Lifestyle Evangelism is . . . Gospel Distribution.

What would happen to a company that spent all its time, effort, and money on maintenance? What if this company spent little energy, time, or money on distribution of its product? What if this company spent all its energy on resolving inner conflicts and tension as if those were the most important issues of the company? What if this company, so intent on keeping down its overhead, especially when its overhead was spent mostly on distribution instead of internal maintenance, vetoed any type of increase in funds for such product distribution reduced such funds? What would eventually happen to this company? I think we all would agree, that in today’s world, without its spending monies on product research and development and product sales and distribution, this company would eventually fail, collapse, go bankrupt.

I personally do not like to compare a church to a business because we do not concern ourselves with profits and losses. We are not here for the purpose of making a profit. However, there are some good analogies that can be made. What kind of company are we here at St. Matthew? Is our priority the giving and distributing of the Gospel? Or is our priority maintenance of our company? Or both? How would St. Matthew fair in the business world today?

A company’s reputation is a witness and does advertise for that company. What does St. Matthew witness and advertise to our community? As firm believers in the Gospel, we will want to give a testimony of it. We will want to give it away. How can we make sure we are advertising (witnessing) the Good News?

We can start with ourselves. We individually ask the Holy Spirit to change our attitude to one that is intent on witnessing, through our lives, the Good News that Jesus is our Savior. We pray that the Lord would help us to make giving and distributing the Good News our number one priority, and we put that priority to work in our church. Also, with witnessing as a priority, the natural flow of events causes us to want to be better equipped ourselves to share the Good News. God equips us through our own personal, as well as, group study of God’s Word. Thus, as we set our priorities to those of the Great Commission, we build a stronger church for our Lord, based on the firm foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

42 of 52 © Rev. Ronald A. Bogs