Evangelism
Our desire as a community at Gymea Baptist Church is to move towards being a faith sharing community. We aim to empower followers of Jesus to share their lives with not yet Christians. Given that we are all unique and diverse the way we share Jesus is just as diverse. We seek to empower followers of Jesus to share Christ through their personality.
This involves allowing God to sear on our hearts a love for either a person or people group. We aim to empower each follower of Jesus to share Christ through being a consistent presence in the life or lives of those that God has seared on their heart. Such a presence involves acts of love in the ordinary moments of life, while naming Jesus through life stories and engaging with someone’s questions and longings. In order to facilitate these passions we have developed:
Urban Mission Team: This is a group of passionate followers of Jesus who actively walks with not yet Christians. Along with empowering our church community to share their lives with not yet Christians.
Ministry areas that empowers our church community to become a faith sharing community:
Finding Your voice: This is a ministry that has been developed to awaken our church community to embrace a missional alternative of sharing life with not yet Christians. It is a three week journey held in small groups.
Finding Your Voice has three main objectives:
- To begin to explore ways in which we can share our life with a not yet Christian.
- To begin to explore ways we can express acts of love in a culturally relevant way.
- To begin to equip you to share God’s Gospel as part of everyday life.
Bereal: Is another ministry that the Urban Mission Team has developed to empower our Church community to share Jesus with a not yet Christian. Bereal is a ten week journey where you experience the guidance of a mentor that walks with you over the ten weeks.
During our Bereal intake we empower you:
- To identify a person or people group that God is sending you to. We take the time to allow God to sear on your heart a love for those that don’t follow Jesus.
- We explore ways to empower you to submerge into a people group that don’t follow Jesus.
- We empower you to be able to express your journey with Jesus.
- We walk with you in exploring how we can express acts of love, along with creating opportunities to share God’s Gospel and sharing Christ with the intention of inviting that person to come follow Jesus.
Stories of Faith: At Gymea Baptist Church we believe that there is a place for gospel communication from the platform. These services usually involve a known artist, or person with community profile sharing there story of faith.
We seek to develop services where Christians from within our church community invite a not yet Christian that they are walking with to come and have the opportunity to begin to follow Jesus. These stories of faith services seek to partner with those in our church community that have been empowered to walk with not yet Christians.
Exploring Faith: As part of the response from these stories of faith services we usually invite people to come for a three week journey where they can ask questions about life, faith, and God.
Some common questions that we interact with are:
- Why would God allow suffering?
- Can we really trust what the bible says?
- What about other religions, aren’t we all on a different journey where no one is wrong?
- What about good decent people aren’t they good enough for God?
- Hasn’t the church made too much of Jesus, wasn’t he just a good man with great values?
The evangelism ministry at Gymea Baptist Church is constantly evolving as the Urban Mission Team gains wisdom and creative empowering from God. For more information contact Paul Summers @ Gymea Baptist Church 9521-4611 or email paul.summers@gymeabaptist.org.au