in the ocean with no firmer footing than he has.

Christians need to have an alternative culture, an alternative way, an alternative lifestyle. But they also have to have, as part of that lifestyle, involvement in an uncompromising way with the world. And I say uncompromising because certain kinds of involvement are not compromising.

To dress differently than the world may not be a spiritual thing to do. Now, of course, the way the world dresses when they go to the beach, and the way Christians dress when they go to the beach, probably should be different. Not because Christians want to stand out like a sore thumb, but because they don't want so much of themselves standing out as the world prefers to have.

I mean, there are certain codes of modesty that Christians observe, and in some places, the way Christians dress will be different than many of the non-Christians. But for the most part, we shouldn't look like nerds or weirdos or whatever, unless of course we are nerds, and there's nothing wrong with being one. I mean, I'm not here to say that there's something un-Christian or even un-cool about being what the world calls a nerd.

I mean, I'm one. I mean, I don't look as much like one as I used to look, but I'm still one in disguise. I was a nerd throughout high school, with horn-rimmed glasses and wingtip shoes and pins in my pocket and short hair and slacks and the works.

I mean, I didn't dress real weird, but I dressed more like my dad than I did like my contemporaries in the first few years of high school, and they used to call me Poindexter, which was not a reference to anybody at the Pentagon. It was a reference to Poindexter and the Felix McCabe comics. And, you know, I wasn't exactly in tune with a lot of people in my generation in those early years of my teens, but that doesn't mean it was wrong.

I mean, there were other people like me. There were some non-Christian kids that were my friends that I reached out to and I actually witnessed to who were just as nerdly as I was. And, you know, nerd obviously is a very negative term, and I don't think it has to be.

You know, I think a person who chooses to pursue academic things instead of sports or instead of parties or instead of, you know, rock and roll music or something has every right to choose that lifestyle as much as anyone else does and without being criticized. But what I don't think is that all Christians should be cookie cutter nerdly types. And sometimes that's how the world views us.

People who don't know how to have a good time, people who are cerebral, people who, which by the way is not wrong to be, but I mean that there is sort of a stereotype that the world has of us that culturally we were removed. We no longer know how to have a good time. We no longer enjoy tasteful music.

Now we like old fashioned kind of music that, you know, went out years ago. We no longer dress like ordinary people. Now, I don't think that's a problem with anyone in this room, but I have known Christians with whom that has been a serious problem.

I have known groups that in their attempt to be holy have dressed in the style, clothing styles that were popular in the 40s. And they stated as such. They think Christians should dress the way people dressed in the 40s.

Why? Probably because those same people grew up in the 40s. And that's what they liked to wear then. And their taste in clothing hasn't changed while those worldly styles have gotten more modern.

We've got to be culturally in touch with the world. And while we do, you know, it is a delicate balance to remain unspotted from the world and yet to be in it. Let me show you a couple of scriptures sort of illustrate this dichotomy and this difficulty.

In James chapter 1, James chapter 1 and verse 27, the last verse in James chapter 1 says, Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Now look over at Jude and Jude is here talking about evangelism and evangelistic strategies. The book of Jude just before Revelation only has one chapter and in verse 22 and 23 it says, Some have compassion, making a distinction, but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.

Now the reference to a garment defiled by the flesh is a figure of speech of course. He's saying don't have any moral compromise with the world. Don't allow yourself to be in any sense defiled by the world.

At the same time, there's people in there who have to be pulled out of the fire. You have to make occasional visits into their world or even live there. But if you have to live there, you need to be careful.

There's a lot of defilement there. You need to remain unspotted from the world. Yet you cannot just pretend like the world isn't there.

You can't say, well now I'm a Christian. I've got my Christian friends. We've got our Christian community.

We can live in isolation and not have to worry about those nasty sinners out there. They are our concern. They are God's concern and they are therefore ours.

So we need to find strategies for getting back into their world. Not to be spotted, not to be influenced, but to provide an influence for them and to be salt and light in their dark and tasteless world. Well, let me just lay out some strategies by which we may penetrate the culture of our time redemptively and reach people in our world.

There are, by the way, a few people who will get saved even if we are a loop. There always have been a few people who were attracted to the monastic lifestyle and so forth. People who are just so disgusted with life or so incapable of coping with the trials of their lives that they just thought, I'm checking out.

I've either got to commit suicide or go join a nunnery. I've got to get out of this world one way or another. There will always be a few people who are attracted to the aloof, to the weird, to the out of touch style of Christian life.

But in general, that is not the kind of Christian life Jesus exhibited himself. Jesus ate with the tax collectors and sinners. He lived among them.

He was touching them all the time in ways that religious people felt uncomfortable with him doing because they were considered to be defiled to be had by contact with these people. But Jesus lived right among them. He at times defended them against the religious people.

He didn't defend their actions, but he often took their side. He certainly associated closely with them. And Christians need to be capable of doing the same thing with the same results that Jesus had.

Namely, he didn't become defiled by those contacts, but the world became less defiled. It became undefiled by contact with him. So let me suggest to you some practical strategies.

If you want to reach the world for Jesus, there are some things you may choose to do. One of those things is to strategically choose what line of employment you're going to be in. Where you're going to go to school, if you're going to go to college, or whatever.

And to make these choices based on the desire to promote the kingdom of God. Now, Christians often feel that it doesn't matter to God where they go to work or where they go to school, that they can make that decision on the same basis that non-believers do. As long as it's honest employment, as long as they're not studying something that's corrupt and preparing them for a sinful life.

They feel like, you know, that's pretty much their choice. What I would remind you is that Christians don't own themselves. We're bought with a price.

We don't belong to ourselves. We have a master now. If we have not forsaken all that we have, we cannot be disciples, Jesus said.

And that means our goals and our ambitions as well. We have to say, now Lord, where would you have me to serve? Now, God may well call you to go to college. He may well call you to go to work at a secular job, or what would the world normally call secular.

But he doesn't have you go there for the same reasons that worldly people go to those places. He wants you there as a spiritual saboteur to undermine the kingdom of darkness. Now, you may go to school just because you know that a particular school needs a Christian voice on the campus.

Or you might go to school because you know that God's calling you to do something for him later that's going to just require you to get an education. Either is all right. The point is, if you go to school, you should do it because you have reason to believe that this is in the will of God for you to make you more effective in promoting his purposes, his interests, his kingdom in the world.

And I have known people who have chosen jobs for themselves that were low in pay, when they could have had a higher paying job simply because they felt like the job they chose was better in terms of their opportunities for ministry and outreach and so forth. There are actually people, Moravians in history, who sold themselves into slavery because they heard of certain islands that were closed to the outside world where there were un-evangelized slaves as slave owners. And they knew that the only way to get in there and evangelize people was to sell themselves into slavery of those slave owners and to go there and to, you know, they were indentured for life.

They were just putting their life away so that they could reach these people. And that's like, I mean, that's like talking about choosing employment for strategic reasons. To sell yourself into actual slavery for life with no hope of retirement, you know, working 12 or 14 hours a day instead of a 40-hour week just so that you can penetrate a group of unbelievers with the gospel that would not otherwise have it, is pretty radical strategic employment choices.

And of course, none of us are in the position probably to sell ourselves into slavery, and I'm not sure that that'd be the right thing for all of us to do. But it certainly shows that what we do choose to do with our lives, and most of you are quite young and have most of your choices in this area ahead of you, you need to choose on the basis of, you know, where can I make my mark for the kingdom of God? Is it going to be in the arts? Is it going to be in business? Is it going to be in politics? Is it going to be in the media? Is it going to be, you know, in social work? What's it going to be? And this is, the choice you make, of course, will have a lot to do with what you feel God is calling you to do. But it may be that you've had goals all your life before you were a Christian, and thought, I always wanted to be a such and such.

And maybe even up to the moment that you got saved, that's what you wanted to be. You need to reconsider it now. It may be that God will still, you know, maybe he put that desire in your heart even before you were a Christian.

And maybe that's what he's going to call you to. At the same time, when you become a Christian, all things become new. Everything has to come up for reconsideration.

You forsake all that you have, and let God replace the pieces that have been forsaken. And it may be that you've had a goal or a desire to get a certain amount of education, or to get a degree from a certain particular institution that your parents approve of or something, or that you've always felt good about. Or that there's just some kind of career that you've always desired.

I say, better bring it up for reconsideration. It may be okay. It may be just the thing God's leading you to do.

But you should make choices like that. Any choice that's going to occupy hours of every day, like going to school full-time or having a job full-time, hours of every day for years on end, those choices have better be made with the top priorities in view. Namely, is this the best place for me to be, to reach part of my world? I can penetrate a school by enrolling as a student.

And I can be in that school for a very different reason than everyone else. I might do well in school, and I might even get a degree at the end for doing so. And that might all be well and good.

But it may be that the only reason I really go in there is because I think God wants me in there. And there's a campus, a school, a student body that lacks a viable witness for Jesus Christ. And I'm going in there as a missionary, or going into a job at McDonald's or Hewlett Packard as a missionary, or whatever.

I think Christians need to have a wartime mentality and realize that we only have a short time to live and a short time to make an impact. And that every bit of our energy and time that we can devote directly to that effort should be considered to be devoted that way. And if we can make a living, which God may want us to do, and also be reaching an area of our culture for God, using the same hours that we're making a living, all the better.

And I don't mean that when you're at the job, you need to be witnessing every minute to the people in the next office or on the assembly line or whatever. But it does mean that you're there for one purpose, because God needs an agent in that space. And God has planted you to sabotage the works of the enemy and to undermine the works of the devil.

Not to undermine the company, even if it's a secular corporation, but to undermine the work of the devil in the lives of the employees and employers and people that you'll come into contact with by being there. And your choices of education and employment, which for many of you lie ahead of you, and you maybe haven't even made those choices or at least you're in the position where you could change them at this point, need to be concerned with that one thing in mind. There's one thing needed.

Where does the scripture talk about being indebted to all men? Where Paul says, I'm indebted to the Jew and to the Gentile. I believe it's in Romans. I think it's in Romans chapter one, but I'm not sure.

I think he says, I'm indebted to the Jew and to the Gentile. I think it might be about Romans one, 15, perhaps. I don't know.

Let me see here. 14. Okay.

Romans one, 14 and 15. I'm a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and the unwise. So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also.

I think that's a good attitude for every Christian to have. Although Paul, of course, was an apostle and his principal calling was as a preacher. You might not be principally called as a preacher.

Yet I think every Christian should be able to say as much as is in me, that is as much as in my power to do, I'm ready. I'm ready to preach the gospel. Every opportunity God opens up for me, I'm ready.

Instant, in season, out of season. I want to get the gospel out to this world that we live in and make an impact. Okay.

So that's the first thing I'd like to bring up. Your choice of employment, your choice of schooling should be made with the idea of penetrating the pagan culture as an agent of the kingdom of God. I don't mind telling an unbeliever, you know, I'm an agent of a foreign government.

That's a good way to start a conversation. I'm an agent of the foreign government, the kingdom of God. It's actually a hostile power.

It's at war with this country. And I'm here as a secret agent, you know, to undermine the powers that be here. You know, I mean, I don't want to take it too far.

They might have me arrested, but it's a good way to open a conversation. And even if you never open a conversation that way, that's the way you should see yourself, wherever it is that you are in this world. Now, it's also, a second thing I'd like to suggest is that you consider targeting a particular cultural group.

And there are many, especially here in the West. Now, if you're called to be a missionary to another country, also, even that is targeting a certain group, a certain cultural group. But if you never leave this country, and if you're called to spend your time in this town or in another town all your life and never travel as a missionary or traveling preacher or anything like that, there's still value in deciding to what particular cultural group do I feel called and equipped to minister.

Examples would be, for example, children's ministries. Children are an entire group that has special needs, unlike other people's needs, special interests, unlike other people's interests, and takes special kinds of ministry to reach them. Obviously, a person who is ministering to children has to have the ability to communicate simply, whereas a person with a campus ministry to university students doesn't necessarily have to have quite the same capacity.

And a person who is ministering to children has to have a tremendous sensitivity to how children feel and think, which often other Christians don't have that and maybe don't need that to the same extent because of their calling. But you might check it out and see, well, maybe I'm called to reach children. By the way, if you reach children, you're reaching all the cultural groups of the next generation because they're all there.

The children today are all basically of one group. They're kind of homogenous. They're all kind of non-committed to lifestyles at this point.

Of course, some of them have been unusually deeply committed to certain lifestyles, like if they're homeless or whatever or abused or whatever. Of course, that's a special category. But the children that you would reach now would eventually differentiate into different cultural types later in life.

And sowing into the lives of children is an incredibly important ministry, and I wish there were more people who did it effectively. There are a lot of children's ministries directed toward children that I think are not effective in the ways that I would like to see them. There are Christian camping organizations and Sunday schools and different kinds of clubs and fun activities for kids that different Christian organizations have.

Some of them are very good. Some of them I really am disappointed with. I remember in high school, there was an organization, a very well-known campus organization that had an outreach there.

All their activities were just fun and games. You could go to them for almost the whole school year and never hear the gospel. They'd have potato sack races and tug of wars and haunted houses at Halloween time and mocked the wars and things like that with each other.

They'd have campouts and retreats and so forth. These were all very entertaining and drew large crowds of kids. But I talked to one of the leaders of this organization, and he made it very clear, we don't preach the gospel to these kids until the end of the year, because we win them in with all these other activities.

Well, I mean, different strategies for different people. I don't particularly appreciate that strategy, because what about the kids who come for a couple of activities and then wash out before the end of the year and they never hear the gospel? Or what about the fact that some of these kids may even want to respond to the gospel at the end of the year, but the school year is over and they're never going to see these other kids again, so they don't have the encouragement of the group that they would have had if they were introduced earlier to the Lord. I mean, that's different people who have different philosophies, but I'm not real happy with the effects of all of the ministries to children that are out there.

I'd like to see more people really anointed with special wisdom for effectively speaking in the lives of children and grabbing their hearts for Jesus. And there are people who seem to have those gifts. And you may feel like targeting that particular cultural group.

On the other end of the spectrum, of course, there's those who have special ministries to the elderly. This can be a fairly depressing kind of ministry, because elderly people are often very set in their ways, and it's kind of statistically much fewer of them make new decisions for Christ in their old age than children or other age groups. There have been statistical tests done, and the results have shown that as you get older, the likelihood of making a change toward being a Christian is actually reduced.

You'd think it'd be the opposite way. You'd think there's people near the end of their life, they'd be more concerned about getting around with God. But the Bible indicates that when a person does return to God early in life, and they resist the gospel when they hear it earlier in life, there's a hardening that takes place.

And although you'd think that common sense would tell them as they get older, hey, I better get around with God, actually an increased numbness to the things of God is often the characteristic of many who have been resisting the gospel all their lives, and by the time they're old, many of them are practically reprobate. And it can be very depressing going to convalescent homes and things like that. I've spent much time ministering in those areas, and I've seen everything from the sweetest little grandmotherly types who love the Lord in those places, to really hardened, angry, hostile, bitter old sinners who won't even answer back when you speak to them and so forth.

But that's a mission field. Those are people who are about ready to perish. Not because of persecution, not because of disaster, but just because of the disaster of reaching the end of their time here on earth, in old age.

And if someone can reach those people, maybe that's where your burden is. Then target that group and try to find ways to get into them. Obviously, once you've targeted a group, there are practical ways to get in at them, to get into rest homes and stuff.

As someone who just goes around, Minnie Davidson, who many of you know because he was here earlier in the year, used to be on our staff. Just when he got saved, no one had to encourage him at all. He just went out.

He knew some old guys in Bandon where we live, some old guys who were farmers and construction guys that he had just met over the years as a heathen, and who were now locked up in convalescent homes. And he just took it on himself to go and visit them, I think a couple times a week, and just to read the Bible to them. Many of them were not Christians, but I think that some of them died as believers as a result of just going to them.

He really didn't have a sophisticated ministry. He just went. These people were lonely, and he just went and read the Bible to them.

A lot of people were ready to listen to anything. And so, to target older people, and they don't all have to be in convalescent homes. Sometimes they're shut in, because there may be widows who live alone and never get out much.

Maybe they're partly blind or partly crippled and can't really get around. But you know of them. There might be some kind of innovative way you can get into their lives with the gospel.

Mexicans, as a cultural group here in Oregon and in California and many parts of the United States, are another group that is largely unreached and needs to be targeted. In this town, I think there is a Spanish-speaking church service in this town now. I'm not sure.

I think I heard that. But a couple of years ago, there wasn't one. And yet, the Mexican population in this town is increasing very rapidly.

And more and more people who don't speak English are coming to this town, and probably to almost any other town in the United States that you might be in, especially in the West, near Mexico. A lot of these people are largely an unreached people group, and yet they're right at our doorstep. And a person who knows Spanish or wants to learn Spanish could probably have a tremendous harvest in that field.

In fact, it would probably make most of the Mexican people stand up and take notice of some kind of an Anglo, well-to-do, middle-class American person actually took an interest in them. Because a lot of these people are poor, they're working for low-paying jobs, and they live in poor housing in many cases. And they'd probably be interested in knowing what makes you tick that you would want to reach out to them.

And you may find a tremendous harvest if you target that group. The migrant farm workers, most of the Mexicans, are a group of people that desperately need to be reached. They're probably among the poorest people in this part of the world, is the Mexican migrant farm workers.

Many of them are here illegally. They live in camps during the harvest seasons. They move around from place to place.

Bill Martin's son-in-law, John Conferno, works with their children. He's a teacher. He teaches in Spanish to the children of the migrant farm workers.

He had some stories that'll just really tear your heart out about some of the conditions under which these people came into the country. A lot of them have been, 20 of them crammed into the back of a U-Haul truck to sneak over the border and had to stand there without getting out to go to the bathroom, I think, for 24 hours or something. So they're standing in their own putrefaction and so forth for all these hours.

And when they get here, it's not the paradise they thought it would be. They live in these unsanitary camps, and their kids have lice and parasites all the time. They're making very little money.

And since they're illegal, they often are exploited where the people will have them work for a week and then they won't pay them. They'll promise them, but they won't pay them. And they can't take them to court, can't take their employer to court because they're here illegally.

So they're just being exploited in many cases. And a lot of times they've got it worse off here than they had it before they left home. Now, we might say, well, they bring it on themselves.

They're illegal. They should obey the law. Well, that's easy for us to say, maybe.

These people are often in desperate situations, and their coming to America is often a desperate attempt to stay alive or keep their children alive. And it's a very sad situation. And I know my wife and I don't speak Spanish.

We want to learn it because we have a particular burden for those people. And I think that more Christians need to maybe target those people as a group to reach out to. They would probably find them fairly receptive, I would imagine.

Of course, college students or high school students are a people group to be penetrated. It's a cultural group all to itself. Campus community life is pretty much out of touch with the rest of the real world, as you know.

I mean, not out of touch in the sense they don't know what's going on out there. They read the newspapers, too. They watch the news or whatever.

It's not like they don't know what's going on out there. It's just that in their real life, it's kind of isolated. The life of the campus is what their whole life is focused on for the time they're at school, to a large extent.

Their social life is all there and so forth. So it becomes sort of a homogenous cultural group. And there's a number of ways to penetrate that group.

One, as I said, is to just become a student. Become a student and get right in their midst. Infiltrate.

Another is, maybe you feel led to become a teacher, a college professor, in which case you're going to have to do some educational preparation to do that. Or it may be that you don't want to do either of those two things, but since there's a campus, for example, right across the street here, you can think of some creative ways to just go over and reach the student community and target them as a special people group that you want to get to. One of the good things about campus ministry, especially college campus ministry, is that you can reach many nations in one spot.

You're supposed to go to all the world, right? I mean, we are. As corporately, the church should go to all the world. Well, a lot of times when you go to a college campus, you find the whole world has come to you.

Many Asian countries, many European countries are usually represented in the student population of any average-sized college campus. And these people are usually going to go back home when they're done. Some of them are going to stay around, but a lot of these people are over here to get an American education and go home to their own countries.

You can reach them now. It's easier to reach them here than it is to go over there to their country and reach them. And you can reach many nations by an effective ministry on college campuses.

And some of you may feel like targeting that group as a special group to concentrate your efforts on. Another cultural group would be, of course, in our modern times, homeless families. Maybe we should call them jobless.

They are homeless, but some of them are homeless because they're jobless. Others have jobs, but they don't have enough money to get a home. But there must be... I must admit, I haven't really worked with the modern homeless people.

I worked with street people for years in the 70s, but it was a totally different kind of street culture. In those days, it was hippies from rich homes who were renouncing their parents' materialism and were living on the street and living in, you know, many of them in small houses and so forth. I mean, a whole bunch of them in one house and so forth just to save money.

It was part of their whole philosophy of renouncing materialism and the American way of life. But almost all of them could have gone home to their parents any time they wanted to and there was a bedroom waiting for them and all the luxuries of home. They were street people by choice in many cases.

Not all of them. Some of them were, you know, homeless in the sense that modern people are. There are a number of people who are homeless today just because housing is so expensive and unemployment is fairly high.

And some of them just are underprivileged people. And I don't deny that some of them bring it on themselves. I think that some of them probably could change their circumstances if they're willing to take jobs.

But again, the question of whether they brought it on themselves or not is not the question we're supposed to be asking ourselves at this point. If we lead some of them to the Lord and we find that they brought their circumstances on themselves, then the process of discipleship will be to train them to get out of those circumstances by getting a job and whatever else involves. But right now, we just need to pity them and reach out to them.

And there are people who, no doubt, when they hear about the homeless situation, God speaks to your heart about that. Makes you feel like maybe I'd like to have some special input into their lives. You know, another cultural group is stay-at-home mothers, homemakers.

It's a dying breed, but there are still some women who like to stay home with their kids and are willing to live maybe a little more poorly than other people so that they don't have to have a double-income family and they can be available to raise their kids. A lot of these are not Christians. It seems to me like there's a higher density of Christians in that particular cultural group than there are in most other cultural groups.

Because most people who are not Christians seem to be, I mean, statistically seem to be wanting to go for the double-income deal. And it's not surprising that there'd be a difference between Christians and non-Christians in this respect, because for Christians, this world is all, I mean, non-Christians, this world is all they have. And to live poor unnecessarily seems to them a greater tragedy than it does to a Christian, because a Christian realizes, hey, I can live poor here and have rewards in heaven.

The non-Christian doesn't have that option. Furthermore, non-Christians often don't appreciate the fact that some of the best things you can give your kids are spiritual things rather than material things. There are some people who feel like they deprive their kids if they can't give them designer jeans and the latest Fisher-Price toys and their own TV and their own Walkman and their own CD player and so forth, because after all, all their kids at school have those things.

And they don't, I mean, they honestly feel like their kids are deprived if they don't have these things. I think the kids have a way of making their parents feel that way. And therefore, there's pressure on non-Christians, and no doubt on Christians too, to earn more money, to keep up with the standard of living of our times, and that usually requires, in most cases, a double income for a family.

And so more and more mothers are leaving the homes and being in the job place, the workplace, and there's of course a mission field there too. But there are some mothers, as I said, I think there's more Christians among them than among some of the other groups, but there are some mothers who are at home. How do you reach these people? It seems to me, door to door is about the only way to really get to these people.

Door to door ministry can be a little bit frustrating nowadays because it's hard to find people at home. I've gone door to door several times, many times, in many neighborhoods, you have to go to four doors before you find one that someone answers you, because most people are out working two jobs or whatever. But someone has to get to those stay at home mothers and homemakers that are not in church, they're not watching Christian television, it may be, and they don't know the Lord.

They're isolated. Now, I know something about this, because my wife is a stay at home mom, and she has a social life among Christians. But even so, there is still a certain amount of isolation there.

Any woman who intends to stay home with her kids is not going to be able to go out to the coffee clash all the time. And so there's going to be more isolation, and there's going to have to be different strategies for reaching that group, for penetrating that sphere. Another, I think, another group would be people who are traveling.

Bus stations are a great place, train stations. Even if you're not traveling, there's a lot of people who pass through there in a long time. One of the frustrating things about living in a small town for me, and this is not as small as the town I moved from to get here, but living in a small town, it's hard to find people gathered in large numbers anywhere.

In Bandon, when we were there, there was just no place. Now, I suppose if I went to the ball games or something like that, there would have been a lot of kids gathered, and adults too, I guess, but I usually had a Friday night meeting, and I wasn't free to go out to the ball games. Where I come from, in California, in Santa Cruz, there were street people all over the place.

There was always people gathering in the parks and places like that. When I came to Oregon, where it rains and it's cold and windy in Bandon, people just don't stand around outside to enjoy the weather. It was a frustration.

Coming here is a much improvement to me. I like larger populations, but still, I haven't discovered yet in this town where people hang out in large numbers. Someone can inform me if you've discovered it, because I would like to go and reach some of the people.

I like to address groups of people. I like to work one-on-one too. A place like a train station or a bus station, neither are in town, of course, here, but both exist in Salem and in Portland and other nearby places, is a good place to talk to people.

For one thing, a lot of people are lonely when they're traveling. An airport is an interesting place to watch people's faces. A lot of times, people have been visiting loved ones, they're about ready to take a flight and go far away and not see them for a long time.

A lot of times, they're leaving loved ones if they're not sure when they'll see them again. There's a lot of vulnerability when people are traveling a lot of times. It's a good place, these kind of places are good places to find a lot of people, and a lot of people who are lonely and vulnerable at the moment.

The same people might not be vulnerable once they reach their destination. Suddenly, they click into their old social style when they're around their friends, but when they're in the airport, they don't know anybody. A lot of people are pretty insecure when they're only around all strangers.

And frankly, without sounding too crass, you can exploit that insecurity. You can befriend them, and their defenses may be to a large measure down. Whereas ordinarily, they'd have the support of all their friends to resist the gospel, here they're somewhat more on their own.

It's you against them alone, or it's God against them alone. You can often find a good situation there. Street people, prostitutes, drunks in the gutter.

There are special ministries to people like that. Some of them are groups like we heard about this morning. Some are rescue missions.

There's various outreaches to these people. It takes a lot of stamina, a lot of patience to have this kind of ministry, especially if you're targeting drunks. People who run rescue missions and target very frequently alcoholics and derelicts, that takes more patience than I generally have.

So many times I've found it's easy to get a drunk to say a sinner's prayer with you because he's blubbering in his misery, how he's ruined his family, and how he's lost his job, and his life is in shambles, and so forth. Different drunks have different mentalities. Some of them are more hostile, and some of them are more soft, but the sad thing is that a lot of times, especially when I was younger, I would lead someone to the Lord apparently while they were drunk, and they seemed vulnerable, and then when they sobered up they were back to their old ways again.

It just takes hanging out with these people, being there in the long term, and being willing to see little fruit, very little fruit sometimes for your efforts. At the same time, those are the very kinds of people that Jesus hung out with and that he said he came especially for. He didn't come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance, because it's the sick who need a physician, not all the sick want a physician, but all of them need it.

I admire people who pick those cultural groups where there's the least gratification in ministry to them. Many times the fewest response is people who stick with the Lord even after you leave them to the Lord. But maybe that's what your burden would be.

Another group of people, it's not as large a group as it once was, people who hitchhiked. When we lived in Bandon, there were a lot of hitchhikers going up and down the coast. If you live along I-5 or something, or some major thoroughfare, which is a major artery between what connects lots of major cities, you'll still encounter hitchhikers.

I wouldn't suggest that women pick up hitchhikers very often, but some of the guys might feel so inclined. One thing nice about picking up a hitchhiker is you have a captive audience. In all likelihood, he's been staying up there a long time and he doesn't want to be put out there again.

I know, because I've done a bit of hitchhiking myself, a good bit of it. I've stood outside all night long in the cold at least twice, and frozen, and I would have been glad for any run. If there had been a manure truck that would have let me jump in the back, there would have been times when I would have welcomed it.

Because I was in the middle of nowhere, I had nobody, no money, nothing, and it was cold. I was making no progress in the direction I wanted to go. So I know the heart of the hitchhiker, and I know that while you'll still find some hitchhikers who are no more ready to hear the Gospel than anyone else, still, if they're in your car, you've got... I've known very few hitchhikers who, if you talk to them about the Lord, they'll say, There have been a few.

I've known of a few. But that's a rare case. Those people are probably about as... if you met them on the street, you probably wouldn't have any success with them either.

They really don't want God. But a lot of people... of course, one of the problems with hitchhikers too, is they may be humoring you, because they desperately want you to keep them in the car. A lot of these people are drifters who just don't have any home.

They're like the homeless in some cases. And they're a group that really needs attention. So, let me just identify some of those.

Maybe you can think of some other cultural groups that we ought to penetrate. There are Christians working in many of these groups, of course. And there are many others, like crisis pregnancy centers, are reaching a particular cultural group.

Mostly, not entirely, but mostly unmarried girls who have a crisis of pregnancy in their life. And that's a tremendously large group of people in our culture. And I praise God that someone has targeted that group and is doing an excellent job with it.

You may have some other group that you have noticed, and you think the work that is being done among them leaves much to be desired. And you may want to target them and try to get at them. One thing about penetrating our culture is we've got to make the gospel visible.

As I said yesterday, we can't really expect that all the believers who need to be saved, nor even all the believers who would like to be saved, are necessarily going to walk into the church. There was a time, I think, in our culture where the church stood for righteousness. I mean, in the minds of the average person.

You know, they kind of take off their hat when they walk into church. Because there was something reverent in the way that people thought of a church building and so forth. That's not the case anymore.

Churches just don't command that kind of respect in our culture anymore, I don't think. Maybe with a few people, but not so much as before. And the average person on the street, even who believes he'd like to know God, often doesn't think of a church as the place where he'll find it.

Because they've known too many church people. And they're convinced that those church people didn't find God, obviously. So why should I go to their church to find God? He must not be there.

And so instead of expecting them to come to us, we have to go out and make the gospel visible to them. And this can be done in a variety of ways. I've known a number of ways that this is done.

One, sometimes... And I'm not... These are not broad, general things. These are some specific examples I know of that have been effective. Sometimes Christians decide to have church in a park, or on a beach.

We used to have all of our baptisms public at the beach in Santa Cruz. I mean, it was an evangelistic opportunity. We'd either baptize in a river, and always in a place where people were gathered to swim and stuff.

Or at the beach, and it would draw a lot of attention. And then we'd preach to people, and sometimes we'd baptize some more as a result of that. And other people I've known have... Where there isn't a beach for baptisms and things, have had church in public parks.

I know of one very effective ministry that did that in Southern California in the early 70s. And they had hundreds of people who were just people who hung out in the park. Who eventually got saved, and were being made disciples out of.

And it made a good church, and they never owned a building. Of course, that was in Southern California. It doesn't rain as often there as it does here.

There's obviously limitations that weather and climate may dictate. But one thing nice about a church in the park is it's out in the open. People can hear the message.

People who are sitting... who don't want to attend, but are close enough to hear. I mean, if they really don't want to hear, they can move out of earshot. A lot of times they can listen because they really want to listen, but they don't want to commit themselves by walking into a church.

But they get exposed to seeing how Christians worship, how Christians think, and the gospel is preached. There's also such things as neighborhood Bible studies. If you have a home, just invite your neighbors to come over for a Bible study.

My father and mother have done this. Not actually in their home, another Christian in their block has opened their home, and my dad has been asked to teach. He's not really even a Bible teacher, but among the neighbors he was the one who was most likely to succeed.

And so he was asked to do it. And all the non... well, not all, but several of the non-Christian neighbor couples came weekly to this Bible study. I mean, there are people who, if they already have a relationship with you as a neighbor, are often willing to learn something about your religious views if it's a non-threatening situation.

You know, kind of a casual visit where you make it very clear, we're going to study the Bible. If you're interested, come on over. Now, if they're not interested, there's no reason to twist their arm.

If God is calling them, they'll be interested. If God is working on their heart, they'll be hungry for spiritual things. And just to hear that there is available someone who is willing to talk to them about the Bible will be a value to them.

And you might think that people aren't really like that very much, but listen, the Jehovah's Witnesses have tremendous success by going door to door and saying, would you like to have a Bible study with us? And most of the people that get converted there get converted because they wanted to know something more about the Bible. Now, of course, a lot of people who get converted by Jehovah's Witnesses are actually religious people already from other denominations. But, you know, it strikes me as incredible that the Jehovah's Witnesses have such success with this, and the Christians have hardly even tapped this hunger that seems to exist in neighborhoods.

Sometimes it can be tapped by door to door, or if you live in such a neighborhood, it can be tapped by inviting your neighbors that you're acquainted with, the people you talk to over the back fence or whatever, over on Wednesday nights for a Bible study or something for coffee and a Bible study. And then over a period of time, they're just drawn. You don't have to nail them with the gospel the first time they're over, but just spark their interest in spiritual things.

A lot of people out there are curious to know what the Bible says, even if they're not sure it's the Word of God or maybe they suspect it isn't. They know it's been culturally very significant in the Western culture, and they know that it's a book that has a lot of wisdom in it, and they know that some people, they know their lives have been affected for the better by the Bible, and while they may have no conviction that this is the Word of God or that Christianity is true, there's still a curiosity. They kind of wish they knew more about the Bible.

Most of them have a Bible at home that they've never read, and maybe even a few times they've pulled out and tried to read it, and it's just gibberish to them. And if someone came up and said, listen, we're going to try to explain what the Bible's talking about here on Tuesday nights at my house. We're going to go through the Gospel of John, or we're going to go through the book of Genesis or something.

A lot of people, not all, but a lot of people jump at that chance, and it's a good way to get the Bible visible to them and the Gospel visible to them who would never maybe go to a church. They might not be motivated to go to church, but you can reach them that way. And then again, I mentioned door-to-door.

The Jehovah's Witnesses go door-to-door very effectively. Christians do much less often. I've done door-to-door ministry quite a bit, but I'm not, no, I shouldn't say quite a bit.

Certainly not very much compared to JWs. That's their main thing, but I have on several different occasions gone door-to-door, and there's different ways to do it. I mean, you can just go door-to-door like Denny Misley was talking about.

He did when he was a student at the Christ for the Nations, and probably you just walk up and say, I'm here to talk about Jesus. Do you want to talk? Or, you know, would you like to? I'm a Christian. I'm from such and such a school.

Actually, Eric, you and Ron Buck went door-to-door here. What did you guys say? What were your pretenses? We introduced ourselves. You know, we said, Hi, my name is Eric, and this is my friend Ron.

We're from the Great Commission School in St. Rose. That's one of our fellows in Blaine. We're wondering if you would, or if you have any questions about what we're doing there, and if you'd like to just make ourselves more visible.

If you have any questions about our faith, Christianity, our believers. Excellent. Yeah, that's an excellent opening.

You see, while you're a student at the Great Commission School, there's a lot of people in this town who have seen the sign and say, what in the world is the Great Commission School? If someone comes to the door and says, I'm a student at the Great Commission School, I say, oh, I always wondered what that place was. You know, what do you do there? Oh, we study the Bible. We're Christians.

Are you a Christian? And it's a good opening. Some people go to me with surveys. I don't care for the survey approach.

Again, different philosophies of ministry for different people. I don't like a survey that's deceptive. I don't like people who say, we're taking a religious survey.

Do you have any religious convictions? It gives the impression that you're disinterested. It gives the impression that you're doing some kind of research, where in fact what you're looking for is an opportunity to witness that. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong to try to get a witness in, but I think some people resent it when they discover that you come on them with the impression that you're an impartial researcher.

And as a matter of fact, they realize now, oh, you came with an agenda. You want to convert me to your religion. And some of those are affected.

I remember once we had, we didn't do this door to door, but there was a festival called the Cranberry Festival at Bannon. And we a few times had a booth there where we had the spiritual IQ test. And we made it clear that we're Christians, you know what I mean? But we had a spiritual IQ test where we asked people how much they knew about spiritual things.

And we usually had multiple choice questions about the nature of God and the basic problem with man and what the solution to man's problem is. We gave them choices between the Christian answer, a New Age answer, some other answers, philosophical humanist answers and so forth. And then we'd grade the test for them and tell them what they got right and what they got wrong.

And there were actually a pretty good number of responses to that. I mean, some people got saved. I don't know if it was through that test or not.

But one thing I did in Santa Cruz in terms of door to door witnessing was I published a little card. It had a list of all the evangelical churches that I knew of in town. Their names of the churches, their address, their phone number, the pastor's name.

And on the card, it was kind of an attractive little card printed up nicely. And it said, there are people in this town who really care about you. And then inside the card it said, the people of the following churches love Jesus Christ and gather regularly to worship him and to make his word known.

We'd invite you to visit one of these churches this week if you feel a spiritual need in your life. And then there'd be a list of churches in alphabetical order without giving preference to any. All these different denominations.

And it made a tremendous impression on people. We'd go to door to door. And what we did, I got several churches involved doing it so that people from two different churches would go together to a door.

And they'd say, what church are you from? Well, I'm from the Baptist church. I'm from the Calvary Chapel or something. It's obvious you're not there to promote your church.

You're just there to promote Christianity. And it was quite clear in this little card we had. We had this card and a parable track.

And we said, now, we don't want to disturb you right now. We realize you may be in the middle of something. But we'd like to give you this invitation to visit the church of your choice locally this week.

And we'd like to give you this little booklet. And we'd like to come back next week and see what you think about it. And so we'd leave it with them.

And see, then when we came back the next week, they weren't surprised. If we had taken them away from a ball game or something when we appeared on the door and tried to engage them in a long conversation, they might be resenting our being there because we're interrupting something. But by the next week when we came by, they were kind of expecting us.

It wasn't so much of an intrusion. It was no surprise. And in many cases, they'd already read the track.

And it was impossible to distract them from the conversation. Anyway, there's different approaches to door-to-door work. But it's certainly one way to make sure that you get to every person in town.

You can take a map of the city, as we did. And we divided it into different sectors. And said, okay, this Saturday, we're all going to take these neighborhoods.

Next Saturday, we'll go to these ones. And eventually, we'll hit the whole town. And then we'll move out to another town.

Now, I must confess, although this went on for several weeks in a row, maybe a few months in a row, we never did finish the whole town. But we did see it was a good experience and good proof came from it at a certain level. We never knew exactly how much because the people who got them may have gone to different churches.

So we didn't know where all these people were showing up. But we had some very good conversations. And I believe it was positive.

Of course, there's also another way to make the gospel visible is to exploit special occasions like concerts, ballgames, fairs, festivals, movies. When there's crowds waiting outside to get in, waiting in line. Around here, I haven't seen any lines waiting to get in movies.

Partly because there's just no crowds. But in California, where I came from, if there's a really blockbuster movie out, there'd be people lined up for a couple blocks waiting to get in. And they're not going anywhere fast.

And you can talk to them or talk to them as they come out. The Jews for Jesus used to do this quite a bit. They'd print up real inexpensively what they call broadsides.

And they were just an 8 1⁄2 by 11 sheet folded three ways like a letter. And it would have some real primitive artwork on it. I mean, it was quickly made.

Just some kind of funny little artwork and some words in large print and so forth about particular movies. When Star Wars came out, they had a couple broadsides about Star Wars. When The Exorcist came out, they had some broadsides about that.

And they would go to the movie house where these were playing and hand these out to the people in the crowd as they were waiting to go in. And the track would start by saying something about the movie and the message of the movie and move on down to a gospel presentation. Not too confrontational.

They would count on personal conversations for the real meat of the presentation. But something to get people talking. Or hit people when they're coming out.

To go to a movie like, and of course it's not the movie houses anymore, but if there's a movie that affects people like The Mission did. How many of you went to The Mission and saw The Mission? That movie, you walk out of there feeling like your gut's been scraped out with a giant spoon. And you're kind of in shock when you walk out of that movie.

In a positive sense. I mean it's an excellent movie, I think. And it's even, it's got much Christian merit.

In fact, I own the video. If you haven't seen it, I'd like you to see it this year. It's very moving.

But when people come out of there, they're thinking about things. They're thinking about spiritual things. And I understand when Ghost was out.

I never did see the movie Ghost, but recently it was popular in the movies. I think some Christians would go to movie houses and talk to people about it afterwards. Because there was, I guess a new age message there.

But it got people thinking about death and stuff. When you get a movie that's drawing big crowds and raises philosophical or religious questions, it's a good thing you can exploit it. If you're familiar with the movie and you know how to turn a question involved with, that involves a movie around to a witness, there's a good place to do it.

We went as a group in a bus load from our church in Santa Cruz to a Rolling Stones concert in San Francisco. We didn't go in the concert, but there was, you know, the people were lined up for blocks and blocks waiting to get in. For hours in advance.

Because they knew they weren't all going to get in. So we just stood up there and played guitars and sang, you know, within your shot. We had rocks thrown at us and stuff.

One of our guys got hit by a rock and stuff. We ended up preaching and teaching and the crowds didn't go anywhere. They weren't going to lose their spot in that line.

They tried to drive us away, but they weren't going to get out of there. These are places where large numbers of people are who may never hear the gospel anywhere else and they're stuck in one place for a while. You can talk to them about the Lord.

So the police can drive you away. Okay, I'm going to have to take a break here for a bunch. We are going to talk when we come back about communication and, you know, some things you ought to know about communication if you're going to share the gospel effectively.

But these are just some suggestions and there are others you could probably think of where if you're really dedicated to the task, you can penetrate our culture, at least parts of it, by concentrating on certain strategies and certain targets. And I think we all ought to be thinking along these lines from time to time. Even if it's just children's ministries or Sunday school classes or whatever, we all ought to be putting out something.

We're taking in so much all the time. We need to be putting out in terms of ministering to other people in the world too.