About a year ago, I put out flyers for a Bible study with little tear off strips at the bottom with our website and Skype information. I put one in English and one in Spanish outside my door in the clinic I worked at at that time, and the other I put on a bulletin board outside of my apartment complexes mailbox center. 4 people responded. 3 actually did studies with us. None of them are studying with us now. It's kind of difficult to put that in writing, but sometimes it just happens. It's certainly been a learning experience, and we won't forget the lessons we learned.
As a side note, we did all of this openly under the eldership of our local church, giving frequent reports.
1 English speaking guy
This one started out nice. I met the guy at a local restaurant to hang out and just get to know him better before going forward. He follows Jesus, and we enjoyed being around each other. We hung out a couple of times, had some moments of spirited prayer, but after about 4 times seeing each other we never did anything together again. Not for lack of follow up, so I don't really know what went on. I think it was just hard for him as a traveler to get his schedule on. We offered to skype with him when traveling, but it was never accepted. Oh well. God bless him!!
1 Spanish-speaking Jehovah's witness
This was a hard one. I met this lady during a financial counseling session at the clinic and noted a lot of irregularities with her family situation because of a lack of control of pretty much every aspect of her life. When I asked if she was being abused, she said she was. I had her read a few books of the Bible, and we would come together and discuss these and how God's spirit was speaking to her. She seemed to improve over time. My wife and I even traveled about an hour to get to her house and have a family Bible study with her boyfriend and other family members present. However, the friendship took a turn towards obsession on her part, and I had to exit the friendship for the sake of honoring my lovely wife. In this, the Spirit taught me a huge lesson contained in Titus 2:3-5, to teach those of your own gender.
1 Spanish-speaking lady
This was a beautiful story. This lady knocked on my office door asking to become part of this study. Karen and I went to meet her at a restaurant. She had been saved by God from a number of cults she had been a part of, and she herself will also tell you she was saved from her own homosexuality. We met with her over a number of weeks and discussed a great number of things and began to get close. Through her we were able to witness to a Muslim friend of hers and to support our dear sister in spreading the good news to her coworkers of other faiths. She introduced us to other of her friends. It faded for a season, and we have not seen her for about a year. We will probably begin meeting with her again soon.
However, one thing we learned with her is that she loved the theologically hard things and focused mainly on those during discussion times. It was difficult to steer conversation back to the simple calling of Jesus on our lives when we were always talking deep into eschatology. It's hard to know what to do with these things. The temptation is to impose structure when things aren't perfect. We let the Spirit move, and we firmly believe Jesus is quite able and ready to lead the church Himself, in reality, not theory and of course without a human mediator.
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*Another guy, actually a rap producer, came into the clinic just angry at the world. We talked, and I felt the Spirit telling me to ask him if he had given his life to the Lord. We prayed together to rededicate his life to the Lord. It was pretty awesome. I texted him for follow up and linked him up with a local pastor, but he never did follow up. That did not feel awesome. :(
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**My wife also started developing a relationship with a coworker, eating out with them and going to galleries together. We consequently got invited to a unitarian universalist wedding, which quite possibly ranks as the most blasphemous experience I've ever endured. Slowly but surely we are making a relationship with the coworker and her husband. She is connected to a large Buddhist following in our city, and I had the awkward privilege of talking to the main guru over it who claimed to follow Jesus.
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It was greatly discouraging to lose what we lost. However, we also know that it was a great joy to share in the presence of God and to share the Word of God with others. It was a privilege. It still is a privilege. It's amazing to see God work, even in the mess.
You can really get burned out if you dwell on these failures, or what appear to be failures, if you take all of the burden of it onto your own heart. It is good to desire good for others and be disappointed when they reject it and reject you. But these are things Jesus told us would happen (like Luke 10:1-16), and we must drink of the amazing calm of passages like Matthew 11:28-30 and 1 Corinthians 3:5-9.
We learned two great lessons from this. First, talk to God all the time and beg God when preparing to go to one of these things. Nothing moves in history without Him, and we must also talk to Him so we can align ourselves with the work He is already doing in people's lives. Second, we have to build relationships slowly... slowly. Trust is the currency we deal in when we desire to make relationships. Flyers, I think, may be the worst way to meet people. It's very inorganic and awkward to start a relationship with a flyer. I'll talk about in the next post what we changed up. Third, people do need a little anonymity for their own protection sometimes, and exchanging emails and cell numbers before you even meet them can be a blessing and a curse.
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