Matt Hess is a church planting strategist with SEND Missouri and a former church planter with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Covention in Toronto, Canada. Matt is currently planting Waypoint Church Wentzville, a campus of Waypoint Church in St. Charles.
I have had the opportunity to be around Matt a couple times and in one of those settings Matt made a refernce to door-to-door evangelism. I was intrigued, because I honestly have a tendency to view this negatively because of the efforts of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and Jehovah's Witnesses which are heretical groups that claim to be Christian but are outside the bounds of historical, biblical Christianity. So, when Matt said something positive about this type of ministry in passing, my interest was piqued and I said I'd be interested in hearing more about that some time. Last Friday we finally connected over Zoom and talked about that and other aspects of ministry. It was a great conversation that was very encouraging and inspiring. I asked Matt permission to record the portion of that discussion that was specifically about sharing Christ by going door-to-door. You can watch that 27-minute video below.
Here are a few soundbites that really stood out to me:
You have to calendar it. If you don't play to share your faith, you probably won't.
In door-to-door ministry, we are not expected or looking for the masses. We're looking for the low-hanging fruit.
Jesus said the harvest is plentiful and the fields are white unto harvest. We're simply taking him at his word and looking for where the Spirit has gone before is already at work.
Before we go, we pray. And what we're praying is that the Spirit will go before us and prepare hearts.
I think we think we share the gospel with people a lot more than we actually do.
Tell folks what church you're with and always leave information about your chuch.
You have to have thick skin. You have to get comfortable hearing no or having a door shut in your face. 96% of Christians don't share their faith and this is one of the reasons why. But isn't just one person worth it?