The Romans Approach to Reaching the Lost

THE ROMANS APPROACH TO SALVATION

Sitting in the living room of our home one evening, my wife handed me a storage box and said, “If you want experience some nostalgia look through this.”  Out of curiosity I began to search through the items in the box and found Father’s Day cards from my children, notes from my wife and various other things that went back over 30 years.  I also found a small envelope with a 37 cent stamp post marked in 2002.  The return address showed Hallsville, TX 75650.  I removed a  letter and it read as follows:

                Dear Jim,

                                I take great pleasure in writing to tell you of the success my wife & I have had       reaching

                the lost using the Romans Approach to salvation. 

A friend gave me a R.A. Tape in 1982.  Since then the Lord, my wife & I have converted more than 50 souls using it.

I am so thankful for the tape you recently gave me.  I promise it will be used.  I’m so greatful for brothers like you who have the knowledge of God’s salvation plan & the ability to organize it in a way that faith, the love of God, the origin of sin, God’s grace, His salvation plan & Church membership can all be taught by nearly anyone.

My prayer is, may God bless & keep you in all that you do.

In Brotherly love,

Gene Tolar

I have shared the letter just as it was written.  You can listen to the tape that Gene is referring to here: http://campusministryunited.com/Audio/RomansApproachLive.mp3

I am delighted that God has used this study to bring hundreds to Christ.  It is the gospel that is the power of God for salvation.  The study from Romans simply presents the truth in a way that people who are away from God can understand it.  God describes us as clay jars that hold the great treasure of the gospel:  “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)

I pray that God will bless you richly as you explore this study!

Finding God

I have just finished reading a book entitled FINDING GOD by Larry Crabb for the second time. Actually the full title is "Moving Through Your Problems Toward Finding God."  This book is  challenging, encouraging and thought provoking.  We know that Paul put a very high priority on knowing God (Phil. 3:7-11).  He said, this is the "one thing I do" (3:13).  Is your #1 goal in life to "know Christ?"

Consider the following from Dr. Crabb's book:

     To believe Christ (faith), to serve Christ (love), and to wait for Christ (hope): that is what it means to find God.

     But to the degree that you haven't found him, your passions are out of control.  Trust is out.  You want to explain and control; therefore, you reduce mystery to manageable categories and attempt to run your own life without depending on Christ.

     You like to be right. You call it earnestly contending for the faith, and you persuade yourself that you are God's ally in defending truth.  But your angry spirit of smugness and condescension gives you away. Compassion and humility yield to arrogance.

     You long to heal, to relieve pain.  But when that becomes a higher priority than worship, you create a god who suits your humane purpose, and you devote your life to helping people feel better about themselves.  You end up using a false god rather than worshiping the true One.

     You long to connect with the supernatural.  You embrace mystery, fall prostrate before God in humility, and yield yourself to no higher purpose than experiencing him.  But your focus is on experience.  You demand it.  So you come up with methods to get it.  Eventually, you become more caught up with your theology of finding God and the evidence that you have done so than with God himself.

     To every cry from you passion-filled hearts, God replies, "CHRIST."

     Let your passion to explain become a passion to know Christ and all that he reveals through the book that God wrote about him.  Think hard, explore, take risks in your ideas, talk to people about their lives, but never leave the chair by the fire for very long.  Let your work of faith be always to believe he is good.

I encourage you to put Dr. Larry Crabb on your reading list. 





There is a BIG difference beween "What" and "Who."

Are you sharing “What” or “Who”?

Jim and Tony, had both just recently became Christians.  These twin brothers both worked under the supervision of Barry Wilkins, who was the district supervisor for a national insurance company.  They often went on the road together and Jim and Tony had many occasions to discuss the gospel with Barry who had never been immersed.  They introduced me to Barry and suggested that I have a personal Bible study with Barry and his wife Nancy.  I agreed to this plan and asked Barry to give me a call when they were ready (I really didn’t expect to hear back from him!).

Barry did call and asked that I come to their home on a Saturday morning.  We sat down around their dining table and opened our Bibles.  After prayer I got their permission to ask a “personal question.”  I asked, “Have you reached a place in your spiritual life where you know for sure that if you died today that you would go to heaven?”  They both answered that they had, and we started our study of Romans.

When we reached Romans 8:1 which states, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  I asked, “Are you in Christ?”  They both said they were.  I asked, “How did you get into Christ?” They answered, “We invited him into our hearts.”  To which I pointed out, “They may be how Christ got into you, but this scripture states there is no condemnation for those that are IN Christ.  We need to see what the Bible says about getting into Christ.”

Earlier we had read from Romans 6, “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4    We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”  I asked, “Have you ever been buried with Christ in baptism?”  When Nancy started to process what this meant she left the table and went to her bedroom weeping.

After a period of silence, I asked Barry, “What are you going to do?”  He replied, “I’m just not ready to receive baptism!”  I said, “Barry, I did not come over here to get you to receive baptism. I came over to share Jesus with you.  You are not saying no to baptism, you are saying no to Christ.  Barry responded, “Boy, it’s not hard to say no to baptism, but it is difficult to say no to Christ!”

Barry and Nancy were both baptized the next Tuesday.

My personal faith journey.

MY PERSONAL JOURNEY

I grew up in a family of consisting of six siblings. Two were younger than me.  My dad was 65 years old when I came into the world.  He was 72 when the youngest was  born.  From my point of view dad was a very religious man.  He had served as a deacon in the Baptist Church and saw to it that we were in church every Sunday, and often led the family in devotions of prayer.  The most convenient place of worship for my family was a Methodist Church, so that’s where we attended.  At the age of ten I made a profession of faith and joined the Methodist Church along with my brother who was 12.  This was the beginning of my walk with God.  I cannot remember when I did not believe Jesus Christ was “the only begotten Son of God.”

When I was 14 my dad died leaving my Mom with four children still at home.  Two days after I turned 17 my mom signed so I could join the U.S. Navy.  After two years and four months in the Navy I re-enlisted for six more years.  While home on leave I met a beautiful young lady that I had known of most of my life.  We found that we had a lot in common and decided to get married.  She and her family were members of the Freewill Baptist Church.  With the influence of a Baptist dad and now a Freewill Baptist wife, I decided to be immersed according to the teachings of the Baptist Church. 

I had expressed to my wife that I felt God was “calling me to preach.”  My first attempt at preaching was at the Oak Grove Freewill Baptist Church in 1962.  I had been baptized in the afternoon and attempted to preach at the evening service.  Perhaps, oddly, although I was attempting to connect with God, and had made honest attempts to, there was still this emptiness.  A suspicion that I was not connected.  Even so, I continued on this path seeking to please God by attending church and telling others about my faith.

In 1963, just over a year since I had been baptized to join the Freewill Baptist Church, a friend challenged me on my faith response to God in becoming a Christian.  He was a recent convert in the Church of Christ tradition.  This friend shared with me scriptures such as, Mark 16:15-16 where Jesus told the Apostles, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”  He also shared Acts 2:38 where Peter was answering the question of those that had crucified Christ and wanted to know what to do to have this guilt removed.  Peter said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”  This meant a lot to me.  It placed in concrete terms what God was calling me to do, that was, to place myself under Christ’s authority and be immersed.  The blessings promised were “forgiveness” and “the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

This also set me on a path of understanding that was not healthy. For years I interpreted the needs of others in the light of my own experience.  Rather than sharing Christ I shared steps (Hear, Believe, Repent, Confess and be Baptized) that should be followed for a person to become a Christian, the right Church with the right name and the right acts of worship.  This formula was what I saw as the answer for those who needed to be saved. (A note here: God’s plan of redemption is through Christ.  Hearing, believing, confessing and being baptized is the order but Christ is our redeemer, not the steps.)

I had graduated from College with a degree in Bible before I saw the light (John 8:12).  I had discussions with my brother-in-law, Jerry, whenever we got together.  He has a Master’s Degree in English and loves debating.  We covered the steps, the right Church, the right acts of worship and he was not moved.  My brother, John, who is a couple of years older than me got through to my brother-in-law and opened my eyes to the powerless approach I had used.  John presented Jesus to Jerry.  “What do think about Jesus,” he asked.  Jerry responded, “Oh, I believe he lived and died on a cross.” John asked, “Do you realize that he died on that cross for you!”  I could tell that Jerry was sobered by this application.  I asked, “Jerry, do you believe Jesus was buried and raised from the dead three days later?”  He said, “Yes, I do believe that!”  So I said, “Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?”  He answered, “Yes, I do believe Jesus is the Son of God.”  Two of us saw the “light” that night.  My brother, brother-in-law and I went to the little Church where I ministered and baptized Jerry that very night. I know Jerry received the gift of forgiveness and the Holy Spirit just as those on Pentecost were promised in Acts 2:38.

I saw the power of just sharing Jesus that night. 

A request for prayer

Just last month, but thirty-six (36) years ago, I was the Evangelist at the Central Church of Christ in Davenport, IA, and we held a tent meeting that August.  I walked around the seven acres owned by the Central Church, which at that time was a vacant field, and prayed that God would do an awesome work under that tent.  It was under that tent I met Gary Lambrecht.  He hung back at the end of one of our nightly services and had questions about the sermon I had just preached (using a flannel board and flannel graphs to illustrate).  After a discussion of this lesson Gary requested to be baptized.  The next night his wife Zoe was also baptized.  Gary later came to Harding University and got a degree in Bible.  He  now preaches for the Baytown Church in Tampa, FL.

Little did I know that almost thirty (30) years later Gary and Zoe and the Bay Area Church of Christ would connect with my family in a most dramatic and powerful way.  Wes, the youngest of four children, got on drugs at a very early age and remained on drugs for almost ten years.  As parents, Geraldine and I, thought we would never know peace as we struggled with Wes, but the day came when an opportunity presented itself for us to ask our friends in Florida if Wes could leave us and be ministered to by the Bay Area  Church.  That decision proved fruitful.  Wes was "born of water and Spirit" on Father's Day in 2004,  wound up doing a one year internship with the Campus Ministry in Tampa and then came back to Harding where he got a Ministry degree in  2008.  While in Tampa God provided Wes with a wife, Airiel.  They now have three sweet, sweet children and expect a fourth in January 2012.  Wes ministers with the Lake Merced Church of Christ in San Francisco, CA and is taking some courses with the FullerTheological Seminary.

Our God is an awesome God.  Connect the dots.  In 1975 there was a tent meeting where Gary & Zoe Lambrecht became Christians.  In 1980 Wes was born.  In 2004 God used this dedicated, Godly couple (along with others at the Baytown Church of Christ)  to lead Wes to the LORD.

Now, for the prayer request. 

I have been invited back to Davenport to work with and speak to the congregation for a week in October.  This congregation has experienced decline for the last several years.  Back in the 70's well over 200 met regularly at Central. This continued into the 90's.  In Iowa, a state with less than 50 congregations of the Church of Christ, Central was referred to as the "Big Church." Now there are only 70 or so in attendance on Sunday.   That is a drop from 140 less than three years ago.

Please pray that God will be glorified in and through the Central Church of Christ in Davenport, IA.  I will be praying that God will work through me to be a blessing.

I make this request knowing that sometimes God's answers are twenty to thirty or more years in the making!

A Plan for Reaching the Lost through Your Congregation

It has been my priviledge to be around soul-winning Christians in the past. In Davenport, IA from January 1973 through July of 1975 over 200 were baptized. Twelve individuals, for the most part, did the evangelizing although there were many more behind the scenes supporting the effort. At River City Ministry in 2008 there were 76 baptized and in 2009 there have been 86 to date.

If there are going to be consistent conversions where you worship there will have to be a plan to do it. It must be intentional. On purpose. How? First you must "seek." Jesus came to "Seek and save the lost." (Luke 19:10) You need someone to lead this PRIMARY ministry in your church. A person with passion for the lost. A person who is willing to lead by example. For the purpose of this brief article this person will be called the Evangelism Ministry Leader (EML).

Following is an outline that might give you a plan to start:

A PLAN FOR REACHING OUT TO THE LOST


I. Evangelism Ministry Leader (EML)
1. A person who is actively seeking the lost.
2. A person who has proven they can equip others to share the gospel.
3. A collector of contacts
All those that seek benevolent help
Non-members contacted by the hospitality/visitation group
Non-members who are married to members
Special event visitors
Names submitted by members of the congregation
Names submitted by the Office of persons interested in Bible Study.
4. Place each contact in a category
For immediate Bible Study
To be invited to a Growth Group
To be asked into someone’s home are taken out to eat
5. Make sure the office gets information on each contact that is baptized into Christ so effective after-care (discipling) can take place.

II. Team Member(s)
1. A person who is actively seeking the lost.
2. A person who is willing to study with a non-Christian
3. A person who is willing to follow-up after the study when a person is converted to Christ.

III. Congregation
1. Should be urged to “search for the lost.”
2. Will help provide the EML and Local Evangelism Group with contacts for conversion to Christ. 3. Willing to be a “silent partner” in Bible study sessions.
4. Willing to “practice hospitality” with non-Christians.

If you would like a FREE outline of a great Bible Study go to http://www.westcoastwitness.com/ and check out the Romans Approach.

Quote from Larry West in the Christian Chronicle

"We will not convert unless we confront..." "We cannot just be friends with someone...and expect him to come to know what to do to be saved. He doesn't learn the gospel through osmosis." (CC May 2009, page 26)