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CSUF
CSUF
We've seen great results from our whiteboard-initiated dialogues this month! We've asked a variety of questions for students to engage with this month such as, "Is Religion Safe?", "Religion or Spirituality?", "Prayer or Mindfulness?", and "Forgiving or Severing Difficult Relationships?". It's amazing how willing people are to share about their beliefs when presented with thoughtful questions about their responses. We would love to hear what you think we should ask on our whiteboard by filling out the form below!
There are so many people who are not Christians that we have been able to share the gospel with, and we pray that God would continue His work by stirring their hearts to explore deeper the authenticity and reliability of Jesus and His teachings! Please pray that God would continue to send us those He desires to reach through our conversations, and please pray that we would be aware of the Spirit's guiding in each unique situation we receive!
We have seen an influx of good Christian students and external ministries at CSUF this month which is very exciting! We are blessed to engage with these people and hope to have opportunities to equip Christian students in evangelism and partner with good Christian ministries on campus! Please pray for the perseverance and protection of these Christians as they begin or continue moving into Jesus' call to evangelism!
There are a number of students who have shown great interest in reading and dialoguing with us through the gospel of Mark, and we pray that God would give them a holy discomfort and hunger that causes the word to take root in their heart and grow into a fruit-producing tree!
The cult groups are still at work on campus recruiting and indoctrinating students with perverted understandings of God's word and we pray that God would confuse their actions and repel students from them. It is often the unsatisfied and young Christian who falls prey to their invitation and, in their good pursuit of God, are led away into a different gospel and different Jesus by these false teachings. We had the opportunity to engage with two members of the Fellowship Church cult, and Nick was able to share with them the false teachings, abusive application of leadership authority, and wicked fruit of leaders in their religious group. One of the members appeared to take this information seriously, and we pray that they research and study for themselves that they might leave this oppressive group and enter a healthy and God-honoring fellowship. Most of these students are unaware of the truth concerning these groups and truly want to love and serve God with everything they have. We want to see these people freed to do so in the truth and freedom that Christ intended His Church to operate in.
City Lights
City Lights
God is certainly at work in City Lights! This month there have been many changes within the City Lights management that have caused a variety of issues for the residents and social worker who organizes and helps the residents. These changes affected people's rent, making it unaffordable for many, and limited the social worker's freedom to host events within the building for residents. We prayed that God would resolve these issues at City Lights and this week we found out that the management that was causing the issues was changed and replaced with a friend of the City Lights social worker! We were told that this is unheard of and is truly miraculous! What a testimony to this unbelieving social worker! God is certainly at work in her heart, and she has been increasingly opening up to Christianity as she asks us to pray before distributing food and pray with residents! Praise God for the work He is doing at City Lights and in this wonderful social worker's heart!
Please pray for God to raise up and strengthen Christian residents to become daily ministers to those living with them at City Lights!
Bible Dialogues
Bible Dialogues
This month we've had a number of Bible dialogues with a variety people over various things. We dialogued with *Anthony, who we met at CSUF while prayer-walking, and explored his first steps as a new disciple of Jesus as we began reading and discussing the gospel of Mark. We met and dialogued with a Christian young lady who has recently left a cult and has great questions about the Bible. We've also dialogued with *Titus, who Nick met back before I arrived in SoCal. We've explored a number of topics that *Titus is interested in as he seeks to discover the truth about the spiritual world. We've had many interesting conversations but have recently seen *Titus open back up to exploring the gospels after being burned by "fundamentalist" Christian teaching. *Titus has said that He loves the Jesus we share with him, but he is not sure how to know which presentation of Jesus is correct. This next week, we will begin a Bible dialogue through the gospel of Mark to discover what the earliest manuscripts about the teachings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus actual say. Please pray for all of these people as we continue to meet them where they are in their relationship with Jesus and show them what it means to be a disciple of Jesus!
Disciple-Making Communities
Disciple-Making Communities
We currently are engaged in two DMCs that are working their way through the Sermon on the Mount. In these groups, we read and dialogue through the text, working to understand what Jesus was teaching so that we can correctly apply it to our lives. Along with reading and dialoguing, we also agree to weekly challenges that help us practice what we read and become better disciples of Jesus.
Teaching Opportunities
Teaching Opportunities
Nick and I will be teaming up to teach and share in a number of different ways in the next month:
The engagement of the 60+ boys we taught at Friends Rose Drive Middle School was amazing and we have been invited back Monday the 3rd to continue our conversation with them about resisting temptation. Please pray that our time with them would be fruitful for their discipleship with Jesus!
On March 2nd, Nick and I will share at Friends Church Fullerton about the practice of evangelism/witnessing- Please pray that what we share would produce fruitful challenge for our church as we work to disciple under Jesus in every way!
We will travel on the 6-8th of March to assist in an Evangelism Seminar in Kansas where we will teach about sharing the gospel; we will also teach at my home church, Hutchinson Friends Church, on March 9th- Please pray that what we share would be edifying and challenging for both of these groups!
It also sounds like, near the middle and end of March, we will be teaching about the Mission of God at another local Friends Church in California.
Please pray that we would be aware and sensitive to how we should engage with each unique group we will be sharing with in the month of March!
A February Reflection:
As I was reflecting on the month and trying to decide what I should focus this update on, I felt that it is important for me to emphasize the simplicity and practicality of evangelism. I believe that there is an overexaggerated image of evangelism being sold and bought in our churches today that evangelism is a confrontational and divisive intrusion into someone’s personal thoughts and beliefs. We construct this image of an apologetic superstar dismantling other beliefs and publicly refuting nonbelievers, but I strongly believe this social media-fed image is not complete. Evangelism is not that complicated. Don’t get me wrong, being educated in the beliefs of other demographics is very helpful in contextualizing and conveying the gospel; however, most people are already familiar with the demographics of people surrounding their day-to-day lives. In my experience, the largest barrier holding modern Christians back from evangelism is merely the fear of man rather than the fear of God. Are we willing to step off our holy hill that we’ve constructed and share the life-giving power of unity with God and freedom from sin? If Jesus is truly worth dying for, is He not also worth living for?
Please do not let the word “evangelism” strike you with fear, for it's far easier than you might think, and the hardest step is the initial engagement. I would argue that evangelism is the most loving thing you can do for your neighbor and the most glorifying thing for God. If God truly came to redeem the earth and restore His people to abundant life, would we not share this news with those we love? If all the world was subject to demonic slavery and abuse, would we, who were freely released, truly think we love our neighbors by neglecting our opportunities to share with others how they too can become free? WE ARE FREE! Now let us use our freedom to reconcile the world to our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ! We’ve been given the best job ever!!! All we need to do ask God to open our eyes to the dying world around us and give us enough discomfort to make us move towards it! It seems challenging at first, but only because we are afraid that we might look silly, others might be offended, or something in that vein. Jesus didn’t just call the Bible scholars and pastors to reconcile the world for Him, but rather His beautiful Bride, the Church! That’s enough rambling for now, but hopefully this can be an encouragement and challenge for you as you work to better reflect the image and attributes of Christ as His ambassador to the world! I want to emphasize that anyone can evangelize! Assess your context, know your target demographic, ask them thoughtful questions, and above all LOVE THEM! We, the Body of Christ, have such a special privilege to serve the world by sharing this amazing news that God has made a way to rescue us from sin and restore His good creation!
With love and peace,
Ivan Penrose
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