The task of the church is to be the church—which is not as easy as it might seem. Our Lord created the church to be the place of his ongoing presence in the world. The church speaks God’s truth. The church delivers God’s grace. The church extends God’s love and compassion. When the church is being the church it is proclaiming God’s gospel—the wonderful news of forgiveness of sins won through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. This is the work of evangelism and the focus of the evangelism ministry at Webster Gardens.

 

Evangelism is the telling of what God has done. Therefore, the emphasis at Webster Gardens is on equipping individual Christians ably and confidently to articulate the faith that they have been given so that others may also receive the gift of God’s grace. Typically, this training occurs using a tool called Pass It On, which is a method of personal witnessing involving calling in the community and using a memorized outline to share the gospel in a conversational way. Vo-Tech Evangelism is another form of Bible study and evangelism training that emphasizes the individual believer’s God-given work within creation and the opportunities that arise within these vocations to declare the Gospel message in clear and faithful words. Both of these 12-week training courses are offered at Webster Gardens twice a year on Tuesday evenings.

 

While Webster Gardens Lutheran Church engages in many acts of service for the sake of the community and offers a wealth of activities for families and individuals who are not members of the congregation, these are actually ancillary to the work of evangelism. Service and outreach are vital tasks of a vibrant congregation, but only the speaking of the gospel of Christ constitutes the actual work of evangelism. Hence, the evangelism ministry seeks to use service and outreach events as opportunities to make contacts with those who need to hear the gospel and to cultivate an atmosphere and relationship in which such proclamation can effectively take place.