Souls are at stake in 2008

It's a new year! This year I'm going to do my best to blog about once a week. I'm also going to try and do a lot of audio blogging on here. I enjoy speaking... I can't really say I "enjoy" writing. Why? I don't know.

This Sunday will be the start of my third year with the Ripon church of Christ. Wow - what a great family to be a part of. In my humble opinion, one of our greatest assets here is that the leadership stands strongly together. We are in constant communication and always working on projects together.

It's a new year. I've been here over 2 years now. I made it! The statistics are shattered! It's amazing that most preachers don't make it past 2 years. I think I know many of the reasons why. Maybe someday I will share those thoughts with you all. But today what I want to talk about is my new theme for the year in Ripon: "Souls are at stake in 2008." This Sunday I will kick the year off with a message that is designed to inspire the congregation to start thinking evangelistically. Last year we spent a lot of time talking about what biblical church growth is, and this year we are going to start implementing some of those things we talked about. To summarize, the main idea of church growth is to become more like Christ (Ephesians 4:11-16). Christ came to preach so as to seek and save the lost (Mark 1:38; Luke 19:10). Therefore, if I am becoming more like Christ I will be preaching to seek and save the lost.

Many times we make "evangelism" way too complicated. We think of it as a program. We think of it as a marketing plan. We look at it from an ungodly perspective of numbers in the water. So we design an "evangelism" program that gets as many people in the water as quickly as possible. It's time for an exegetical theology towards evangelism.

In brief, Jesus described evangelism as showing people who Jesus was, making people disciples (that means they start to become like Christ - Matthew 10:25), baptizing them, and teaching them to endure all things Christ has commanded (Matthew 28-28-20). Evangelism is "good newsing." We take the good news and we preach it, and then we live it, and continue to teach it. Much more is in store as the year moves on! This is just a teaser. I'm looking forward to preaching this message on Sunday.

Sow the Seed Faithfully,
Caleb O'Hara