Horace Burks is a deacon in the Sycamore Church of Christ in Cookville, Tennessee. He has a burden to reach every home in the United States with the Christian gospel. Horace has developed an eight-page brochure in a comic strip format to mail to 102 million homes. It will be sent bulk rate and will cost about $10 million!
I applaud Mr. Burks' motive, but there is a much better method. Person-to-person is one hundred times better than a bulk mailing and a lot more cost effective. Of course, the person-to-person method takes the cooperation of lots of people while bulk rate mailing can be done by a few.
Just think--there is a united Methodist church in every county in the United States. If each of our 8.7 million Methodists would share with twelve persons a personal word about Jesus, every household in America could be reached. And if we skipped the Baptist households, each of us would need to reach only five persons. Heaven knows, I don't want to rile my Baptist friends.
Let's bring the matter closer to home. About 3000 persons will worship at Christ Church this weekend. If each of us shared with two other persons a three-sentence message about what Jesus means to us...just think! 6000 persons would hear the Good News!
Imagine what God could do with that kind of holy networking! If I may borrow Dean Witter's slogan: "We measure success one disciple at a time."
There are persons who may never know Jesus Christ in a personal way unless you provide the linkage. These persons could be relatives, colleagues, business associates, or golf partners. Our witness is vital. The fate of people's eternal souls depends on it. If someone helps save a life, we call him a hero. The ultimate hero is one who helps God save a soul.
Our scripture lesson for the morning points to such a hero but does not reveal his name. Let me set the scene for you. Jesus is just a week away from his rendezvous with the cross. On his way to Jerusalem for the annual Passover celebration, he passes through the town of Jericho. This resort town with its constantly warm temperatures and swaying palms is located just north of the Dead Sea, on the banks of the Jordan River. By the way, Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited site in the world.
The crowds greet Jesus enthusiastically. A spontaneous parade develops. He is a well-known healer, teacher, and controversial disturber of the status quo. The fact that he has many enemies in high places makes him all the more popular with the common people.
As Jesus makes his way through Jericho, suddenly a shrieking voice is heard above the milling sounds of the crowd. Old blind Bartimaeus is shouting, "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me."
Though by-standers try to hush him, he keeps screaming. Jesus hears him and calls him to come forward. Once our Lord discerns that Bartimaeus has a bit of faith, he heals his blindness. Then Bartimaeus becomes a follower of Jesus.
That's the essential story, told in just six brief verses. But there is an unknown hero in the story who is not even mentioned. I refer to the person who told Bartimaeus about Jesus. The blind man addressed Jesus as "Son of David." That title meant that Jesus was a special representative of God in the tradition of King David. Someone must have told the blind man about Jesus. Perhaps someone sat with Bartimaeus often at the end of a day, sharing with him some bread and cheese. Perhaps that person explained to him that Jesus was a healer, that he brought hope to the hopeless. Some anonymous hero had prepared Bartimaeus for the day he would encounter Jesus face to face.
You and I are called to be that kind of hero. Jesus said to his followers of every age, "You shall be my witnesses." That is not an invitation; that is a command. What does it mean to witness? It just means taking the initiative to share your faith in the power of the Holy Spirit, leaving the results to God.
At the close of my sermon today I'm going to ask you to write down the name of at least one person who to the best of your " knowledge is unchurched, someone who does not have a meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ. You won't be asked to hand in that name; it's between you and God.
I'm going to ask you to do three things in regard to those persons. First, pray for them regularly. Secondly, invite them to church on Easter, April 16. Third, if a natural opportunity arises in the course of conversation to say a brief word about your faith or Jesus Christ, that you will do so.
These next three weeks before Easter are critical. We know that unchurched persons are more responsive to an invitation at this time than at any other period except at Christmas. Now, most of us have a problem at this point. We are terribly shy and reticent when it comes to talking about our faith or our Lord. So often when there is a golden opportunity to speak an affirming word about the Lord, we suddenly get tongue-tied.
I am reminded of a little four-year-old boy who had a baby sister. A friendly postman asked him one day if his sister could talk yet. The little boy said, "No, she has her teeth but her words haven't come in yet."
When it comes to witnessing, lots of Christians haven't discovered their words yet.
Herb Miller is a wise observer of the church scene in America. In his book "Fishing on the Asphalt," he says that the average church member has listened to 6000 sermons, has heard 8000 prayers, has sung 20,000 hymns, and has asked zero persons to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.
The devil is a smooth salesman, or, should I say, salesperson. He suggests that you are too much of a sinner to be telling others about Christ. He wants you to forget that you are a forgiven sinner who not only has the right but indeed the obligation to speak a word about the Lord. The devil likes to suggest that sharing Christ is for professional clergy only, not for amateurs. The devil knows that the most powerful witnesses are precisely those who are not paid to do it but are motivated solely by their love for Christ and his people.
Your mission field is that network of persons with whom you have credibility. That includes family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Studies have revealed that the average united Methodist has a meaningful contact with eight unchurched persons per week.
We earn the right to speak about our faith by demonstrating three vital characteristics: reverence, integrity, and concern. The absence of anyone of these three will nullify our spiritual influence. If someone hears you using God's name flippantly, that person loses any interest in your serious use of that name. If your honesty is suspect or if you participate in shady business deals, then no one will be interested in your spiritual witness. If people sense that your life is tilted too much toward selfishness, they will lose interest in what you have to say.
On the other hand, if you know that every other person is one for whom Jesus died, a potential sister or brother, then that knowledge will create a concern within you for that person. Such a concern is transparent. It causes one to listen well to others. And then they almost beg you to speak.
The single hardest area of witnessing is within the family. So many other interpersonal dynamics are at work there. One must be very gentle with parents or siblings or grown children. One almost has to wait until the other person extends an invitation to speak, and that can take a lot of patience.
I am reminded of a little boy who was standing at the bottom of a department-store escalator, watching the moving handrail intently. A salesperson asked, "Are you lost?" "Nope," he said, "I'm just waiting for my chewing gum to come back."
The capacity to wait can be vital in witnessing, trusting that God will help create the right moment when the Gospel can be shared. There are so many varied ways to witness. There is a Christian bellhop at a certain hotel who is often asked where one can get a fifth of liquor or a girl for the night. He responds, "Sorry, sir. I can't help you with that but I have a gift for you. Will you read this as a favor to me?" Then he gives that person a paperback copy of the Gospel of John.
What if a businessperson were brave enough to ask at each lunch meeting, whether with one or twenty persons, "Would it be okay if I asked God to bless us before we eat?"
There is a Methodist church in West Hollywood whose people go "bar hopping" every Christmas Eve. They go into every bar and hand out complimentary tickets to the church's midnight worship service.
Let's suppose, heaven forbid, that this morning in our parking lot a man had car trouble. Let's suppose that he jacked up his car and crawled underneath it to repair something. Suddenly we hear him scream for help. The jack has slipped and the car has come down on top of him. We would all drop whatever we were doing and run to his assistance. Someone would call 9-1-1. Our strongest persons would try to lift the car off him. Our doctors and nurses would rally round to offer assistance. We would all feel a sense of urgency as we tried to save a life.
How desperately we need that same sense of urgency in saving eternal souls. After all, the greatest peril is not the losing of one's life; it is the losing of one's eternal soul.
Sometimes I wonder if when we enter the portals of heaven, perhaps the delegation to greet us might consist of every person with whom we have ever shared a word about Jesus. How strange it would be if when we arrived, there were no greeters. The presiding angel might ask us, "Didn't you invite anyone else to come with you?"
There is a TV commercial which shows a Mercedes Benz automobile colliding with a cement wall during a safety test. Someone then asks the company spokesman why they do not enforce their patent on the Mercedes Benz's energy-absorbing car body, a design evidently copied by other companies because of its success.
The spokesman replies matter-of-factly, "Because some things in life are too important not to share." At the top of that list is the life-changing, soul-saving good news of Jesus Christ. Nobody on earth may know about a witness you share with another person, but the angels in heaven will call you a hero forever and ever.