I am happy to partner with Ken Hemphill and Auxano Press in announcing the release of Steve Gaines's new book, Share Jesus Like It Matters. Here is an excerpt:
June 14, 1980 will always be a special day for me. It was the day I married Donna Dodds. Donna and I met in college, dated for a year and a half, and then we married. Frankly, I would have married her after our first date! She loved the Lord, she was beautiful, and she felt called to serve in full-time
Christian ministry. After we prayed on that first date, I knew it was the beginning of something that would last for a lifetime.
After our wedding ceremony, we drove to the hotel. En route, we both became thirsty and stopped at a Dairy Queen to buy soft drinks. I walked into that tiny fast-food restaurant in Jackson, Tennessee, and something came over me. Before I knew it, I shouted out to everyone present, “I just got
married!” The place immediately erupted with cheers and applause. We celebrated together, I purchased our soft drinks, and then went back to the car and told Donna what I had done. We laughed and drove away. I had shared some really good news that I just could not keep to myself!
Have you ever been so excited about something that you had to share it with others? That’s the way it should be with every Christian. We should be so enthusiastic about the fact that Jesus is our Lord and Savior that we cannot contain the good news.
I remember the first person I ever led to Christ. He was a cafeteria worker at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ camp in North Carolina. I was an eighteen-year-old college student, alone with this stranger, doing the best I could to share Jesus with him. Then came that moment when I asked if he would like to follow
Jesus. My heart was beating rapidly when he answered, “Yes, I would.” I then helped him call on the name of the Lord for salvation by leading him in a “sinner’s prayer” through which he repented of his sin, believed that Jesus died for his sins and rose from the dead, and received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Afterwards, I gave him a Bible and encouraged him to read a chapter a day in the Gospel of John. We prayed together, shook hands,
and parted ways.
I was on cloud nine! I’ll never forget what it felt like to lead someone to faith in Jesus. It changed his life and mine. Nothing is more thrilling and fulfilling for a Christian than to lead a lost person to Jesus. That night, I asked the Lord to help me become a soul-winner.
Admittedly, since then, I’ve been slack at times in my efforts to share Jesus. Yet the Lord has helped me to discipline myself to witness and share the Gospel one-on-one with many lost people.
As a senior pastor since 1983, I have seen many people give their hearts to Christ after I have preached Gospel sermons in public settings. Yet I can honestly say that I still get more excited when God uses me to lead one lost person to Him through personal evangelism than I do when people get saved after I preach. Again,
nothing is as thrilling as leading someone to faith in Jesus Christ. Absolutely nothing!
We live in a day when personal evangelism is in a state of decline among evangelical Christians, even among my own faith family, the Southern Baptist Convention. At the time of this writing, our seminary enrollments may be up a little. However, our baptismal numbers for new converts are down—way down. Many leaders in
our day emphasize “making disciples,” and rightfully so (cf. Matt. 28:18-20). But too often, “making disciples” has degenerated into simply gathering together people who are already Christians to engage in Bible study, prayer, Scripture memory, and so forth. They might occasionally go on a mission trip or enjoy fellowship at someone’s home. But rarely, if ever, do they verbally share the Gospel with lost people.
Is that what Jesus had in mind when He commanded His followers in the first century to “make disciples of all the nations”? Absolutely not! To make a disciple obviously includes first sharing Jesus and winning a lost person to faith in Christ.
