Nielson / Furman Joyfully Spreading the Word

Sharing the Good News of Jesus
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5946-4
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

You can be a part of the spread of the gospel in the world.  Here are theological reflections and real stories from women from across the world who are eagerly sharing the good news of Jesus wherever God has placed them-showing us just how possible it is to follow Jesus's call to evangelism in our ordinary, everyday lives.

Kathleen Nielson (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is an author and speaker who loves working with women in studying the Scriptures. After directing the Gospel Coalition's women's initiatives from 2010-2017, she now serves as senior adviser and book editor for TGC. She and her husband, Niel, make their home partly in Wheaton, Illinois, and partly in Jakarta, Indonesia. They have three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five granddaughters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nielson, Kathleen

Furman, Gloria

Leseproben

Introduction

Kathleen Nielson

This is a book by women and mainly for women—but certainly not all about women. It’s about the gospel and sharing the gospel—making known the good news that God has redeemed us sinners through the death and resurrection of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we are called to believe and find life. As women in the church learn and grow together, following Paul’s instruction to Titus that older women should teach the younger ones “what is good” (Titus 2:3), a call to evangelism must be a crucial part of the good things passed on. Although it is clearly the concern of the whole church, the subject of sharing the gospel is one that women will do well to consider deeply together. Let me suggest three specific reasons why.

1. Evangelism Turns Us Outward

First, believing women need to hear voices calling us to a gospel-centered outward focus—rather than a self-centered, inward one. Especially in Western contexts where many Christians have lived comfortably for a long time, there is often a lack of passion and clarity about communicating the gospel to those who don’t know Christ. I regularly find a great deal of passion among women for personal issues, amid the challenges of relatively well-to-do lives that can leave us stressed or lazy or worried about physical appearances or tempted by easily available, ungodly entertainment. It is easy for many of us to focus on inward-oriented questions that are important but that can fill our thoughts: questions about self-image and identity, emotional health, finding just the right work and finding satisfaction in that work, etc. When we do turn outward toward social issues and actions—and, happily, we increasingly do—the temptation is to turn with passion to the physical and emotional needs that move our hearts. Why are we not equally moved, or even more moved, to share the good news of Jesus and how he can meet the greatest and eternal needs of every needy human being?

Questions concerning sharing the good news of Jesus need not cancel out other, more inward questions. A focus on the gospel and the power of the gospel inevitably feeds our own souls in remarkable ways. At the Gospel Coalition’s 2016 National Women’s Conference, a workshop panel assembled to discuss the topic, “Evangelism: Sharing the Reason for Our Hope.”1 The panel brought together women who minister in universities and neighborhoods and cross-cultural settings—but, most important, it brought together women on whose lips is regularly the good news of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Their hearts for the gospel came through, not in a theoretical way, but with loving care for the people around them who have not received the gift of eternal life in Christ. Their hearts for the Lord himself came through; it was clear that in sharing the Lord Jesus, they had come to know and love him even more deeply and securely. We heard these voices on the panel calling us to evangelism, and we knew it would be good to hear more.

2. Evangelism Thrives on Role Models

We’re already talking about the second reason women should be considering together the subject of personal evangelism: there are great role models who can teach us biblically and well. For many years, Rebecca Manley Pippert has served as a wonderful public role model; with her classic book Out of the Salt Shaker, Becky helped shake many of us awake to the beauty and the real possibility of talking with people about Jesus and seeing them drawn by God to faith. What confirms the goodness of Becky’s model is that she has continued powerfully to inspire many on this subject, serving in recent decades more internationally than in her native United States. I’m grateful she has agreed to join us in this volume on a subject she has lived out personally and with faithful perseverance.

Such role models, of course, speak not only to women. And, indeed, such public role models must join a host of private ones, so that we will all know we’re part of a family enterprise, a whole prayerful purpose of the body of Christ to see the church grow by adding new believers. But it is true that women can play a significant part in this enterprise in a myriad of ways—and one way is through offering role models to the next generation, to help them envision just what a woman with a heart to share the gospel looks like in action. We’re hoping that the voices in this book will offer some helpful role models and inspire a whole lot more.

The contributors are women simply serving in the places where God put them, showing and sharing the good news of what God has done to save us through his Son. Many of these women juggle a variety of contexts, mixing home and work and friendship and hospitality and mercy ministry in that sometimes-chaotic combination that makes up many women’s lives. We hope the multiple involvements highlighted by these women will spur others on to see that we can share the gospel from any and every life context, from a kitchen table to an office desk to a podium in front of thousands. We hope these women’s stories will stimulate creative thinking concerning the possibility of reaching out not just to people across the globe but to neighbors across the street and people across town. Speaking of stories—we hope you enjoy them; there are a lot of compelling stories in this book, and just telling them turned out to be one of the most effective means of lighting up the subject of evangelism in a most personal way.

We also hope these voices will spur us on to increasingly careful, consistent study of God’s Word—not simply in order to feed ourselves, but also to feed others with the Word of truth. The contributors to this volume are women who have immersed themselves deeply in the Scriptures. Their thoughts and words are full of God’s Word. Their articulations of clear gospel apologetics grow from the very logic and flow of the Old and New Testaments, with Jesus at the center of the story. They would remind us that it is the Word of God that makes people wise for salvation (2 Tim. 3:15). They call us to trust this Word as the sword of the Spirit, and they provide heartening examples of what it looks like to wield this sword with excellence, humility, and trust in God alone for the salvation of those he calls. Hearing these women’s voices will help transform our picture of Bible study from that of a routine meal to an ever-larger table where we get to share an amazing feast.

3. Evangelism Is Urgent

Third, and finally, women should be considering deeply together the subject of personal evangelism because we sense the urgency of teaching each other this part of “what is good.” The paragraph immediately following Paul’s instructions to Titus concerning the various groups within the church gives the big reason for all his instructions:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. (Titus 2:11–13)

The emphasis in this passage is God’s redemptive work through Jesus Christ that has come for “all people,” and that happens in a certain time frame—a time frame that will culminate in the second coming of the Lord Jesus to earth, in all his glory.

What Paul calls the “present age” is the same period also referred to in Scripture as the “last days” (Acts 2:17; Heb. 1:2). These terms describe the time in which we now live—the time between Jesus’s first and second coming. It’s a time of taking salvation to all the nations, as believers spread the good news, until Jesus’s return. According to his clear command before he left the earth, Jesus’s calling of believers during this time is to “go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:18–20).

That command was given to Jesus’s disciples and is passed on through them to the church, with its preachers and teachers and evangelists who lead the church in making and teaching disciples both near and far. This volume’s contributors love and depend on the context of the church, and specifically local congregations, for the work of the Great Commission. (Watch for how many of their stories make local churches a part of the action!) This book celebrates participation in the Great Commission by every single church member, under the leadership of pastors and elders. And this book in particular encourages women to feel the urgency of this call, just as did the women in the early church. Just think of all those fellow female workers mentioned by Paul: Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Junia, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus’s mother, Julia, and Nereus’s sister (see Romans 16).

Among people who enjoy all the economic progress and technological enlightenment of the...