What is Good News to these people?

What do these people have in common?

Dale, a professional voice coach for television actors and musiciens
Lurdes, a poet
Tiago, a traditional baptist church pastor who plays bass in an up-and-coming punk band in Lisbon
Jordan, an American entrepreneur who refurbishes homes and rents them out?

Dale & Lurdes

Tiago and Alfredo

Jordan

They seek to share Good News with Portuguese people who would never otherwise cross the threshold of a church building. They attempt to discern “what aspects of the full-orbed Gospel would be truly Good News to these people, in this place at this time?”

Their stories revealed that they had tried lots of traditional approaches, but generally only reached church people. (Joshua Project estimates that 3% of the Portuguese are evangelical compared to 35% of the N. American people group.)

Their desire for people to know Jesus sent them on a quest to connect with the majority of the population that is not at all interested in church.

Alfredo led us in lectio divina

He uses this contemplative bible reading to sow the Word in the lives of business people who do not know Christ.

See Tiago’s youtube video “You kiss like a nun”

Interestingly, Tiago has decided to keep the local church very traditional in order to discover what true spirituality is. He does not want to draw people to the “punk church” or cater to the fad of the month in worship. He connects with people outside of the church but wants them to come to church because of Jesus only.

On the way home from dinner, Jordan took some workshop members out to meet some of the homeless to whom he distributes food.

Not all who attended the workshop were gifted as evangelists, so we explored what might have gone through Timothy’s mind when he read Paul’s letter saying, “Do the work of an evangelist”. Evidently Timothy knew what Paul wanted him to do, but we did not want to assume that we do 2000 years later.

So Roy led us in a biblical theology jaunt through Scripture to discover the meaning of “evangelist” (euangelistes: Acts 6:1-7; 8:3-40; 21:1-8; Ephesians 4:4-16; 2 Timothy 4:1-5). And we took an especially close look at Philip the evangelist.
We distilled from the life of Philip that an evangelist is a person who:

• is a servant
• is recognized as being filled with the Spirit, wisdom and faith
• is on the go, yet wherever s/he is always remains focused on sharing the Good News of Jesus
• demonstrates and articulates Good News in a way that people see, hear and respond to it

We recognized that the Ephesians 4:11 "evangelist" — a person who is a gift incarnate given to the Church by Christ — may be or should be on the go more than someone doing the work of an evangelist.

And while "Timothys" should “work at bringing others to Christ” (NLT 2 Timothy 4:5), an indicator of the evangelist’s giftedness is that people actually receive Christ when s/he talks with them.
Stories were shared of how the gospel was shared faithfully over a period of time, but it was when the evangelist shared the exact same message that the person gave their life to Christ.

“Cindy” attended a Christian campus group bible study week in and week out. But in God’s plan it was when she attended church where there was a visiting speaker (who happened to be an evangelist but was not preaching a particularly evangelistic message) that she surrendered her life to Christ.

We recognized, therefore, that evangelism is a team effort (1 Corinthians 3:5-9).
We recognized that as we plant ourselves and the Good News, that as others water that seed through testimony and teaching, that if God does not give the growth our farming will be barren; “he is the one who makes the seed grow.”

So we prayed for people with whom we are currently sharing Christ, that they too might have the joy of knowing him.