Reaching the UnreachedAn annual conference for churches trying to reach out in the hard places of our land

The second session from this last year’s Reaching the Unreached conference, “Getting started and keeping going”. Andy Mason looks at Titus 1:5-16.

The first session from this last year’s Reaching the Unreached conference, “Getting started and keeping going”. Duncan Forbes looks at Titus 1:1-4.

More quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication …

The challenge of the city

The exodus of Christians from the inner-city areas to the more desirable residential areas of suburbia has seriously undermined the life and witness of churches in working-class areas. (43)

There are too many urban people and too few urban Christians. So we cannot afford a ‘believer-drain’ to the suburbs. (223)

It would be wrong to suggest that God wants all Christians in the inner city to stay where they are and never to consider a move. But I do not believe that no Christian should leave the inner city without considering fully the spiritual issues involved. (224)

If God could transform pagan Ninevah, can He not do the same for pagan London, Liverpool or Birmingham? If God chose to achieve the transformation of Ninevah through an imperfect human instrument like Jonah, then God can use us too. We must direct our unceasing prayers to this end. (311)

The challenge to evangelize

It is possible to detect a marked contrast between the New Testament Christians and those of today in relation to the spreading of the gospel. Put simply, it is this: they did it; we talk about it! Evangelism for the early Christians was not something they isolated from other aspects of Christian living in order to specialize, analyse, theorize and organize. (79)

For many believers, their ‘evangelistic lungs’ are in a poor state of health. Witnessing to our faith in Jesus Christ is such an effort – just like laboured breathing! We cannot go on like this. (81)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

In this week’s quote from Urban Harvest Roy Joslin offers ten ‘tests’ of gospel ministry.

In order to help us apply the appropriate ‘tests’ to the gospel work in which we are engaged a number of probing questions need to be asked.
1. Are we placing the responsibility on the believers to evangelise or on the unbelievers to come and be evangelised?
2. Do our church members in their daily witness see themselves as the principal agents in evangelism, seven days a week and all hours of the day, or do they think that the chief responsibility lies with the preacher in his ‘one-hour-a-week’ gospel service and sermon?
3. Are all our church members capable of giving a ‘reason for the hope’ that is in them? Can they with simplicity and accuracy articulate their faith? If not, why not? Where does the fault lie? We have seen that John Bunyan, shortly before he became a Christian, was greatly impressed by the ‘three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun…talking about the things of God’. Are we to regard these women as peculiar and exceptional, in view of what the scripture requires of us? How can we ‘loose our stammering tongues to tell his love immense, unsearchable?’
4. Are our church membership and congregation socially representative of the community in which it is located? If not, why not?
5. How far has our gospel outreach become ‘introverted’ evangelism?
6. Are our methods of evangelism unfairly selective? Have we been guilt of a form of favouritism without realizing it? Apply this question to your own work among adults and also among young people.
7. In our evangelism generally do we make it our policy, as far as possible, to introduce people to the gospel first before we seek to introduce them to the church? Is it spiritually realistic to expect an unbeliever who is without spiritual life and understanding to share meaningfully in the worship aspects of an evangelistic service in order to hear the gospel?
8. If our church is located in a community which is partly or predominately working class, do any aspects of our evangelism take into account the phenomenon of ‘solidarity’ which is an important feature of working-class culture?
9. Do the methods of evangelism we currently employ reflect an awareness of the need to have a careful balance between ‘instruction’ and ‘persuasion’? Ideally we need to explore or create opportunities for ‘feed-back’ following our preaching or witness. We need to be able to gauge whether or not we have carried our hearers with us in an understanding of the gospel …
10. … Do we in our local churches have any policy for regularly reviewing the opportunities that we have and thought we ought to use? Are we able to make a calculated and spiritual assessment of the opportunities presented by a number of forms of evangelism? (149-151)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.

More quotes from Roy Joslin’s Urban Harvest to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its publication …

The New Testament knows nothing of a ‘one-pastor’ church where the leader is imported into the local situation for a number of years and then moves on to another local church. In the early church, men were selected from a local church, trained within that local church, and then called to the service of that local church. An apprentice-trained, non-mobile, indigenous team of local church leaders may be new to our thinking, but it is possible to show that this policy is soundly biblical and eminently practical. (257)

It is no use a mother bird (or church) saying to its offspring, ‘You are not leaving this nest until you have proved to me that you can fly’. God does not make parachutes for birds or churches! As soon as it is right, the mother should gently but firmly ease the young life out of the security of the nest. The wings of faith will do the rest! (197)

Urban Harvest is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. In October IVP are publishing my latest book, Unreached: Growing Churches in Working-Class and Deprived Areas, was written with the Reaching the Unreached network.

This article was originally published on Tim Chester’s blog.