Come and See

The theme for the Exponential Conference — a conference on church planting — that I attended this week was “Seek and Save—Rethinking Evangelism.” One of the speakers, Larry Osborne, pastor of North Coast Church in Oceanside, California, spoke about how their congregation has reached people for Christ by implementing a “Come and See” approach to evangelism. In short, their philosophy is to encourage their people to invite friends and family to come to church with them to see who Jesus is. They make every effort as a congregation, then, to make sure people see Jesus when they visit the church.

Some Christians, of course, go to much greater lengths to take the Gospel to people. Beginning in 1992, Dr. Bill Becknell of Manchester, Kentucky, for instance, has been recruiting other doctors to go with him to Russia’s far north country. In those isolated villages near the North Pole, where the nearest medical clinic is a three-day trip over rut-filled roads, they treat Nenet Eskimo children who have never seen a doctor or heard about Jesus.

Every trip is a story. On one expedition, Becknell flew from Moscow to Siberia and traveled 10 hours on a rickety bus to a Siberian outpost of about 3,000 people. Leaders asked if he would travel to another village about eight hours away to see people who had never seen a doctor.

In the six to seven hours in a jeep loaded with medicine, Becknell never saw a human being, car or house. At a tent in the middle of nowhere, he met a young shepherd about 25 to 30 years old. “All my life, I have sat on these mountains and looked at the stars at night and wondered if there was a God and if He knew me. I can’t believe He sent you here to tell me about Him,” the young shepherd said as he committed his life to Jesus.

In 2012, 13 expeditions cared for 2,610 people. Currently, there are more than 400 written invitations to come and serve in different parts of Russia.

God doesn’t ask all of us to go to such lengths to witness for Christ. A friend from New Mexico whose wife died in her 70’s in February from cancer told me over lunch this week of all the women his wife had influenced for Christ. Four of them spoke at the celebration service for her life.

For most of us, sharing Christ can be as simple as saying to friends and family, “Come and see.” All of us know people who do not believe and people who do not attend church. We just need to look around us, and we will notice them. Some of them may not respond at first, but as we demonstrate a life that has different values than most people and they begin to see Christ in us, some will come and see. Who do you know to whom you can say, “Come and see”?