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Many people have a hard time understanding why we approach evangelism the way we do at BRBC.  I mean what right do we have to send people ½ way around the world when there are lost people right here on our street?  Further, why spend so much to go so far?  Let me 1^st say I have just as great a passion to go down the street to see someone saved as I do to see people saved in India but there is a big difference.  If the person down the street wants to hear the Gospel told correctly he/she has only to choose one of hundreds of churches they drive by or sleep through every Sunday.  The same is not true of the places the believers we train in India will go.  Still there’s even a greater reason I believe we should be in every school and every square and every country- it’s Jesus’ command.  Go make disciples!  Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth are the places we are to GO.  People talk about our Jerusalem but that’s not the point.   Jerusalem was and is Jerusalem not Greenville or wherever you’re from.  We are the ends of the earth.  We are the Gentiles and we have an obligation to finish the job and make the Jews jealous just as Paul says in Romans. 

So what exactly is our strategy?  First, every believer must share their faith every day no matter where we are.  Next, as a body, we need to ensure that the Gospel is clearly preached and the cross presented in the pulpit.  This doesn’t mean shallow preaching but Christ centered preaching.  Next, we need to aggressively pursue every chance we have to take the Gospel into the lost world.  I believe the schools are some of our best opportunities here but there are thousands of other venues.  Currently we use Child Evangelism Fellowship at two of the local elementary schools.  At a local middle school we are trying a Saturday basketball program and hope to help with Release Time where students are allowed to leave school for one class to study the Bible.  The Youth House (a house In front of a local high school) we’ve turned into a coffee house is a great example of going to the world.  In this ministry we are ministering students of all backgrounds with one thing in common; they will come to “The House” but would never come to our church.  This is a bridge ministry.  Students feel the love of God through our workers and slowly build trust.  Next they come to our Wednesday night youth service also there at “The House”, then you look up from the pulpit and see them on Sunday- How Awesome! 

So what about India?  Why go there with so much to do here?  There are more reasons than I can name here but let me give a few.  Our “missionaries” are outnumbered.  People are lost by the millions around the world and we need to be reminded that our mission is more than our community, we are about the Kingdom.  Jesus is ruler of the entire cosmos not just Greenville.  We need to have impact not just here but everywhere.  We need to be reminded that there are people who Jesus loves that are very different from us.  The believers we train are our brothers and they are facing insurmountable odds.  One last reason (again I could give hundreds).  Why wouldn’t we go?  If we have the chance to have impact in one of the darkest regions in the world who wants to stay home?  Personally I want to be part of the world wide advancement of the Gospel.  I want to see with my eyes what God is doing in every region on every mountain and in every valley.  I pray that one day I will have been to every country and seen God’s work in the lives of every people and nation.  Our God is the God.  He is the God of every nation and He deserves praise from all peoples.