intersect IN THE ZONE     INTERSECT (Where the Bible Meets Life) is a regular column of ONE Magazine featuring Dr. Garnett Reid, a member of the Bible faculty at Free Will Baptist Bible College. Email Garnett greid@fwbbc.edu

I have a confession to make. I’m not sharing the gospel enough. Chances are you’re not either. The truth is that my neglect is sin; I grieve and repent over it, but I still need to get busy doing what Jesus commanded me to do.

Find the Zone

The early church had no such reluctance, however. They had a simple two-step strategy we would do well to adopt. Read Acts and you can’t miss it. First, they found their zone. That is, the church zeroed in on their message and audience.

“God promised that Christ must suffer, be killed, and rise on the third day. Jesus is the Christ, and now He commands you to repent,” they declared, first in Jerusalem, next in Judea and Samaria, then as far as they could go to tell it.

Flood the Zone

Once they distilled the gospel to its essence, they told it as many ways and in as many places as they could. To borrow an old football tactic where an offense sends out more receivers than the defense can cover, they “flooded the zone” with the good news of salvation. Christians told it in synagogues, prisons, courts, and marketplaces. Even the Jewish leaders conceded that Jesus’ followers saturated Jerusalem with their message.

Witnesses of the Way shared Christ’s love on the streets and in houses, in cities and deserts, along coastal towns and the inland road to Damascus. Like the surging surf, their witness swept farther and farther across borders to Antioch, Cyrene, Ephesus, Philippi, Athens, Corinth, and Rome.

Zoning In
On a recent visit to Park Street Church in Boston, I saw firsthand how this strategy helped a congregation become intentional in their outreach. First, they had honed their message to a fine point: “We uphold the centrality and exclusivity of the gospel,” they affirmed, and “that Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, is the only way of salvation.”

Then they built a program to get this news to people, using whatever proper means they could. Here are some of the ideas that are working for them. They offer gospel “talking points” to interested “questioners,” internationals, 20- and 30-somethings, and university students. They sponsor outreaches for sharing Christ on the job, through the arts, in urban settings, through adult education; to teens, couples, grandparents, single parents, and families with children.

They use testimonies, canvassing, small-group Bible studies, hikes, retreats, service projects, mission trips, drama, music, media, crafts, hospital and prison care, tutoring, crisis intervention, and counseling, just to name a few strategies.

My church or yours may not be able to do all these things, but some of them will work. The real issue in reaching people, though, is with me: what am I doing now, where I am, with what God has given me in my zone?