HOW ARE WE GOING TO EFFECTIVELY REACH THIS WORLD?

First let me point out as to the title's question, many among us want to know an answer.  I mean that one could assume that few care about the question or its response.  But I believe the church has grown so effectively that thousands of we common ones continue to dream, imagine, and apply ways to find the lost.

We breathe deeply such a desire.

Intentional and random acts of ministerial application are available to us.  Small groups, work lunches, Monday Nights for the Master, evangelistic campaigns, prison classes, training DVDs, on and on the list of possibilities actually work among us. 

I both enjoy and experience many of these fruitful labors.  The world wants to know and we continue to have hearts to want to inform.

Yet, I find an element of world evangelism goes overlooked, unmonitored, and even neglected.  I speak of the church's humility. 

Humility needs God and invites neighbors. 

In my earlier training, I operated in opposition to this factor.  I was an answer man itching to find one soul who would/could ask a question which would match my well-oiled answer.  I wasn't into God working.  Neither was I into showing my prospects that there were yet a few things I didn't know.

You know what this mentality does, don't you?  It shuts out God and my neighbors.  Evangelism was all about me; my image, my education, my Bible proofing. 

Yet, the Word says that Jesus humbled himself even to the point of death; death on a cross. 

Ummm, not me.  I was more into door knocking, sermon scolding, and coming out looking good...even if in my eyes only. 

Humility is what God became to win.  I believe victory comes no other way.  It is just as impacting to confess what we don't know as it is to give God credit for what little we do know. 

And I do believe that the reason a vast majority of those in the true church do not have a conscience for reaching the lost is simply because it is believed image matters and we must not fumble nor fail. 

Thus, we never try.

Shame on us. 

Yet, praise God when we dare feel as a fool and try anyway.