Missions, Part 2

Transcript

GRM 91
07/13/1980
Missions, Part 2
Selected Scripture
Gil Rugh

I want to pursue a little bit further our discussion of missions this evening for those of you who were in the open forum tonight. There were a number of questions in this area and appreciate your response, your questions, because it helps me and helps us as elders, as well as us as a church, to consider some of these things more carefully, and appreciate your continued response in coming days as we think through some of these situations.

I mentioned George W. Peter’s book to you, two weeks ago in our discussion and I’d just like to remind you of that. The book is worth its price for simply the review of theology that is contained through the first portion of the book as he reiterates biblical theology as the foundation for biblical missions and I think you’ll find the book very profitable. Again, to emphasize, I believe that we as believers are to be involved in missions, and by that I mean reaching out with the gospel to unbelievers wherever they are. There is no given geographical line drawn on that responsibility although obviously, where God has placed us is a primary focus for us in ministering the word.

I want to share some miscellaneous thoughts in addition to what we’ve already done in our study on Sunday evening, and then give you a chance to respond as well. An area that we have considered for a missions project is an outreach in South America. Again, the things I share I’m just sharing with you as our thoughts, and not to be critical of what someone else is doing or is not doing. They’re not my prime responsibility but rather this local body, and so I want you to take it in that sense rather than critical but how we have been evaluating.

As we looked at possibly being involved in South America in missions, we thought that we might be able to invest $75,000, over a two year period in missions, which does not seem like an overly large sum for a congregation our size, and a budget our size, and so we looked into the ministry there and talked about that possibility. The possibility was presented of investing $75,000 for two years to plant churches in new areas. How this would be done would be, two men would be given the responsibility over this two-year period to survey the area surrounding Quito, Ecuador, and determine where there would be a need, where there was no gospel witness, and then to determine to share the gospel there and to plant evangelical churches. That sounds like something that we could be involved in and be consistent with our ministry here.

There are a couple of things that entered into it that caused us to be rethinking it and thinking it through. We want to be sure before we challenge you as a body, and settle on this that we’re going the right direction. It was shared with us that in Quito and we asked, what is the situation there? There are 65 evangelical churches. Now Quito is a sizeable city. How big is Quito? About 900,000 so 65 evangelical churches and 900,000 people isn’t, you know, one on every corner but it’s not exactly unreached yet either and the question we raised was, why don’t these 65 churches undertake the evangelistic outreach into the surrounding areas, and the response being that they really don’t have the interest. So perhaps if we would invest the money, and support the personnel, that this would work in stimulating the interest in the churches there to see the potential, for evangelistic outreach. I think that may well be, but as we thought this through, it seems like we’re getting in this circle again.

We send money to South American to reach unreached areas because the churches there primarily are not interested in doing it. I thought, “well what about our situation? We have churches around the country sending missionaries to the campus in Lincoln to reach the university students. Why?” I guess it’s because the churches in Lincoln aren’t interested in reaching that area, right? We’re not doing it, so people in other parts of the country are investing their money to reach that area, but that has a circular affect because you know what happens and the question has come up as we’ve talked about reaching into these areas. They’re already being reached so why should we channel our resources there as a local church? So in a sense, it becomes self-defeating, because then we asked the question should we invest resources at the university when someone else is already investing resources to reach there and then the circle just gets larger.

We invest money in another country to reach an area the churches there aren’t interested in, and people somewhere else are sending money to reach here where we’re not interested in. I’m a little concerned about that kind of cycle, and wonder whether we really stifle what we want to do. That the edge is taken off of reaching an area because someone else is doing it and it doesn’t matter to us that the money comes from the outside, it’s just a question should we be involved there? Now as we talked about the money, I thought now would we do this here. Again, it sounds critical but I don’t mean it this way. I’m just sharing it with you.

In other words have we evaluated, Nebraska since we are in Nebraska, to evaluate what communities do not have a bible believing church and a strong outreach. Would we be willing to invest $75,000 over the next two years to do that, and consider that missions? They say well there are churches around but they’re churches in this country too. The trouble is that many of the churches around here don’t have the interest and motivation to reach into those areas, so it’s the same kind of problem; it’s just in a different place. We’re not talking about there not be any Christians or any churches, we’re talking about there not being any churches who are interested in undergoing the inconvenience to spread the word. Now it resolves a lot of problems if we just do the $75.000 there because since were sending it to another country we all feel better that were doing missions even though it may not be any different in one sense than what we have here.

I’ve just written down some questions that need to be answered and perhaps elaborate a little bit first on what do we need to do. Someone asked the question the last time we were together on what are we doing as a local church to encourage and train people for missions activity and I just jotted down some ideas. One thing I think we should be doing is encouraging people to be involved in the ministry here. I’m convinced that we ought to be sending people who are qualified.

Reading another book on missions that was shared with me from the Back to the Bible library. Some of you there may want to read it, Church Mission Tensions Today, edited by Peter Wagner but it’s written by different individuals with different responsibilities in various missions’ organizations or relationship to missions. Again, very stimulating, and they make the point there of questioning the validity, biblically of our sending men who are fresh out of school out as career missionaries. In light of the biblical patterns, it seems to be men of experience being sent out which puts the responsibility both on the individual and on the church to be having people involved.

We were talking this evening a little bit about training. Young people often like to go overseas for short-term missions work, but I would see our prime responsibility in missions work being evangelism. So perhaps we ought to be challenging our people to spend a summer here in evangelistic outreach, following up on the 40 first time visitors that we don’t follow-up on that are ripe contacts. Ah, that’s good missions training. Do you know how to share the gospel? Can you share the gospel? Who have you led to Jesus Christ and personal faith in Him as a training ground? So that would be one thing that we ought to be doing, encouraging people to be involved.

Second, to provide necessary training in development and other ways such as the training center we talked about, to provide a broader biblical training. Now, this is going beyond. Some men can go to seminary or bible school, some cannot. They are here, they’re working, they have families but I think that they could be getting training that might suit them for mission’s activity here or elsewhere. I think it would involve having a man to develop biblical studies in needy communities around, after first surveying to find out where these communities are. I’m impressed when we got to talking about doing this in Quito in South America that we haven’t done that here. You know talking about investing that amount of money to do it in a foreign country when we haven’t done that here.

Then this becomes a training ground, for those men are going to go elsewhere, if you have a man overseeing and developing a program, these people can be channeled in here to prove themselves, and then from there it’s a natural step to be involved in a ministry somewhere else. I think we need to be open to have men as interns at Indian Hills, to work for a year or two, as part of this body. Now we’d have to undertake some financial commitment to them, and then after that we would evaluate them, in light of their gifts and ability, and send them on that basis. We’d need to develop a plan to oversee those that we support. Again, maybe it’s just the areas I’m reading in but each of the books I’ve been reading have been making the point that no one is overseeing the missionaries.

There is an example given in this particular book. A missionary executive in a large well known agency recently said he had been personally supported in his ministry for over 25 years, and had never, up to that time, been asked any direct questions about goals or accomplishments by those who have invested thousands of dollars in him and his work. Competence seems to be taken for granted or perhaps the church is depending entirely on the mission board to guarantee it. However, the mission probably hasn’t been asked tough-minded questions on effectiveness by its supporting churches either, so I think that we have to be planning for that. Not like we want to be a watch dog but for the benefit of those who are going. Are we going to be ready?

Now this all costs money to do, and interested at John MacArthur’s church. I’ve been readying some literature since we have similar emphasis on the Word as a local church, and how they’ve developed their missions program and they are turning around. I feel comfortable that we are in a healthy position because in re-evaluating, they’ve come to some of the same areas that we’ve been talking about, and they’ve had an old style (the way they referred to it) missions program and now they are changing it. Demanding that those that they support be involved at that local church for a period-of-time and then be evaluated as to their effectiveness, whether they can be supported to go to the field or not. Now they have a man overseeing that area. They’ve dropped nine missionaries the last year. I’d rather not have them rather than have to drop them, so that development going on.

It all costs money. Now are we willing to say that we’ll commit $100,000 to get a missionary training program at Indian Hills, say over the next year or two, or whatever it takes? There has to be commitment here first. The problem is, we often don’t see that as mission’s money. I think that it’s developing, it’s just developing a lot slower than most are satisfied with and we are coming more and more to certain conclusions, I think will result in us being involved in missions. Not in a traditional way necessarily but being involved. The problem is, it costs money and the less money you have, the slower you go. We don’t have a man that is giving his full attention to developing such a program, so we have to be satisfied to develop it more slowly as time permits, so that’s an area you may want to give thought to.

Now right away the question comes. We have quite a large budget, why don’t we invest some of that? I guess you could say, we’d never have enough and maybe we’re going to have to stretch ourselves more. We can’t do everything, it’s true, and I’m convinced there’s certain things we have to do, probably because I’m here. One, we have to do something so that we can have less than four services a Sunday or get more preachers on staff and I think that’s a valid alternative that these things have to be weighed and so we’re stretching ourselves but I think we may stretch ourselves more. Some of you have shared that you have money you would give to missions that you’re not comfortable giving for the local ministry here. Well would you consider this kind of program missions? To develop and train individuals to carry on mission’s activity, even though it may be two, three or four years before you see actual missionary results. I think that question has to be considered.

We probably won’t be sending large numbers ever, and I’ve shared a little bit about this with you before. I think we’d want to send men of certain qualifications and certain gifts. I think that missionaries ought to have the gift of evangelism. Their going out to “make disciples,” win people to Jesus Christ, and if they’ve never led a person to Jesus Christ here, they probably aren’t going to burn up the earth someplace else, so a good test is, have you led people to Jesus Christ? How many people have you talked to about Jesus Christ this week? Somehow, it’s easy to have a burden for those people over there yet they are sinners just like the sinners here, they are lost just like the lost here. They have to hear the same message just like the people here have to hear it, so good practice. I see we might have a smaller number but we may be involved totally with them.

We have a staff of seven men now. If we had two to three men doing evangelistic work in other countries that would be a large percentage staff wise doing that but it wouldn’t mean we wouldn’t have an effective program. I’d like to see us have our major mission’s emphasis in supporting men in this area. I think there’s a danger that we get involved in many good things that are not the best things. And supplementary activities, I think we have to be careful about, and I don’t have the answer to all these things but much of our money as I’ve already mentioned is tied up in other areas. When I talk about money and it always comes back to money, it seems. (Money—Money-- Money) in fact hey there’s the title of this section. (Money—Money—Money)

Let me read you a section out of here because I think it’s a problem. What happens? It happens at Indian Hills since we don’t have what we would call a strong missions program; everybody does their own thing. Every man does as is right in his own eyes. He has some concerns, two concerns he expresses. Our first concern shared by many throughout the churches, is the amount of time and money we spend to raise money. For most of our mission’s agency, this amounts to a great deal more than ever shows up in financial statements. Even if our public relations departments are very small we have 20 to 25 percent of our staff regularly on furlough, our accepted candidates represent another five to ten percent, so we have somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of the missionaries not out on the mission field. Granted these people are involved in more than just fund raising. They should have a genuinely important ministry of sharing, but this could be planned into much shorter, more effective periods if fund raising were not involved.

Our second concern is closely related, what we normally tell people in order to raise money and they had talked about this earlier in the book. Consciously or unconsciously, we end up emphasizing what people want to hear, what they have been used to hearing and have translated into values. Now he goes on to say we are frankly facing these concerns. While we are frankly facing these two concerns, we will have to take a look at a venerable institution, personalized support. To suggest that there may be some ills in personalized support is a bit like attacking motherhood and apple pie but we all know that mother love can get off the track and become smother love and not all apple pies are of equal quality. I’ve liked almost all apple pies I’ve eaten. Few students of missions in this century would deny the crucially important role personalized support has played, important not only in terms of enabling but also of involving.

At the same time, it produces by-products, which can cause problems in today’s mission picture. For example, individualists tend to be confirmed in their preference for independency, and they see this as characteristic of our day where there’s a great emphasis on independence and we see that here. People like to choose what they do with their money, and I want to decide whom I give my money to and what I give my money to and that is also true of people going into the work. If I’m supported by 500 individuals instead of one local church, chances are I can function pretty independently and if you’re supporting individual missionaries you probably have little say over what they do, although you probably get their prayer letters.

Probably the greatest need is to take a hard look at the number of families supported by a church, the amount contributed to each. Their point is, maybe we ought to be undertaking large amounts of support for a smaller number of missionaries. It used to be that you’d say spread your support out broadly so you can have a lot of people praying. Now the emphasis is going the other way. Have your support centralized and you spend less time raising money.

Well let me stop here, and see if you have anything, you want to inject on this area of missions. What you’d like to see us doing as a local church. Some of you come from an evangelical background. What is the desire you would have to see the local church you’re involved in, doing in missions in light of some of the things we’ve been talking about, not just to say we have a $100,000 missionary budget but maybe you have some thoughts. Maybe some of you have a desire to be involved in mission’s activities and you would like to see this local church doing something, to make that more of a reality for you. Obviously, I’m a pastor and I approach it a little differently.

Okay, very good to spend some time in developing and studying together the biblical foundation for missions; then where that carries us. Good, I’ll do some work on that. You know the reason we picked that and some of you have been here lately who are newer wouldn’t believe it, but we really thought we wanted to have a missions program. A general ordinary missions program, not ordinary but you know, regular missions program but we seem to keep running our head into walls. We’ve tried missions programs, we’ve had missions conferences. We, a few of us in the early years I was here and so on.

Then Abe Van Der Puy who is with HCJB and comes to Lincoln to speak for Back to the Bible. A great respect for him and his stature in missions. He is located in Quito with HCJB and so we got to talking to him. I talked to him one time after the Back to the Bible banquet and said, Abe you know we as a local church need to get involved. Perhaps undertaking a financial project, just get us involved in a short-term commitment and maybe we’d get some momentum going that way, so he came up with several projects for us to consider and we talked about it as elders. We went to lunch with him, he came to our Board of Elders meetings and so that’s how we got into Quito. He shared with us he doesn’t really think that Quito itself needs any mission’s activity, but there are surrounding areas.

He is also convinced, and shared examples with us from other countries, that if the churches would do it that would be the most effective way to get it done. The problem is, how you motivate the church to do it and I think that perhaps that where we could undertake to do some things that aren’t being done and become a pattern as a local church for undertaking to reach our city. The high schools, the junior high schools, the grade schools, the university that this become a pattern for the local church reaching out to where it is, to do it because he did share examples where it’s being done in Latin American countries with effectiveness but it’s similar to this country. How do you get some of these churches out of the mud and gaining momentum, so that’s how we got into that area? We have been looking for some help and guidance, because I realize my involvement in missions has been through books, not really any other way.

Okay, I think that—let me take the second one first. I think that we ought to send our best--is where the emphasis ought to be and that’s why I think there’ll be few, but they ought to be quality men and I think that the elders and the staff ought to be open to what the Lord would have to do with them. A few years ago, we had a man here from Italy with Back to the Bible. He just sent me a note a few months ago. I forgot his name. Art Wiens, and I was excited about what he said in Italy, and he said I could go there and teach the bible and not have to learn Italian and that excited me. I had a hard enough time with Greek and an impossible time with Hebrew and I’d be open if that’s what the Lord wanted to do, would want to use me someplace else. All of us as staff and men have to be open to be used there.

I think we need to involve more men. That’s what excites me about the Timothy program where we have more opportunities for more men to take on more responsibility in ministry, where they can demonstrate their abilities, gifts, and rise to the top so to speak. So hopefully, that’s going to happen. Bob, when Bob came on, he was going to develop a mission’s policy. I’ll talk about the obstacles second. Bob is so loaded down with so many areas right now. The things that demand immediate attention sometimes press in, like overseeing the children’s ministries since there’s going to be hundreds of kids here each week, you can’t just let that sit, and overseeing the other areas that press in but he has been doing work on our mission’s policy, and he has submitted several written statements.

The obstacle is probably me. I’m thick headed and so we’ve gone round, and uh we do, you know. He’s trying to help us see the light so pray for Bob. He’s working on it. He’s submitted some good material to us for consideration. I just have to go through it piece by piece and question everything, and then I’m sure Bob hits his frustration point where he thinks there is no hope but then he cycles around and pulls himself together again and hits us with another shot. He’s working on developing it and I think it’s good for us because Bob has had more involvement in missions than most of the rest of us have, and so has that background and we can challenge one another.

Well, here’s what you’ve said here. Does this really fit the pattern or is this traditional? We say one thing and he says, well I think that’s a cop out. You really haven’t dealt with the issue, so we are wrestling it through and I think that our final policy will come out of this. Again, its not going as fast as it would if there was a man—if we could tell Bob to give more of his time to that area at this occasion but since it’s a new area and there are not a lot of churches working through it this way, it takes us a little more time.

We are trying to reach out and Bob’s written to like John MacArthur’s church to get all the material that they might have available for our consideration since they have, and come around to the kind of position we have been evaluating, and are ahead of us because they have a fulltime man whose responsibility is to develop these areas. They are in southern California. They’ve taken advantage of the missions organizations and research centers in Pasadena and so on, so we’re working on that probably more intently than we have at any time in the past. Bob’s presence has done a lot for that because he’s sort of a prod for that area. Discussing it with you is a help to us because that means that many more of you are involved in the process, are thinking about it. That helps put the right kind of pressure on us, not to just put it on hold, and leave it sit for another six month but what have we decided, what have we come to, what conclusions.

Yeah, right and I think we may be moving toward this direction again. Things go so slow sometimes. I sometimes get frustrated. I talked to my brother-in-law who is a pastor. I say, you know sometimes I just feel like sometimes we’re just mired down in the mud, just can’t get going, but we are making progress as I stand back and look at it. For instance, the development of our Timothy Groups again because I think that men who are undertaking responsibility in these groups, in effect, are functioning in many ways in pastoral situations with the ministry there. It becomes more natural then maybe as we develop out for men who have gained this kind of experience to move out into a community in another place, having had some training by being involved. Then from there, I think in training we could take advantage of other churches around. Mike MacDonald is in Logan, Utah, with a group of about thirty-five in a Mormon community and the possibility for us to send a man in there to work with him for a year or two. Would we be willing to undertake that man’s support as a training ground for him? It could be a great help to Mike in the ministry there and a great training ground for this man.

Tom Rempel who is coming to speak next Sunday. He is a man who has not come out from this body but we would be in agreement with him theologically and ministry wise. I want to do what we could to encourage him. We just had a man from Lincoln from the Christian school go out to work with him for a year. Tremendously excited about that. Well perhaps there are other churches around where we could use as training grounds as well. To have men from here, they wouldn’t have to all be interns here but they could be working in other churches. It’s terribly hard, you send a man out in isolation. Lex DeWitt has asked, would we consider sending a man over to work with him for a few years. Perhaps someone with the gift of evangelism, so that he could work with him instead of being out there alone. Well, you know, why not? I think that would be exciting. I think there is merit.

Paul didn’t travel alone, he usually took somebody with him. I think maybe we ought to consider rather than sending someone out there by himself that we ought to be looking around to reinforce ministries and do what we can. I think we could do more to see where there are bible believing, bible teaching churches in Nebraska already going, and what could we do to help them in establishing contact and in maybe channeling men out there to minister with them for a period of time, so the opportunities are mindboggling. I think the potential for that and what we need to do, again, is determine if its important enough that we’re going to invest the money to have a man undertake it as a responsibility. It again comes back to the time to develop it and the potential again so open.

I was talking with Loyal Martin who is Susie’s nephew and he’s in charge of the field education program at a seminary in California. He is proposing now that every seminary student have to do a year’s internship, but he says my ultimate plan is a nine year curriculum, where you go to school for a year and then you’re out in a church for three years. Then you’re in school for another year and then you’re out for three years. The church undertakes the responsibility to cover this. Well what he is saying is we need people more involved, that’s what this book on missions said. We need people to have more of their training as part of the body rather than in isolation. Well we ought to be able to give the theological training here and also provide the practical involvement in ministry.

Why don’t we do it? You know that’s a good question. Why don’t, we do it. I don’t know either. You know why not, that becomes the key, and I’ve said next year is the goal. We have to give a man the total responsibility to develop this, put it together and make it go. It’s that large of a project! You just can’t have someone doing it in his spare time because you have to develop the curriculum. You have to get the teachers ready you have to work with the students. This person would have to have the responsibility then of involving those who were in the training center in the practical program, in ministry somehow in the body. That’s a major job! The goal for a year from now is to have a man to do that. Again, I don’t see this primarily just limited to here but I think that’ll be involved in training to prepare people for ministry everyplace. Again, it seems like you go slow, it seems like wow, we’ve done a lot, but in some ways it seems like we haven’t done anything.

Loyal was talking about Modesto Baptist Church. They have a program there; they have ninety-five students in their intern-training program. They’re a church of 2,000 but how many staff do they have; thirty staff people. Their church our size, in a building program, several million dollars and have a staff of 30, so they can have 95 interns. It stretches us. It seems like we’re doing a lot and that’s why it’s good to look around and say hey, we’ve got to reach out further, can’t settle down, and I think missions is a good area. It focuses in and it touches so many other areas as well, so I ought to take an offering now but I’m not.

We increased our support to Lex and I think again we ought to do more, to evaluate our missionaries and with Lex we’re working on that. Calvary Bible Church is his home church now in Henderson, Nebraska, and so some of our men have been together with them on occasion and they’re pursuing some matters, some doctrinal questions that have come up about Lex’s ministry right now, just to resolve those to make sure things are clear.

Then I think that we ought to do more to evaluate his ministry there. I don’t have any idea what the church situation is around him. I don’t have any idea what could be done. I know he did ask whether we, as a church, would consider sending a man to work with him out there. I think that would be valid for us to consider. I wouldn’t want to cut back on what we have until we are developing some momentum in the other direction and then I don’t know that we would want to cut back on that anyway, but we might want to get more involved and become more a part of their ministry.

Again, we’ve undertaken an almost token support in a couple of other cases, and so it’s hard to put the pressure on to say, hey we want better reports from you. We asked for pictures from those that we support and of their ministry, what they’re doing and so on, but it’s hard really to put the pressure on for them to do it when you’re giving them so little support. You figure of the forty-five people supporting them, if they have to do this for everyone they’ll never get any ministry done, so you tend to say well let’s not make an issue of it but if you we’re supporting them fully or almost fully you could do it like you do a staff person here at Indian Hills. It’s your job; you report or find another job. I think that’s the kind of demand we need so we know what is going on and how we can better do the job. I’m the pastor, preaching pastor, but I know very little of what’s going on with those we support except the letters we get but really involvement and understanding of their ministry is minimal. Probably more with Lex since he was here recently and we talked with him.

Obviously, you’re not qualified for the missions committee. Well I’m going to Philadelphia on my vacation. Did that qualify? I think more could be more done on that. Some who are more involved in missions, Abe Van Der Puy feels strongly that it would really help our insight if some of our staff would visit some mission fields. He thinks that I might have a different perspective. You know it is easy to sit in isolation, so I think that there might be validity to that and there are things could be done, like HCJB has a tour there and they are so located that there are many mission organizations functioning close to them, so you can go there and get exposure to a variety of missions. Well he recommended that we consider having some of our men do that. On their vacation? I don’t know anything in Hawaii. I got offered a job in California at a school and one of the attractions they held out was, I could teach at their school in Hawaii part time. I didn’t think it was spiritual enough, it’s not bad though. No. but I think that point is well taken.

We’ve talked about Logan, Utah, where Mike McDonald is. Well to have a man go there—we’ve talked about having a couple of our men go up and see his ministry and how we might be involved there. I think that could carry over to other countries as well. I’ve never been out of the country; well I was in Tijuana, Mexico. Okay, be in prayer about it. I’ll do some more work on this area and particularly the biblical foundation for missions. We’ll be talking more as staff about our policies and so on and then we’ll come back and share some of these things in coming days as we search them through, so appreciate your involvement there.

Again, I want to encourage you to be here in the coming weeks. Again, we talk about the ministry. I keep wanting to impress upon you the ministry you have to the people who are ministering the word here in the coming weeks. You can’t look at just what do I get but what do I give and that’s true for me. It’s not just what you get from me but what I get from you in ministering here, so I hope that you’ll take advantage of this opportunity and share in that ministry, not only with those coming from the outside but with our own men, which is what we’re talking about in the mutual ministry of the body.

All right, let’s stand for prayer together: Father we are mindful of the tremendous message that we have to proclaim, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lord mindful that it’s to a world that is without hope apart from what Jesus Christ has accomplished. Lord the responsibility that rests upon us as those who have been called by You. Those who have been entrusted with the good news of the gospel that we might be a people that are open to have You accomplish what You would in our lives and through us in the lives of others. Lord so easy for us to become focused in on this one little spot in this one little place. Lord we want to have Your vision for the people of the world, to be open to be sent wherever You would want us. Lord we pray that You’ll raise up men from this congregation to make Jesus Christ known throughout the world that we as a congregation might stand behind them might be involved with them. Lord that we might have the compassion, the passion that You have for the lost. Lord pray that You’ll use us even this coming week to this end. Make us mindful that we are a people with a message to proclaim. Lord, that You’ve placed us here in this city, that You’ll give us many contacts throughout this week. Lord, pray that we might be sensitive to the Spirits’ leading that we might seize the opportunities and redeem the time that many people might hear that Jesus Christ has died for sinful men. We pray in His name. Amen.