"The 'E' Word"

Pastor Laura Guy

February 3, 2008

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We watched a funny video that combined our new series theme of evangelism with football (for Super Sunday). If you'd like to watch it, click here.
We thought about the negative images associated with evangelism - people knocking on doors and telling us we're going to hell or even questioning our faith when we say we already believe in Jesus as our Savior. For many of us, evangelism has become "that which must not be named" in our churches - it is the "E" word.
We recognized that evangelism is something the Church has done from the very beginning. We read the story of how Philip helped the Ethiopian eunuch understand what he was reading in Acts 8:26-38. The story does not say that Philip spoke to the man about hell or damnation, it says he shared the "good news" about Jesus with him. The Greek word for good news, euaggelion, is where we get the root of our word evangelism. That's what evangelism truly means - sharing the good news about Jesus.
We heard Pastor Laura describe her own history with the E word - from her overzealous attempts to scare her mother into belief in Christ, to her false belief that if she didn't have the spiritual gift of evangelism then she was off the hook and didn't have to talk about Jesus anymore. She said she spent years sitting around with other Christians talking about Jesus, but almost never spoke to anyone else about him. Even as a pastor, she still finds it difficult to initiate conversations about Jesus with non-believers.
We anticipated all that this new series, Unbinding the Gospel, will teach us about how to share our faith in ways that are natural and comfortable. We prayed that God would speak to us and change our hearts during this series.
We shared communion by breaking the bread and noticing that there is plenty of bread left over for those who are not yet coming to the table.