129. Freedom In The Church - Evangelism and Outreach

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Saferick and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. It's always a blessing to be able to come back on and record and talk about what's going on in our lives. And as we're in this series of In the Church and Brett, we had a great service this past week for us. Man, we had four visiting families. Two of them were first-time guests and one was a newlywed couple. Don't know how they even found out about the church, but man, it was a great time for them to be there and just be able to make some of those connections. And so I hope you are doing well. Are you still here or has the rapture happened? And am I looking at a hologram or what's going on here? I hope this isn't my glorified body. I would prefer my glorified body to not be this one. So I'm hoping the rapture did not happen. But yeah, obviously we're still here. All the cities named Nineveh are still here. And the ark didn't go to heaven. It's still there. And so, yeah. And the one man in rapture, Indiana. We don't know if he's still there. He may have been the only one that was raptured because he was the only person there in rapture, Indiana. Exactly. Exactly. So the eclipse came. The eclipse left. And once again, the date setters are wrong. And never, never believe it. I think I'm not sure. Somebody in the Bible warned us about date setters. I can't remember who that was. Right. Right. Somebody famous. Somebody everybody knows. I just, it's on the tip of my tongue. Right. Love it. Well, you know, it was a great time. I got to watch. We were, you know, 80 or 90% coverage out here. So my son had some glasses and we looked at them. Brett, you were planning to go look at it there in Arkansas, I think. I was three hours away. I was three hours away from it. My plan was to drop Emily off at work. Take the boys up to Jonesboro, Arkansas, about three hours away. Watch it for about four minutes. Turn around, come back home in enough time to pick my wife up from work. It would have been a whole day. But now I'm glad that I didn't do it because my sister-in-law went to Arkansas. Yeah. It took them four hours to get where they were going and eight hours to get back because of the traffic. Wow. There's, there was a map of the country of all the Airbnbs that were sold out. I saw that. Along the path of the eclipse. Sold out. And my sister-in-law told me that the traffic was so incredibly bad. There's no way I would have made it back to pick my wife up from work. We had small group that night. And then I'm like, okay, we're going to, we're going to watch it here because we're still 83 to 90% coverage. And then the cloud said, nope. Yeah. So little cloud coverage there. Crazy. And so no, no eclipse for us. So I'll have to wait. The next one that comes through in 21 years is going to come right through Mississippi. So I'll have to wait for that one. You just walk outside the church, baby. You can rent out some of the Sunday school rooms as an Airbnb, make some money off of it. Hey, we're good. Oh man. Very cool. Love it. So yeah, we, I got to watch a little bit of it to me. Uh, it happens, you know, I know it's pretty cool, uh, to be able to see, but I'm not going to drive a whole bunch of different ways, uh, to go see it or watch it or whatever. But, uh, yeah, I was standing outside jumping a couple of times, maybe hoping that in one of those jumps, it was just gonna, I was just gonna keep on going, but never happened. Hey, funny thing here. I'll share this. I was on the phone or I was at football practice and, uh, we had four practice that day. And we're standing outside and John calls me and I'm like, oh dude, I'm so I let it ring like four or five times. And I pick up and I act like I was given like it was a voicemail. So, Hey, this is the phone of pastor James. Say for it. If you've reached this, it's because I have gone on to glory and the rapture has happened. He hung up on me. Like I'm in the middle of saying this. And he thought it was actually the voicemail. I caught him back. I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I thought it wasn't a voicemail. So I was like, dude, I was leaving like a funny moment where I, so, uh, yeah, love it. Love it. It was great. So, uh, well, Brett, Hey, uh, we've got a couple of things. Our, uh, for freedom podcast.com. We have went live with our Israel trip on there. So if you've been looking and wondering where to find that information, it's at for freedom, podcast.com. The number for freedom, podcast.com. You can go and look at that. Hopefully you'll, uh, want to go with us to the Holy lands. And, uh, we'll be talking about that here in a while. Uh, me and, uh, John are actually going to be at a preaching conference in Asheville. Uh, it was supposed to be me and another guy and his wife is having surgery on the 25th. Uh, and so the 24th and 25th will be in Asheville if you're in that area and you want to get up with us, uh, shoot me a message and we'd love to hang out and, uh, just have a good time there in Asheville. And then just around the corner, Brett, we're about two months away, 60 days away from, uh, the meetup. We're calling it a meetup in Indiana. Uh, why don't you tell us about that? Oh yeah. We're going to the national Southern Baptist, uh, convention conference in, uh, Indianapolis, Indiana. And we're looking forward to it. We've got us at Airbnb and, uh, we've had several people contact us wanting to, uh, wanting to meet up. And absolutely, if you are going to the, uh, Southern Baptist convention, uh, this year in Indianapolis, uh, let us know, hit us up. We want to get together with you. We've had a couple of people contact us and, uh, we're going to all get together and, uh, we, we'd love to do that. So we're, we're definitely looking forward to that. And then, uh, after the, uh, after that, I think our next thing on our calendar is Katoosa. Absolutely. Hey, one of the things that I'm really excited about with, uh, the Indianapolis, uh, SBC meeting, they do a pastor's conference and most conventions do a pastor's conference beforehand and the pastor's conference for the state national convention. Of course, they got the big names, Jack Graham, uh, Shane Pruitt, some big guys that are coming in, Bartholomew Orr, um, Herschel York, some guys, Jimmy Shrogons are coming in to preach. Uh, but what I'm excited about is the theme is pursuing your mission and, uh, just being able to think about where we're at. And, uh, you know, one of the part, important parts of, of being pastors is writing sermons and praying with people. Uh, but also it's being faithful stewards of what God's called us to do. Um, and so these, these men that are going to come in are going to preach and teach us on, uh, you know, how to care well and how to be faithful pastors. And so I'm looking forward to that as young pastor, my first year, uh, being a senior pastor. And so it's been, uh, that's why I'm going to this preaching conference, you know, we're, I'm trying to hone some of these skills and, uh, even been chewing on some of the things that, uh, Marcus said last week on our episode of, uh, some, some certificates and, uh, just thinking about ways that we can be effective in our leadership, effective in our pastoring. Um, and also here on the podcast, just how we can care well for others that are going through hurt and trauma and pain. Uh, and so, yeah, I'm excited about that. And then Katusa, man, it's going to be great hanging out with JC and getting a shine, the bald head and, uh, hopefully rub it. And the genie will come out and grant a wish from the RFP. And, uh, we're literally looking forward to that. And, uh, hopefully you are as well. And hopefully you'll be joining us down there in Katusa for the meetup in November. And then we've got Israel coming up next year in March. Uh, this is the second week of March, uh, next year, most of it is probably going to be spring break for a lot of people and, uh, nine days in the Holy land. Uh, listen, we like, we're just going to kind of repeat this like a broken record, but we're excited about it. We want everybody to go that wants to go. It's safer now than it was when we went. And so, you know, there are tours on the ground right now. We've got friends that are going over there this summer that are leading groups. And so it's, it's just going to get safer as we get closer to next year to next March. So if you have not signed up for Israel yet, uh, go to our website for freedom podcast.com and click on the link. And, uh, you'll be able to, uh, to go to our trip website, check out our prices, check out our itinerary, where we're going, what we're doing. We're doing stuff on this trip that we have, that we haven't done yet. Right. And some of the, some of the new things on our itinerary, I'm very, very excited about. Uh, we've worked in some time for just bumming around and shopping and things like that. And so we're definitely looking forward to taking this trip once in a lifetime trip. Uh, your life will, will never be the same. You'll never pray the same again. You'll never read your Bible the same again. Uh, you will not regret investing in this trip. Absolutely. Absolutely. Man, I can't wait. And, uh, I'm so excited to even put the information on the website this week, just being able to read through the itinerary again, just, oh man, it was just a, uh, it was awesome for me. Uh, just was overwhelmed with emotions, seeing some of the sites again. Uh, man, it was great. What food are you looking forward to the most? Cause I got great food over there. Uh, two things, two things. I cannot stop thinking about the hummus that we had while we were there. Um, not a hummus fan whatsoever, but there was just something, I don't know if it was the magic of Israel, if some, it was some type of holy water they put in it, but the hummus was fantastic. And then dude, I'm going to, I'm going to go deep dive in on the, the shawarmas again. Like I'm, I'm missing it. I loved it every single time and I wish I would have had more. There was a couple of times where I branched out and got the falafel and some of the other things should have just stuck with the shawarma and just smacked on it the whole time. And so, man, I can't wait. It's going to be great. The chicken shawarma was great. I'm a big falafel fan. So that was good. We went to that one restaurant where I ordered steak, man, it was good too. I didn't have that one thing over there that, uh, that I didn't like. And man, the breakfast buffets just go on for just an eternity. They're so big. Now there's no bacon, there's no pork, nothing like that, but there's plenty of other things that, you know, to satisfy you. So I'll give them a pass on the no bacon, but, uh, there's plenty of other things that, you plenty of other stuff there. So you're definitely going to have a good time. Absolutely. Can't wait for it, man. It's going to be great. Uh, so this week and next week, we're going to be talking about evangelism and outreach and what that looks like and the mode of what that is and how we were trained and, uh, some ways that we've learned since that and since leaving the IFB and what that looks like. Uh, we've got a guy named Don Lomb coming on. He is the director of outreach and evangelism for the Mississippi Baptist state convention. And so he's going to come on next week and discuss some, some things that they're doing with the convention and outreach and opportunities. And, uh, at Southern Baptist, we give in cooperation through Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon, uh, for North American mission and, uh, and the, um, international mission board. And, uh, those dollars go to, uh, support missionaries all over the world here in the States and all over the world in mighty different ways. And, uh, so we're really excited about talking through that today and sort of talking through what we have been taught. So Brett, uh, I will, I'll get the conversation started today. Uh, as I was preparing and thinking through, uh, the episode, I was thinking about my very first time being trained on, um, uh, outreach evangelism, whatever you want to call it. And so, um, we had our men's soul winning every Thursday night in our church. And so the men would show up, there'd be 10 or 15 of them there and they'd go out and knock doors. And so I showed up cause they advertised it and they talked about it every week. And I'm like, well, I probably need to do this at some point. So I was like 15 years old. Um, I show up and, uh, we sort of had some names of people who had came and we're going to go follow up and then sort of knock that street that they lived on. And so, uh, well, the name we got, I can't remember. I remember a couple of different guys I went with, uh, and I don't remember which one it was, but I was with them and I'm talking and, uh, he goes to the door and we knock on the door, you know, you've been there and they introduced themselves, you know, we're so and so from gospel like Baptist church and Salisbury. And we just want to follow up from you guys coming. And so this was someone who already came and was familiar with the church. And so the conversation was really good. Well, it was like an apartment complex. And so we went to the next door and we knocked on the door and the guy led the conversation. I'm just watching. I'd never done this before. And so he's like, so do you have any questions? I'm like, nah, sounds good. He's like, all right, you're going to do the next one. I'm like, dude, what? Like you've done two doors. And so like I stumbled through, I didn't know what I was doing. I'm trying to invite this guy to church. I was nervous as I'll get out. Um, and so that was my introduction to door to door soul winning. And so door to door soul winning, it's effective in a way. Uh, and I did that all the way up until Bible college. And even after Bible college in our first ministry, that's all we ever did, you know, was, was door to door soul winning. And then, uh, there was this thing called the idea day. Do you remember, have you ever heard of the idea day, Brett? No. Okay. The idea day came out when I was in Idaho and that was basically this really big event. It sort of spawned out of West coast Bible college. And it was a group of guys, Josh Tice and some other guys, uh, that said, Hey, let's just get some guys in a room and let's just talk about some things that we've done in evangelism that have worked good, bad, and different. Maybe I did that you never thought of. And so I'm like, okay, let's, uh, maybe this is sort of some ecumenical thing, some crazy left-wing thing. And so I just sort of watched from a distance. Well, man, some of these ideas were coming out and they were fantastic. I just things I'd never thought of. Cause when you get people in a room, uh, I like how Brian Edwards said the other day, we only ever drink out of our barrel of water. And it's only until we get other people there, do we get to hear what other people's barrel of water is because we all think differently. And so for the first time in this, you know, round table gathering, and I'm sure it'd been done in other places, but in the IFB had never been done before. And so they began sharing some ideas like, Hey, we went to the DMV and, uh, in our area, uh, where this guy was talking, the, the DMV lines were hours long where people be waiting outside and be cold or whatever. And so what we decided to do was just show up with them hot chocolate and just give everyone in line, hot chocolate and coffee. And it was cold and it was a great way to encourage them. And, and while they're there, Hey, do you guys go to church anywhere? You know, we're not there to, you know, make them go to church, but we're giving them a cup of coffee. And so they're, they're sort of stuck in line. And so we had an opportunity just to talk to people. Uh, maybe it was just a simple ways of just serving and helping and loving people in our area. And I began to just think, man, this is a crazy different way than I'd ever thought. And so this is sort of what spurred on to me to think outside the box in evangelism. And so Brett, why don't you share your, and then we're going to go back and share how we were taught in college because those are some fun stories as well. Uh, so share how you sort of got started in evangelism and, and your, your upbringing of church. There was one reason and one reason only when I was a teenager that, um, I wanted to go to midweek, uh, soul winning. And that was because of Taco Bell, because they took the teenagers to Taco Bell on the, what we do is we load up on the church bus and they would, we split up into groups and they drop us off in a neighborhood and we'd canvas the neighborhoods, cold knock doors. They weren't, uh, you know, visitors or contacts. We just, you guys, you knock this street, you guys, you knock this street. And then we'll come pick you, we'll drive through and come pick y'all up when you're done and just knocking on doors. And then afterwards we go to Taco Bell and then, uh, you know, that you socialize before Wednesday evening church. And then we did that for a couple of years and then we got tired of Taco Bell and switched to Dick to Dairy Queen. And so that, that was amazing. That was the, that was the, you know, the catalyst that wanted me to go soul winning because I wanted to socialize with everybody, but it worked and I got out there and you know, what, you know, I was lucky. I got to go a couple of weeks and watch before, uh, they threw me out into the waters and I'm a natural introvert. And so it's really hard for me to talk to people. And so I really had to push myself out of my shell to do it. But, you know, this time I'd already surrendered to preach and so I was like, well, I'm going to have to do it. And so we started knocking doors and passing out tracks and things like that. And I can remember, uh, one of the first door apartments that I knocked on. And I remember this guy comes to the door and I asked him the questions like, if you died today, where would you go? And he said, man, if I die today, I'm going to Brookhaven, Mississippi. And, uh, man, that really caught me off guard. I was like, well, but what he was saying was, you know, that's where he was going to get buried. And then they're just going to put them in the ground. I've had good experiences. I've had, you know, you know, nice people, but I've had short tempered people. I've had people cuss me. I've had people slam the door in my face and, you know, all that stuff. Then we'd go to Bible college and was trained there and kind of the same thing and, and on into the ministry. And then, you know, all we knew about evangelism was door knocking, door knocking, door knocking, door knocking. Like that is the only way to do it. Um, and, you know, and so that's what, that's what we were taught to do. And that's what I did. And so then I left the church where I was at. I went to go pastor my own church and, you know, I'm still door knocking and doing that. But then I got to thinking, you know, there's, this can't be the only way. And, you know, there's got to be other ways, other avenues. I didn't, I was so out of touch with people. I didn't know. I was only trained by IFB churches and IFB colleges. So I didn't know anything else. And so, man, I just went to YouTube university and I started, you know, you know, getting, you know, church outreach ideas, typing it up, trying to find videos. And I found a guy on the internet. His name is Chris Abbott on YouTube. And he's got some good videos. A lot of them are repetitive. They kind of repeat the same thing, but he's all for social media, media and Facebook ads. And man, we started to try some new stuff. One of the things that I would do that I got from him is that I would put on this Facebook ad, I'd record a video of, you know, Hey, this is pastor Brett. And I want to pray for you today. And so if you just shoot us a message, tell me what you want me to pray for, and I'll pray for you. And so what they would do is they would send me the message. Hey, my mom's having surgery. I'm going through a tough time. Could you pray for me? So there's a messenger. There's a little feature where you can record like a 60 second clip of you talking. So what I do is I record my voice. Hey, this is pastor Brett. Let me pray for you. And I pray for their need. Make sure it was in the 60 seconds. And at the end of the video, I said, listen, if I can ever do anything for you, let me know. We're having church this Sunday at 11 a.m. Can you make it? And then I'd send it to them. And man, I did that for a while. Had a lot of good responses from that. A lot of people contact me. A lot of people would end up wanting to call me, want me to come visit them. So prayer ads was another idea that I come up with. Another idea that I kind of, that Chris kind of let me know about was fill the fridge. And so what I did is I went to, we had an elementary school right across the street from the church. We have the middle school and high school a half a mile down the road from our church. So I had three schools right there around the church. So I went to each principal and I said, hey, once a month, can we come in your school and just kind of fill the fridge in the teacher's lounge? And they said, yeah, go ahead. And so I go to Walmart and spend about 150 bucks. We're talking 50 bucks a school. I'd buy drinks and Cokes and waters and oatmeal cream pies and little Debbie's. And I'd fill my car up once a month and I'd go to the teacher's lounge and I'd get my, I bought me a little dolly and I'd bring the drinks and snacks into the teacher's lounge. I got, I bought magnets with the church information on them. And every time I left, I'd put a letter on the refrigerator telling the teachers how much I appreciate what we did, how we're praying for them, things like that. And I did that all three schools for several months. And man, we had a lot. We had so many teachers and their families come through and visit our church. We had, you know, like five families come through and visit from that. We had three families of teachers join our church and start coming faithfully, you know, once we did that. And so we just saw a lot of good, a lot of good things from that. And that was kind of the thing that showed me, okay, door knocking. Yes, it is part of it, but it's definitely not all of it. It's not even most of it. There are other things we can do to reach out, to reach people where they're at, to influence them into a gospel conversation. There's other things we can do. And that's what really kind of opened my eyes to, okay, door knocking isn't the end all be all of what evangelism is. Yeah. And man, that's some great ideas. I hope if there's pastors out there listening, you'd write those ideas down that Brett just shared, uh, cause that was great. So Brett, let's back up a little bit because when we were in college, uh, I wasn't, when I was in high school, when we were going out, no one ever formally taught me, uh, okay. If someone wants to accept Jesus, how do we, uh, talk to them? I just literally was just fumbling through this, trying to figure it out. So when I got to Bible college, it's the first time I was actually, uh, they, they showed me how to lead someone in the sinner's prayer. Uh, now I don't like the sinner's prayer in this sense because, uh, I believe there's a lot of, uh, manipulation that's done. Um, and so I think that it's more about, uh, you know, how, what is, what does, uh, Paul say, uh, in the new Testament in Romans? He says that I think it's Romans, uh, maybe in, uh, one of the other, I can't remember exactly where, maybe in the Corinthians where he says that, uh, I planted the seed, Apollos watered the seed and God gave the increase. Our command is just simply to go out and to share the word and to share the good news of Jesus with others and allow God to give the increase, whether it be in that moment or another time, uh, and to call for people to have, to have repentance of their heart. And so we were, we were taught operation go and operation go was taught by a guy named David wood and David wood would lead through this. You know, you got to start the conversation out where you, you walk up and you see him with kind of Mustang out there. Uh, you know, you automatically just start talking about, uh, hot rods and cars, you know, and, and some of those things are great. If you're, if you're trying to blind cold call a conversation, you do want to have some type of something that you're going to talk with. And so that's, that's a good, good, good word there. And then he began to go through, you know, you, you lead them into this centers, uh, the, the plan of salvation and the Romans road. And, and so for me, it was all new. And then he went into the manipulation tactic of all tactic. And you can sort of share what you were taught as well, but it was, uh, if the person wants to receive Jesus, you reach out and you put your hand on their shoulder with your left hand and you keep your right hand open. And so you began to pray. And in that prayer, you say, you sort of squeeze the shoulder a little bit and you begin to say, now, Brett, if you want to accept Jesus in this moment, reach out and grab my right hand. And in that moment there, they, they reach out of this manipulation and they grab your hand and you say, okay, now repeat after me. And you lead them through this prayer. And now all of a sudden they've accepted Jesus and you write that name down and you, you turn that paper in that so-and-so accepted Jesus and the church is going to follow up with them. And that's the, the evangelism mode that, that I was taught. And I used, uh, up until, uh, I mean, eight, nine years ago when I left the independent fundamental Baptist movement. So Brett, what were you taught in Howells Anderson, uh, from your time there? Uh, and maybe even at, uh, was it Maranassa you went to? Well, I'll tell you at, uh, growing up as a teenager, our pastor did, you know, teach us how to lead people to Christ. He, you know, we memorized the Romans road, the track that we had at our church. I memorized every word of it. I memorized all the Roman road verses and, you know, was taught to do it, but really, um, it really, you know, got a little more in depth when I did get to Howells Anderson. My personal evangelism teacher was a man by the name of Laurie Smith. Hello, this is Laurie. That's how we used to mock him. And, uh, but he's the guy, there's a clip that, that bad sermons, uh, you know, put up of a guy standing at, uh, uh, first Baptist church and he, he, he's, you know, calling out a, a Howells and Anderson college student who's, you know, talking and just mocking him and, you know, all this stuff. I can't even remember half of what he said, but that's Larry Smith. And he would scream at us in, in class. You know, these guys are working, they're working third shift jobs or, you know, they're working, you know, 50 hours a week and coming in at two o'clock in the morning, getting up at six to go to class. And, you know, he would tell guys, he'll stand up in the back, don't go to sleep. And if somebody closed their eyes or dozed off, he would just start screaming. His, his big thing was don't make a statement, ask the question. So you couldn't even set up a premise to ask a question. I remember this one class, he made this girl cry because she's trying to set up the premise in order to ask the question. Um, but he wouldn't let her do that. And so he was real particular and, uh, you know, he just had a method and this is how you do it. You asked, you know, just like you said, you, you go up to somebody, you find something to compliment if they have, you know, an LSU mailbox, talk to them about LSU, find something to connect with them. And then always, he was a big thing. I'm always, always, always ask the question. If you died today, are you a hundred percent sure you'd go to heaven or would you have some doubt about it? And, you know, trying to always manipulate them and just, you know, it into, into us giving them the plan of salvation. Now today for me, I rely on the Holy spirit. If I'm not feeling the situation, if I feel that, you know, they're in a hurry, or if I feel that, man, this just isn't the right time, we can do this another time. You know, I'm going to listen to the Holy spirit when I'm in a situation. When his big thing was always, always, always give them the plan of salvation. And it was kind of like the same as you. He told us, you know, you, you put your Bible out or your new Testament out and you say, Hey, if you want to accept Christ as your savior, put your hand on my Bible. And then as soon as they put their hand on the Bible, you say, repeat after me. And then my problem with this is we would go, you know, we would study like that at house Anderson. And then we would on the weekends go out on the bus route and we would lead these people to the Lord on the street. And then we'd never see him again. I mean, I can't tell you how many times we're trying to make numbers because, you know, we've got to witness to so many people a week. And we go up and we're trying to pull those numbers and then they turn around. Then you never see them anymore. Discipleship just was not a thing. It was all about the ABC one, two, three, pray after me. And I remember we would have our programs and we would go to Kaminsky Park outside where the White Sox play. And that was my bus route. I was the bus captain for the White Sox. And so and we would street preach after ballgames and we would just stand up there and we were counting every single person that walked by and heard the speakers. So every person that heard us, we were counting and turning those numbers in because that's just just just how we did it. And so, you know, that's kind of a how I was taught in evangelism and house Anderson. Now, Brad, I always heard stories that up at house, they would put like a horse feeding trough or a portable baptism in the back of a truck or even fill the bed of a truck up and drive down the streets of Hammond and do street baptisms to get the baptism numbers up. Was that ever true? Did that ever happen while you were there? Or is that just something that people said? I never saw that, but I would not put it past them. They would do some sketchy things. I remember that there was this one they're trying to get numbers up and there was this one division leader that said, OK, if you have a high attendance on your bus, you're going to win KFC for your bus route. And so this one bus captain, he did everything he could. He filled his bus up and then the division leader said, OK, you won. And so he gave him like a three piece dinner. For him to like give out to one family on his bus after they had promoted, he had promoted KFC for the whole bus route. That's one of the reasons why I had so many people on there. And so he ended up having, you know, he wasn't just about to do that. The captain had to, you know, buy by meals out of his own pocket for that. But, you know, they would do some sketchy stuff. I wouldn't on the wouldn't put it past them on on the on the portable baptism. But I never saw it. But I wouldn't put it past them. Yeah. Wow. Well, as we move into sort of the second half of what we're doing now, how how are we evangelizing people around us? Me and you both are in very rural locations as pastors, many farms around me. There's not a lot of subdivisions. Actually, I don't think there's any subdivisions in the area of Klingman where I'm at. Rhonda, there may be one or two. I'm not sure I haven't explored enough to know, but I haven't seen one yet. And so we're inner city church ministry. There's a little bit of things you can do different. But where we're at context is everything. And one of the things I really like that Michael Knowles says often is find your your square, your your your your corner square, where in the days of Paul, the corner square was the the place where people gathered on a daily basis, the Acapulacus or the hippodrome or these arenas where people would come and they would hear people talk. That was the common square. Nowadays, there is not a big common square out in public. And so if I were to go out on the corner of Klingman and I would start preaching, no one would hear me. It would just be cars. Now, in the context of New York City, maybe there would be people walking and maybe I would catch someone's attention and they would come and they would listen or in Chicago at the White Sox. You know, those are appealing places where people are giving a lot of foot traffic. And so as we think through our context of where we're at and what we do, I don't want any of us to say here that this is the only way to do things because there are many different ways to evangelize and outreach. And ultimately, all of that needs to lead to what's called discipleship, where you are sitting down one on one, two on one, and you are opening scripture and you're discipling this new believer in Christ. This is the the goal of making disciples and disciples making disciples is reaching and teaching others about the gospel. That's what Jesus commanded us to do, go into the world, reach and make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you to do. When have we, why have we gotten away from this teaching side of it? And so one of the couple of things that I'll sort of share one really cool example, Brett, I heard this this week. Yesterday, I had lunch with a pastor who's who's now the director here at the North Carolina Baptist Children's Home. And he said he had a friend that went to Montana. And I just thought this was a fantastic story. So I wanted to share it because I want us to understand that evangelism outreach looks different in all locations. He went to Montana and was going to plant a church up there in a rule, you know, very, very rule farming land of Montana, 100,000 acre farms, you know, the massive farms bigger than what we're used to. And so he began to get some advice from the North American Mission Board of, hey, how do I plant this? And at the time, this was 20 years ago, they had a program called 2 Plus 2. And what it basically was, was find two things that you can begin to help and reach and make you sort of in the area in the know and then find and begin to build on those relationships. And so what he began to do was he found a local cafe. And this local cafe is where all the farmers met almost every day. And they had lunch. And the same here where I'm at, there's about five or six of these all around my county. And he said every Wednesday, he went and sat at this cafe every single Wednesday and had lunch. And after the course of a couple of months, people began to realize, okay, this guy's here. Who is he? They asked questions, told him he'll start in a church. And they began to even refer to him as the pastor, the new pastor in town. And so he did not have a church yet. He had not actually started to plant church or anything, but he just wanted to be in the community and know the community. Well, as he was in these meetings, he found out about the volunteer fire department that was in the area. And they had two meetings a month. One was for the leadership and one was for the volunteers. And the volunteers were open to anyone in the community that could come and find out information about the volunteer fire department. So in that second meeting, he began to, with his wife, make cookies and brownies and cupcakes. And they would show up to that meeting once a month, drop off the cupcakes or cookies and say, hey, I'm pastor. So-and-so wanted to give you guys some, some, some treats. And I appreciate all you guys are doing. And he did that for a couple of months. Well, then they began to ask him, hey, do you want to become a volunteer firefighter? Hey, do you want to come to these meetings and sit in on them and give some of your input? And so now all of a sudden he became a volunteer firefighter. He's having these meetings at the, at the local diner. And so he began to have two working relationships, still had yet to plant the church, still had yet to actually had one service, but he's making these relationships. Well, then Brett, this was the cool part of the story. He began to figure out, okay, let's start trying to think about how we're going to plant a church. And so he found the local nursing home and he said, hey, do you guys have someone that comes in on a Sunday morning and, and does a message for your residents? And they said, no, we'd love to have that. He said, can I come in and host a service for your residents, but also open that up to anyone from the outside that wants to come in? And they said, sure, let's do it. So he used the nursing home facility as his plant to start his church. And so he had several members from the nursing home come and would sit in there. And then people from the outside, these connections he made at the cafe and at the volunteer fire department, they started coming and he launched the church out of the nursing home. And now the day this church is going, they have a building and they've got about 150, 200 people in a really small town, uh, right outside of Bozeman, Montana, uh, all because of just taking some really practical advice and just building relationships, getting to know people, not necessarily, uh, beating things up, but just being where they're at and showing up where they're at. Uh, and I just, I love that so much because so often that would not have been the method that would have been taught to us. They would have been go and knock a thousand doors every day and nothing wrong with that. If you want to do that, uh, but a thousand doors in a rural community, it's going to take you a really, really long time to do. And so it's finding ways to find where people are at doing where they're at and sharing the gospel with them and being a good positive influence in the community. That's an unbelievable. That's an unbelievable story because I I've never heard anything like that before. And it's so smart to use the nursing home and start your church with no overhead. And, uh, I just that when you told me that story, I just could not believe that. That's so great. It's such a good idea too. Uh, one of the things that I forgot to mention, but you were talking about volunteer firemen and it made me think of it. I tried this fill the fridge with firehouses too. And I went into the main firehouse and I said, Hey, you know, I'd like to fill your fridge. And the fire chief said, yeah. And then I said, you know what? I'd also like to come up and pray for the firemen one day. When is a good time to do that? And just so happened, he said, you know what? Next Friday, uh, we're having training and we're going to have all, all the firemen at this front from the whole parish at this firehouse next Friday. You can come in and pray for them then. And so then I was like, man, that's so cool. And then I had double booked. There was something going on. I can't remember what it was now, but I had double booked and there was no way that I could be at that meeting. And so I asked one of my deacons to go who just happened to be a retired fire chief. Wow. And so he was able to go in there and relate to them and talk to them and make them laugh and represent our church and pray for them. And it was just a good way to get out and get in our community. But that's an awesome story about that guy planting the church. And one of the things we're doing in our church this year is we want to do missions on several different levels. You know, the book of Acts says to go to Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth. And for us, the uttermost part of the earth is, you know, that's out of the country missions. That's overseas missions. And then Judea, Samaria, that's our state. That's the country we live in. But the greatest mission field we have as a church is right outside the door. It's right out the front door of the church. So we have to ask ourselves, what are we doing to reach our Jerusalem? You know, this this past Sunday, not this past Sunday, a couple of weeks ago, we had Palm Sunday. So, of course, you got to preach on Jesus on the donkey on Palm Sunday. And I preached about how, you know, Jesus looked at Jerusalem and he wept because, you know, he did not they didn't recognize him. And at the end of the message, I asked the question, how often do we weep over our county? How much do we weep over the lost people in the cities that we live? And where we live, our city is divided up in communities. And you've got you've you know, you've got Barnes and Renfro and Remus and Lena and Thomastown. These are all the different communities around us. How often do we weep for those lost, you know, without God there? And I think one of the things you have to do in evangelism when you're trying to evangelize your Jerusalem is you have to decide what are the needs of the community that you live in. Just just just think through it for us. We you know outside our doors is a bunch of farmers. We've got farmers all around us. You know, we've got chicken farmers and, you know, so those those are these are middle class farming communities. They've got kids that go to school. They're into athletics. You know, they they've got football players and they've got signs in their yards, you know, that have their child's football number on it. And so, you know, maybe there's an avenue you can, you know, some kind of sports banquet or something like that. Think about, you know, the youth in your area. Are there any youth programs that you can start at your church? Just know the community where you're at. We've got a lot of homeschoolers in our area with a homeschool group, the beneficial to reach people. We've got kids with small, you know, we've got families with smaller children who just can't sit in a church service and wrestle with their kid the whole time. And so it may be advantageous to start a, you know, a children's church or something like that, you know, where, you know, the mom and dad can sit in church and listen to the message and the kid can go next door to the children's church. And but that's all outreach. That's all evangelism to me. You know, well, I think there's two areas. I'm rambling a little bit, but there's two areas we need to decide on. And that is we need to know the difference between our mission and ministry. Our mission is that's evangelism. That is sharing the gospel. OK, ministry is like building something, building a ramp for an elderly person in a wheelchair, painting a house. That's ministry. Now, if you're painting a house and you're beside somebody and you're able to start a gospel conversation and share the gospel with them, that that's considered a mission. But just decide, you know, we're to do these two things, but don't confuse them. Know the difference between ministry and missions. And I think a good way to do that is to really understand the needs of the community that you live in. And then out of those needs, you can discuss ideas on how to reach that community. Love it. I think it's great. And it's so important that we do that. We have those brainstorming meetings where we can figure out how we can reach and help our community. You know, I've sat down with several of our principals since I've been here and just talk to them and say, OK, what do you guys need? What are some opportunities for me to be able to come in and partner with the school, help the school out and be a part of some of those great things? One of the things that before I even got here that was established a couple of years ago was the local high school. If there's a bomb threat or some type of, you know, a nuclear reaction or some type of power outage, our church is the designated response site. So they will bus all the kids to our church because we've got an aging stage of classrooms. There's cameras on the property. There's bathrooms. And there's a loop around our church for the graveyard so parents can have a pickup line. And so if something were to happen, a school shooting or something, they would take all of our kids to our church. And they tell every parent that comes in, hey, we've partnered with this church. And this is how we're going to be able to be an influence. So it's little ways that we can just partner and be a part of our community. You know, the church should be an effective part of the community. It should not be something outside the community. It should be in it and with it and helping that community out in mighty different ways. And so the people in our community should be able to know that that church is there for us to be able to be a blessing to us. And one day when there's a need, you're going to be there and you set that up and you've prepared for those needs to come in. And so I think it's important that we do that. And we have to understand that there's not just one size fits all. It's understanding the context of where you're at and just figuring out how can you reach the people that you have been placed in and be effective in that. And so I think some great things and looking forward to hearing what Don has to tell us about what's going on in the Mississippi State Convention and some ideas there that we've got in our next interview. Brett, any last thoughts? Just like you said, you know, just brainstorm on some ideas. We one of the things we did at our church is we started an outreach team and our outreach team, our first meeting we just had last month, and it was just a brainstorming session. What can we do? Listen, door knocking is a part of it. You can't get away from it. You know, you're going to have to go out and put door hangers on doors. You know, you're going to have to do that. When it comes like two big things, it's like Easter and track retreat. Those are kind of the biggest draws for your church, and you're going to have to get out there and put some door hangers on some doors, but that's not the end all be all. I know for our Baptist convention, you can contact it, and they'll give you a demographic of a survey, a demographic of where your church is in your area. And just, you know, to help you just kind of think through some ideas, think about the signage on your church. Does your signage need to be updated? Are the kids in athletics? Can you sponsor a ball tournament? You know, can you do a raffle or whatnot, which in the IFB raffles are, you know, that's gambling. You stay away from that. But there's nothing wrong with it. And so, you know, do something like that. Fourth of July is a big draw for your church. Invest in some fireworks to, you know, get people to come. Have like a first responder type, you know, type meeting. And just, there's so many things that you can do. Back to school bash. One of the things we're doing at the end of this month is we started, we started a contemporary band at our church. And so we're having a night, a free concert at our church, a night of worship. And so just to get people in the community to come in. So, you know, door knocking, it's a part of it, but it's not all of it. There are other things that you can do. And so just think about it and pray about it and, you know, get with some other people. You don't have to come up with this all on your own. Get with another group of fellow church members and brainstorm. I think the idea day was a great thing. A lot of great things spawned out of that. And so, you know, evangelism is something that we're called to do. We're called to spread the gospel. We're called to make disciples who then go out and make disciples. And that's what this thing is all about. And evangelism is something that the church is commissioned with. And it's something that we can do. Absolutely. Love it. And excited about this talk. And I hope it helps in some way. Excited about Don coming on in a couple of next week. And so until next time, Brett, to God. Not the pastor. Be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. That has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. 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