Just recently we had a great week of meetings at our church and I was dropping off Dr. David Wood at the airport. On the way to the airport we were talking about the importance of not only emphasizing soul winning, but continuing to emphasize soul winning, even over the years. I was thankful that Dr. Wood commented that that is what we had done here at Maranatha Baptist church. That even over the years we have continued to have an emphasis on soul winning. You can do a whole lot of things right, it’s important to do church administration right, to do Sunday school right, it’s important to, of course, preach what your are supposed to preach. It’s important to do everything in church right. But you know what? It’s very, very, very important to do soul winning right, *** to be a soul winning church, to have a soul winning emphasis, to have the identity, to be identified as a soul winning church. And how do you do that? How do you keep that up over the years? I think one of the ways you do that is, well, the Pastor has to do it. If this isn’t important to the Pastor it won’t be important to everyone else. And I would hope that over the years my enthusiasm, my excitement, my example is what has continued to encourage others in the area of soul winning. We have had and continue to have a very exciting soul winning club using Dr. David Wood’s ‘Operation Go’ materials. And we have people who began with us many years ago, who are still knocking on doors, still winning people to Jesus Christ and still working as trainers in the program. If you don’t keep your trainers excited and enthusiastically involved your trainee’s, your new trainees won’t be excited and enthusiastically involved either. Now I know that there many folks that have many different programs that they might use, but the pastor has got to be excited. He’s got to be fired up. He’s got to be an example. While he may not be the soul winning director specifically, I believe that he needs to be involved in soul winning and his folks need to see it. And we still get excited about it when somebody leads a lost soul to the Lord. When someone during the week has the opportunity to lead a person to the Lord we now have the advantage of finding out right away due to texting. And we will rejoice as we will text several people in church sharing the blessing of a recent salvation decision. We’ve got to keep that in front of us, keep that in front of everything that we do. No matter what we do we need to make sure that our Deacons, our song leaders, our children’s workers, our AWANA workers, everybody from top to bottom is involved in soul winning, is involved in reaching people for Jesus Christ. And preacher, let me just talk to pastors for a moment, you and I are the ones that need to get it done. We’re the ones who need to set that example. We’re the ones that need to demonstrate that in our own lives. Of course we need to be men of God. We need to be prayed up; we need to make sure that our own house is in order. All these other important things that we know that we need to do, we need to do. But you can be a soul winning church for a little while and then cool off, lose that focus. All the sudden you are doing some other things well, you’re doing them very well, you’re doing them right, but before you know it you look around and no longer is soul winning a high priority.
When we think of soul winning at Maranatha Baptist Church, we’re talking about the whole package. This includes sharing Christ with people even outside the church house, on purpose using a plan, getting them down the aisle to make a public profession of faith, seeing them get baptized, and joining the local church. In other words following through with them, discipling them. This is the biblical way for churches to grow and this is what still needs to be done.
Friend if you’re finding that the enthusiasm used to be there and it’s not there anymore, I want to encourage you. Ask the Lord to rekindle that fire and to help you demonstrate the kind of enthusiasm that you need to demonstrate. Maybe you need to restart ’Operation Go’ all over again. Start with those that are truly interested. If you’ve got only two people that are interested in being trainers and two people that are committed to being trained, those are the four that you go with. Then just re-birth soul winning in your church. If you’re finding that people are not staying committed, make sure you are not trying to push somebody through ‘Operation Go’. If your trainers are not truly committed they won’t be able to encourage the trainee. You can try to encourage them, take them out, and buy them a steak, let them know how much you love them and truly appreciate what they are doing. Let them know that you get excited when one comes to know Jesus Christ as Savior. When I get a text message that says “Hey Preacher, this is Mario (a nurse at a local hospital), I just had the opportunity to lead a 72 year old woman to the Lord. She won’t be with us much longer but she’s going to be in glory!” I text him back and I thank the Lord for him, then I text, (I have a list and it’ll go out right away) several in our church so that they might rejoice also. Keep up the enthusiasm; keep up the excitement and keep soul winning in front of your people.
Soul winners are not an elitist group and we must at times work at keeping that feeling from coming across. But when we share in humility and with appreciation and excitement that God can use even us, others will catch the fire. They too will want to see God use them in this area. Soul winning is a command and as with each command we are to teach and train those God has entrusted to us, to follow these commands. So when we (whether a Pastor, Deacon, church worker or just a member of the congregation) reach out to a lost and dying world in humility and with God’s love, people are drawn. The lost are drawn to the Savior, and others to share the Savior. That’s how you continue to have a soul winning church.
