Acts 19:8-20
And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.
And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. As you know, we're continuing the series in Lent on the core values our congregation selected as part of our strategic planning process called serving in God's mission. The first of the values are the active core values that we see in action. They are Christ centered worship, Christian growth, or Bible study, sometimes called catechesis, and then sanctity of life, the aspirational values we covered one last week human care. Today, we're going to talk about outreach, and next week, we're going to talk about evangelism. We'll get to find out what the difference between outreach and evangelism is important distinction. But tonight, we're going to take a look at Outreach, and the value of outreach is defined this way in the planning tool we use, we purposefully engage non church people in our community through a planned approach that guides them from a connection point to becoming active in the spiritual life of our congregation. The reason I chose Acts chapter what chapter was it acts? Chapter 19 today was because St Paul shows us how hard he worked in Ephesus. You should note the process of what it talks about. First he goes to Ephesus, and for three months he preaches in the synagogues. Then for two years, he reasons daily in the Hall of Tyrannus. Paul's outreach in Ephesus was not a speedy thing. He did not come into Ephesus say Jesus is Lord. And then the entire city fell on their knees and cried out, I have seen the light. See he knows what I'm talking about. What he did was an ongoing process of proclaiming the Word of God to person after person. Often, it would be over and over and over again to guide them into the arms of the church through faith in Jesus Christ. And I think one of the key things to understand is what it would have taken a group of magicians, sorcerers, to come to the church, to the point where they would burn their books worth 50,000 silver pieces. That's a lot of money, isn't it? Not too many people think you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to destroy my business to become a Christian, which is what they did. What would it have taken for the Holy Spirit to bring them from I'm making a ton of money being a magician and a sorcerer too. Let's burn it all. It didn't happen in one day, which is why we see Paul working over and over and over. And this makes sense, because that's the same thing that happens with us very few people come into the world a fully formed Christian. Very few people hear the Gospel for the first time, fall on their knees and are able to articulate the justification by grace through faith, on account of Christ and the doctrines contained therein. Right? That's because becoming a Christian and growing in Christ is a process. We all know that you begin with faith and you grow from there, moving from I'm not a Christian, to wow, I really want to go to church every Sunday is a process, too, and that is what this idea of outreach, it thinks about. Outreach is about how the congregation, together connects with people, to bring them step by step, from out there to in here. And so you can think about things that we do that are sometimes outreach oriented. We can think about trunk or treat, which is a wonderful event, right? We get 100 200 kids. And their families come in through our trunk or treat, and you say, why do they come here? It's for the candy. I like candy. I would come for candy. And so they come. They get their candy, they eat their hot chocolate, they bounce in the bouncy house, and they say, thank you. First Lutheran Church, you guys are really nice. And then you ask, How can we take them from candy to Christ? They want the candy. We want them to have Christ. And it is not. Oh, look, they gave us candy. Let's become a member of first Lutheran Church, right? Similar things happen in the way outreach works is that there must be repeated and ongoing contact so that the Holy Spirit can work through the Word, through the gospel, through our relationships, to draw people ever closer to Christ and to our congregation. Why don't we do that? I think that's a great question. I think many of us grew up in a world where outreach was mostly just reminding people that they should go to church, and VBS grew out of that sort of thing. A Vacation Bible School was situated in a in a culture that said everybody knows who Jesus is they're all and they are all looking for a church. Let's make sure that they know that our church is a good one. And all it took was a reminder. You should maybe come to our church, or it was focused on those, those families that had drifted away. You invite them back for an event they see everybody they love. Is that the culture we're in anymore, if you look around El Cajon, does everybody say, You know what? I should really get back to church. And here, El Cajon is far more Christian than any place I've lived. I feel like I've come into Christendom when I moved here compared to Chicago. I walk down my street and I see Muslims, and they're not going to be reminded to come to church. They're going to say, Nope, no, thanks. Mosque is down the road. And so in a in a world where we have Muslim neighbors or atheists or agnostics or even apathyists, which I think is the biggest group, the people who just don't care, how do we slowly through the gospel, gather them into the into the church, it is through a planned communal outreach approach. And so what I'd like to do is talk about a church that I've seen that does it really well as an image of what a program like that can be my very first call. I went to St James Lutheran Church in Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. They had a school with 250 kids in it, and they milked that school for every ministry opportunity they could. It was a perfectly planned, well executed outreach program because they saw their school and their congregational ministry as fully integrated in gathering people into a relationship with Christ. So what happened was people of all different kinds really didn't want to send their kids to the public schools in Chicago. I'm sure nobody in California can can see anything with that, but it was like that there. And so lots of people from various backgrounds, some Christian, some not Christian, some not caring, sent their kids to the school because it was a good education with teachers who loved their children in ways that the public school didn't. So
the pastors and the ministry staff then saw that every interaction with teachers, students and staff was a way to share the gospel with new people and gather them into the church. So what did they do? One of the ways they is that they used they used their teachers for vacation Bible school. They had so many kids in. Neighborhood that went to it, they had to do two, one for the elementary and one for the preschool, and there were like 100 kids at each it's just because of the neighborhood. It was crazy neighborhood. They paid their teachers to run the groups to be the group leaders for their vacation Bible school, which meant all the kids wanted to come, and then that led their teachers and the ministry staff to have a whole opportunity to end their year for the elementary kids with the gospel in this in this United environment where they didn't see a difference between school staff and ministry staff in the in the fall, they had their preschool VBS as an introduction to their teachers. They build it to all the new families. You get to come and hang out with your teachers for two hours before the first day of class, which meant all the preschool families put their kids in it, and they got to see the pastor and the ministry staff every, every day, hearing the gospel, leading into the school the school year. Throughout the school year, the ministry staff was fully integrated into the life of the church, so the pastor and the school offices and the pastor's offices and everything, same space, same building. Pastors and principals were at every event. They greeted people before, before school started. Every day, they made sure they had events where they were doing youth things for the school kids on a regular basis. All the major events that the school did happened in church, graduation, opening, opening ceremonies for the school, all sorts of things. It was constantly a way of gathering the parents into the worship service to hear the Word of God, so that everyone would hear and know. They also did big events where they would do get kids and parents to come in, meet the staff, meet the ministry staff, the teachers, everything else, the entire school was planned and programmed so that they could share the gospel with the parents and draw those parents into the ministry. And it took years. It was not the kind of thing that happened in preschool or in first grade. It was usually third, fourth or fifth grade before a lot of these things took place, because it takes time. The pastor at the time when I went there, he said that the philosophy of Outreach at the school was simple. He said Our job is to bump them up against the cross and hope they get splinters. And you do that over and over and over again with love and care, and that is how a planned process works. And eventually the Gospel goes out and the Holy Spirit changes hearts. Outreach takes a lot of work. It is not a single event or a thing that you can do and say, Yay, we've done it. Check that box. It's about relationships and hard work and presence and love and fully incorporating people into the life of our community through a planned and slow process, which means it's hard, and you guys said, you want to do it, so we got to do it right. And we trust that the Holy Spirit will do his work as we build these relationships and care about the people through our ministries and with the love of God in Jesus name, amen.
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