Group 7
When I learn about the phone evangelism training at TSTM, I am very excited about it as it presents us with an opportunity to reach out to non-believers during the pandemic period. I thought if I were a pastor, I would love to have as many brothers & sisters as possible to get involved in this training, so I started to introduce this program to my pastor as well as believers inside and outside of my church.
The first person that I invited was brother A who was the leader in our outreach department. Not only did he show much interest to join, but also he shared this passion with our pastor and other church leaders. Praise God that he seized this once-in-a-lifetime gospel opportunity for our church to get trained and share Gospel via phone during this period. He also made an effort to take some time off from work and reschedule his work hours to accommodate the gospel training and practice time. It was also encouraging to see him inspiring and inviting a number of our church brothers and sisters to join passionately!
The second person who responded to my invitation was sister B, who is always very passionate about missions. Although she attends our English congregation, she is also proficient in Chinese and is able to connect with the believers from the English congregation. Like me, sister B is not fluent in Mandarin. However, she is willing to step outside her comfort zone to call Mandarin speaking believers in our church. I admired sister B for her willingness to stretch herself.
Sister C also responded to my invitation. Although sister C can only read very limited Chinese and much prefers to share her faith in English, she has a strong desire to reach out to lost souls. Without much understanding of what to expect, sister C was willing to give this a try. I thank God for sister C and her willingness to step out to challenge herself.
I am truly thankful that including myself, there are 4 people from my church attending this training. We have a strong desire to call up gospel prospects from our own church. When we first requested their information, people were hesitant to release them because they were not sure or whether they had a good understanding of the approach. Would it be too aggressive or making the prospects feel uneasy? Thankfully, we learn that this training program uses a friendship evangelism approach which is our preferred way to evangelize. With brother A’s good connection with different ministry teams and sister B & C’s connection with the children ministry at our church, we are able to call up gospel prospects from Chinese and English congregations, along with the parents of the children who attend our children programs. Praise the Lord!
We thank God for the overall good team spirit. Through smartphone evangelism, we can witness together and share God’s grace with our contacts. We work closely with the church referrer for each gospel prospect we call. In addition, there are times we team up with the referrers on the calls. Both the referrers and our team members are blessed through this process as our passion for sharing the gospel inspires each other. As a result, the referrers are providing more gospel prospects for us to contact.
As our pastor and church leaders start to realize the effectiveness of the smartphone evangelism program, they want to use phone evangelism for engaging more brothers and sisters to share gospel during this pandemic. We are also invited to share our program and testimonies at our corporate prayer meeting. Praise God for paving the way all along to inspire the church to be involved in sharing His good news!
Below is the sharing from one of our members:
God answers prayer in His time and in ways that is beyond our expectations. The first gospel prospect our team contacted was an elderly man – prospect A who was not a believer but had a good relationship with our church. The relationship between our church and his family went back at least 30 years. His three children were introduced to the church at a young age. The youngest was in primary school and the older siblings just started high school. Although their grandma and parents were either ancestor worshippers or agnostic, they allowed the children to attend the church activities. But learning from the children, their hearts were hard to the Gospel . The children attended the English speaking youth fellowship. For years I was one of the fellowship counsellors and watched them grow up at the church. They were encouraged to pray for their unbelieving parents and family members. The children are now all grown up adults. The youngest – DW stayed with our church for the longest time and even served as an elder. He later moved on to another church but still connected with some of our church members. A significant event happened when DW was still at our church. His grandma was sick, but someone reached out to her and she eventually became a Christian before she passed away. I knew DW and many at the church had been praying for his family to turn to Jesus. Even though DW left our church, the church still tried to reach out to his parents. Faithful brothers and sisters invited them to join the fellowship for seniors. During this COVID-19 period, a sister dropped off a gospel device for them to listen to. With the smartphone evangelism training, prospect A was among the first we called. It was an easy conversation as soon as I told him how I used to know all his children. God paved the way and there was no awkwardness in our call. We even ended our conversation with prayer for him and his children. In subsequent calls, the team used the gospel device as a connecting tool to topics of discussion, he gradually gained deeper understanding of the Good News and eventually opened his heart to the Gospel message. On June 18th , he was willing to accept Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! God didn’t forget faithful prayers and what an amazing way He answered. Who would imagine He used this pandemic situation and smartphone evangelism to bring about the harvest of Gospel seeds that was sown many years ago for prospect A’s family. When I shared the great news with DW he was in shock and still couldn’t believe it happened. Even with years of prayers, he knew his dad’s heart was so hard and wondered what could bring him to Christ. But our God is a God of miracle. He makes impossible things possible. This is our God and glory to Him!
The above incident encouraged my heart and taught me a great lesson of faith. Keep praying, keep trusting God, and faithfully point others to Jesus. Our God is working and in His appointed time, He will let us see and reap the harvest.
Although we all have the desire to share the Gospel, without this program, we would probably be idle at home or send out faith related information to non-believers at the most. This training program has not only helped to equip us to share our faith more effectively over the phone, it really helps us to put our acts together and stir up our heart for the Great Commission. We thank God for the opportunity to take part. May everyone of us be the spark that lights the fire of faith in many peoples’ lives. To God be the glory!