"It's On"

One of my favorite marketing campaigns is the Southwest Airlines' "It's On" program. I like what it says. I like what it means. I like the spirit behind it. It says we are not going sit back and let this economy get the best of us. It says we are going to take it on. It says we are going to fight and claw our way to success no matter what it takes. Rather than whining about the situation, we are going to do something about it.

What if we did the same thing as Christians? What if we said to the world, which appears to be falling apart all around us, "It's On". I think for too long now, we as believers have sat around whining about how bad things are getting from a spiritual and moral perspective, feeling helpless, rather than making a decision to do something about it. We trade emails and forward news stories regarding the latest moral failure, pro-evolution "discovery", terrorist threat, or religious freedom violation and lament together as to how "bad" it is getting. While sharing of that information with each other is actually good, we need to go beyond just commiserating together in our holy huddles and engage the world around us to make difference for Christ and the Kingdom. We need to make a difference.

So many times we think the only way to change the direction of the world, country or our community is through our government officials. While that is important to let our government officials know what we think, the real way to change the direction of a society is not from the top (gov't) down but from the bottom (people) up. Change the hearts of the people and you will change the government and the society as a whole.

That being said, there is no greater way to "change the hearts of the people" than to share the good news of the gospel with them. I recently had a chance to meet Larry Moyer, founder of EvanTell, a not for profit dedicated to sharing the gospel with the world. I was so impressed with Larry and what he (rather God) has built over the last 36 years. Part of their ministry is a evangelism training program which is available on-line at www.act111.org. It is excellent. I am the process of doing the training myself and I want to challenge you to do the same. It is four sessions of approximately 20 minutes. It is simple, straight forward and theologically sound.

I like the program so much we are going to spend the next four weeks studying the training materials in class so we can all be equipped to share our faith. We started the series this Sunday for the Cornerstone (Sunday BFG) class and we will be starting the series this Wednesday for the Wednesday night BFG. The training has four sessions so we will be covering a session per week. For Cornerstone members (Sunday BFG) you will need to do at least sessions 1 and 2 before Sunday the 16th to get caught up. For Wednesday BFG members, you will need to do session 1 to be prepared for this Wednesday the 12th. There are materials (worksheets) to print out from the website and complete. If you don't get the homework done before class, please do not let that prevent you from coming. We will covering all of the material so you will not be lost. You will just get more out of it if you do it before hand.

I am looking forward to this program and getting back to a regular blogging process.

Please join me on this evangelism for life journey.