Out of Commission: Getting Every Christian Back to the Great Commission by Paul Chappell

Author:Paul Chappell [Chappell, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Striving Together Publications
Published: 2014-05-27T07:00:00+00:00

NINE

The Relationships of a Soulwinner

My grandmother Chappell first came in contact with the gospel through a soulwinner who went door-to-door, actually farm-to-farm, in the rural area of southwest Colorado where my grandparents were bean farmers. Pop Kinney, as he was called, wasn’t turned off by my unsaved grandfather’s hardness toward the gospel. Over the course of a summer, he worked to develop a relationship with Granddad, eventually resulting in both Granddad’s and Grandmother’s salvation.1

Granddad has been in Heaven for several years now, but Grandmother continues to be one of the most faithful and fruitful soulwinners I know. At ninety-five years old, she has arthritis and struggles to get around with a walker, so she can’t get out as much as she used to. But that doesn’t stop her from sharing the gospel! She practices a sort of “reverse doorknocking.” Anyone who knocks on Grandmother’s door—or crosses her path in any way—is going to hear the gospel. Neighbors, doctors (and she has a lot of them these days), her hair dresser, salesmen—they’re not leaving her presence without an opportunity to hear the gospel.

Several weeks ago, Terrie and I were able to visit the family farm in Colorado. As we visited with Grandmother, she told us about Megan, one of the Visiting Angels who provides home health care for her. (Grandmother is fiercely independent and still lives alone.) She told of how kind and helpful Megan is, and (I knew even as she began the story that this part was coming soon) how on Megan’s second visit she asked her if she knew the Lord. Megan didn’t, so Grandmother shared the gospel with her…and Megan trusted Christ.

I remember at my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday celebration a man standing and telling about coming to Grandmother’s home in 1957. After a meal one evening, she took him (a young teenager at the time) into the living room, opened the Bible, and shared with him how he could become a Christian. As this man, Mr. Brown, shared this testimony, he began to weep and said it was the greatest day of his life and that since then his life has never been the same. After his testimony, others around the room also shared that it had been my grandmother who introduced them to Christ.

Grandmother understands a truth that many soulwinners neglect—every relationship in our lives should be stewarded for sharing the message of the gospel. Some Christians treat soulwinning as if God only saves people during a two-hour weekly time slot, and even then only after someone knocks on their door with a gospel invitation. Some Christians seem to further assume that people only get saved if they do so in their brief encounter with the soulwinner on their doorstep.

The truth is that relationships are as necessary to the spread of the gospel as any form of evangelism. Any relationship that God has placed in your life—family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, classmates, coworkers—is an opportunity to share the gospel. And any soulwinning encounter that you can develop

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