ARE WE BEING STRATEGIC IN LONDON?

This past Tuesday, together with our Bible worker Christopher Bassaragh, we attended Mayor’s leadership breakfast at the Metropolitan United Church. Our Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best outlined plans for the city development, shared her need for spiritual support and prayer, and importance of faith communities working together for the good of the city.
As London is gearing up for major developments, transforming the international airport into the distribution hub for the whole Canada, with 24x7 open sky policy, goods coming from USA and Europe, and major companies coming to East London, the city will see major growth in population and territory over the next decade. I was thinking about the church that considers itself to be the remnant with a special message for the end times people. Are we being strategic in planning for growth?
Both churches had gone through the “Master Plan Evangelism” curriculum. Even though poorly attended during the Prayer Meetings, it was published through blogs in bulletins and online (still in archive). The whole focus was to call the church to a simple plan of Jesus – discipling by reproduction. There is no plan “B” in the New Testament. Christ left us the Legacy – the Message and the Method, the Gospel and the Group.
A few probing questions: has Christ been reproduced in you by the Holy Spirit? Have you reproduced your spiritual passion in someone else, leading them to Christ through the Holy Spirit?
I quoted R.E.Coleman in the past: “Jesus intended for the disciples to produce His likeness in and through the church being gathered out of the world. Thus His ministry in the Spirit would be duplicated many fold by His ministry in the lives of His disciples. Through them and others like them it would continue to expand in an ever enlarging circumference until the multitudes might know in some similar way the opportunity which they had known with the Master. By this strategy the conquest of the world was only a matter of time and their faithfulness to His plan.”
You know the principle of exponential growth – “each one reach one”. Simple math – if each of us would win just one person per year who in turn will do the same it would take only 20 years to lead whole city of London to the saving knowledge of Christ. Sad reality is that 8 out of 9 nominal Christians will never lead even one person to Christ in their lifetime.
Are you reproducing?…. spiritually? Message of Jesus to us could be summarized in his last address to disciples: “Fruit . . . more fruit . . . much fruit . . . fruit that abides”(John 15:2,4,5,8,16). A barren Christian is a contradiction of terms. A tree is known by its fruit.
Once you are involved in personal evangelism, you would be even more wiling and readied for corporate public effort.