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Greetings from North Orange County!
This month we had two Disciple-Making Communities that I was helping to facilitate, and they will both be finishing up DMC 1 shortly. We’ve also continued meeting with various ministry contacts from CSUF and other places throughout the summer. Along with that, we’ve been going out to the Huntington Beach Pier around twice a week for whiteboard evangelism, often bringing along people from local churches or from CSUF who are currently involved in DMCs. We’ve also started developing a new evangelism approach that combines street preaching and whiteboard evangelism. The goal is to hold onto the strengths of proclamatory evangelism while avoiding the usual drawbacks of it being one-sided or unnecessarily abrasive. We’ve tried it at Huntington Beach and look forward to bringing it onto campus this semester.
Nick and I also had the opportunity to share at Friends Community Church in Brea for their Men’s Breakfast on being and making disciples of Jesus. We perceive that this went well, and we pray that God would use the words we shared to challenge and compel those within the Church to greater depths of discipleship - that is, learning Jesus and becoming conformed to His image and likeness through intentional action.
This month we also held the second Archways training at Friends Community Church in Brea with a good number of participants. This is a training in conversational evangelism that we developed based on our engagements at CSUF with the whiteboard evangelism. This training aims to equip you in identifying and walking through the archways of everyday conversations - that is, the natural connecting point in normal conversations that connect a person to Jesus and the Gospel. We would love to continue training those interested in this practical approach by inviting you to join us throughout the week at CSUF as well!
I’ve begun meeting with a young man I know to discuss the reliability of the Bible, and I’m refining my approach as I learn what is most effective in addressing this topic. His concern has been more of general skepticism than specific objections, so we began walking through Cold Case Christianity together in order to narrow down the area of concern. That’s provided a helpful basic foundation, and so far it seems to be serving him well. We plan to continue meeting and narrowing in on his true concerns as I was initially so eager to jump into it all that I overlooked his ignorance of the Christian perspective - improperly assuming he had already looked into both sides. I anticipated a much more historical-defense conversation, but actually just needed to provide the big-picture Christian perspective (so far). Moral of the story: make sure what you’re providing is addressing the actual issue at hand and not just the assumed one.
Nick and I also met with the family of a college student who has been recruited into one of the cults we engage with on campus and has since cut off contact with them. The family comes from various religious backgrounds and we pray that this might not only serve to free their son from this extremely unhealthy group, but also be a ministry to them as they experience the freedom and power found in the true God.
We are now back on campus at CSUF and have already had some great conversations at the whiteboard with atheists, naturalists, agnostics, Christians, Muslims, and more. We’re seeking to unite the healthy Christian groups on campus in ministry together, especially in prayer-walking and evangelism. Please join us in prayer over this campus and the students that we get to engage with! It’s only by the partnership of the Holy Spirit that people will be transformed by the Word of Truth being sown in their hearts! Pray that the Holy Spirit would teach us how to engage with these students and that God would prepare the soil of their hearts for Him!
Thank you for your continued prayer and support! Your partnership is deeply valued and treasured! May God bless you in the ministry He has prepared for you to do!
With love and peace,
Ivan Penrose
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