Buttery Vehicles
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As always, thank you so much for your time. Last time I spoke about the concept of Wishes and Destinations within “CHOCOLATE EVANGELISM, Outreach in your Comfort Zone”.
To read these Blogs from the beginning (and so it all makes sense!) please click on the Categories menu at the right. They are arranged alphabetically and the Posts they lead to should be read from the bottom up as the more recent is on the top.
We now have our basic Cacao Bean (hopefully ground into a fine powder). This is a great start, but still really not Chocolate. It needs butter for it to work.
Likewise, we now have our Plan in place and need to do something about it. That something is a Vehicle. A Vehicle is our ‘Shopfront’. In regard to Evangelism, this is the point we connect with outsiders.
God’s greatest Vehicle in modern times is His written Word – the Bible.
Vehicles come in as many flavours as there are Human Beings. A crucial point to remember is that the nature of the Vehicle is derived from the people God has called us to engage with, NOT US. If we base our Vehicles on us, usually we will fail to achieve our Destinations.
We may have a great Wish, such as ‘Introduce local men to Christ’, with some good Destinations such as ‘Use the ‘State of Origin’ Rugby League Game to engage meaningfully with Men outside the Church’’, only to be let down by the wrong Vehicle.
Please compare this. Our Church ran a ‘State of Origin’ evangelism evening. ‘State of Origin’ is a major televised community football event on the East Coast of Australia. Several people spent quite a bit of time making sure the activity happened. Food had to be prepared; the projector paid for, picked up and returned, advertisement had to go out and the church building set up. Lots of little things had to be done. Our most well intentioned congregation were told to bring their (I feel, mostly non-existent) non-Christian friends. After all this passion and energy was expended, few (if any) non-Christians came.
The Vehicle in this case was the evening at Church.
On that same evening, a few of us did something different. I have many non-Christian biker friends, some of whom invited me to their football evening at their Clubhouse. I took up the invite and went with some other Christian brothers who shared my friendship with this particular group. Our preparation time was NIL. Our non-Christian friends organised the whole thing. This freed us up to interact, by helping with tasks or simply sitting back enjoying each other’s company and the game on a big screen. This led to heaps of quality interactions, setting the stage for much more ministry in the future. An example of this was we were asked to baptize one of the biker’s babies, as the family had no contact with any church, but believed in God.
The Vehicle in this case was the evening at our friend’s motorcycle Clubhouse.
Which Vehicle do you think impacted the most on others outside the church? Which event channelled the most Time, Energy and Money into achieving the aforementioned Destinations?
I’m not suggesting everything has to be done outside the Church building or members houses. I’m also not suggesting everything done in a Church building or members houses is necessarily bad. In this instance, I’m contrasting what I felt were two similar Vehicles with two vastly different outcomes.
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Next week I’ll be talking about ‘Sugary Tools’ and how they enhance our Vehicles, equipping us to more effectively achieve God’s Destinations for us
May God bless you in all your endeavours for Him
Captain Andrew CARTER