God’s Plan For Sharing Across Kansas-Nebraska
By Jon Sapp
June 2010
These past weeks have been filled with new people meeting Southern Baptists and joining in worship all across Nebraska and Kansas. We have seen church members out praying for members of their communities. Others were walking in their neighborhoods to provide a simple message of how to know Christ personally and an invitation to join with their church on Easter Sunday morning. Hundreds of thousands of people saw on television the 30 second announcement of finding “not a religion, but a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and I found it here” broadcast across the two state area. Finally, new believers are in our churches as they have found that relationship as a result of someone taking the time to share the good news of Christ with them and they have responded.
These results have been reported from churches in the past four weeks. For example, in Fort Scott, after hearing the ad on TV a Fort Scott resident got onto the “Find It Here” website, used the church locator and attended on Sunday morning. The Sunday School class where that person joined was so excited that it really did work. The teacher reported, “As we walked up and down the street, I wondered if this was going to make a difference. We are so happy we were obedient and we have evidence to prove, this really works!”
From the reports of our Directors of Missions, it appears we had over 180 of our churches participating in the God’s Plan for Sharing events for Easter 2010. Now pastors and church leaders are doing follow-up to insure that new faith continues to grow and develop.
With Easter and all these activities behind us, I want to present some next step ideas for our continued commitment in God’s Plan for Sharing. Prayer continues as an effective evangelistic tool. PrayerWalk training is available for churches, small groups or individuals that will continue to intercede for those that do not have a personal relationship with Christ. During the upcoming State Convention, we will have two opportunities for evangelistic prayer. “Standing in the Gap for Kansas-Nebraska” will be an option available to all participants during the October meeting in Lexington, Nebraska. Each of the 15 Associations will have their unreached group or groups identified and information available for you to pray over during and after the meeting. In addition, we will hold the “Crossover over West Central Nebraska” where those attending can join with the Oregon Trail churches and PrayerWalk both Lexington and Kearney as well as pray for the Convention Meeting. Details for this opportunity will be provided in the coming weeks and obtained from your Associational Office.
Another step in living out God’s Plan for Sharing would be getting your church or small group trained in sharing their story of Christ’s presence in their lives. During the recent weeks, as church members distributed the plastic bags, one participant mentioned, “I can do this, but I hope no one asks me a question, because I don’t know what to tell them.” A major goal for Kansas-Nebraska is equipping every believer to share their faith. To meet that goal over 100,000 of us need to be ready to share our testimony or story of how we learned, believed and accepted God’s grace in our lives.
I want to encourage you to take personal responsibility to identify yourself as a follower of Christ to those around you. Pastors and Associational Missionaries have training available for every church and every believer. Let’s continue to equip and share God’s truth about life with Him and how we personally experience receiving and applying that truth in our daily lives. In doing so, we are living out God’s Plan for Sharing.
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