Recently I wrote about Parish Evangelism and how to strategically evangelize an area.
There’s just one problem… how do we each do that where we are?
In the days of Chalmers it was relatively easy… a missionary or “visitor” could visit 3 or more dwellings per hour on foot. Where I live, there is no place we can go without a vehicle. In fact, there are few sidewalks available.
There are residential sections, apartment complexes, and other centers of housing but they are all remote from each other. They are nowhere near where we gather on the Lord’s Day or where we gather for Celebrate Recovery.
One urban missionary I know has at least one luxury compared to me… they can focus on a 2 square mile area that can, if necessary, be walked on foot.
We have 1025 miles of roads in this county!
So how do we operate a “parish type” ministry?
I’m still trying to figure out how to do that.
On top of that, at every turn we have literally suffered physical, emotional, and spiritual assaults. Life often seems to be about little more than lifting ourselves out of the dust and slogging on.
What we’ve decided is to regroup regarding our Celebrate Recovery (Christ centered 12 step outreach) and finding the nexus point of our community.
To regroup, we’re raising funds to go to a refresher training course.
To reach the nexus point,we’re planning to work with a large retail store (you’d know the name if I mentioned it) and have one Saturday when we can distribute 100’s of pieces of literature to interested people who we can then follow up with by future contact … just how is subject to more brainstorming of course. Maybe we’ll have a drawing for a “recovery resource” or something? Still working on that.
As we get more contacts, we’ll try to work through people’s networks.
Our goal overall is to see people’s lives transformed through the Gospel of Christ.
It’s not exactly a “parish strategy” geographically speaking. On the back end it may resemble a parish in the sense that we will work through individual/family nettworks and move out to more and more people with God’s help.
So what are you doing?
Would you like to help us? Your prayers are greatly appreciated.
If you can help make a donation to this effort, it would also be much appreciated!
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