Peer to Peer Evangelism

No doubt about it! There is nothing in the world of students that is more powerful and impacting than "peer to peer evangelism." The stories have been multiplying like crazy these past few months in the Student Ministry here at Second Baptist the West Campus. We now have students who have only recently come to know Christ because of one of their friends, who have already begun to reach their friends for Christ. The impact has been incredible. I have seen 17-18 year old young men, who really don't cheer about much, screaming and jumping up and down with excitement as their friends are baptized in the fountain here at church.

I love it, this is how it is supposed to happen. Sometimes even I forget that in our walk with Christ the goal is not that we become super intelligent, over-developed, ultra-spiritual Christians. Instead the goal is to mobilize the workers, who Christ reminds us are few in Matthew 9:37-38. "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field," to do the work of taking the love of Christ to the world. I talk with students week in and week out who believe that is necessary for them to obtain some higher level of spirituality in their walk with Christ before they can begin to be effective in doing his work. It's just not true. Take the woman at the well, she knew Christ for a whopping 30 seconds before she went into the Samartian village and began to tell people about what he had done in her life. There is no time, age, ability, intelligence factor, vocabulary or any other limitation or requirement to be mobilized in the army of Christ.

It is this thought about evangelism that scares me to death about what we have done so many times to make evangelism what it isn't in the church. As hard as we, me included, work to preach the Gospel from the stage, we need to be working even harder to mobilize those workers who God has put right into our laps. Students, adults, and children alike have to begin to understand that the church (the people), are the ones responsible for bringing the lost. Be as creative as you want with your teaching series or your plans for bringing in the lost...if we aren't mobilizing followers of Christ in our ministries, or spheres of influence, we are missing the point.