Churches can find effective outreach strategies in studying apostles in Acts

What is the world saying about your church? Is your church troubling anybody?”
   
“When’s the last time your church was accused of turning things upside down?”
   
With a series of simple but thought-­provoking questions, Jerry Wilkins, director of missions for Tuscaloosa Baptist Association, challenged those attending the Tuesday morning session of the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting to consider the effectiveness of churches reaching out to their communities.
   
The first of several speakers to offer interpretations of the convention theme, Intentional Evangelism, Wilkins compared church buildings to “baskets under which we’ve hidden the light of the Word.”
   
He warned that while Alabama Baptists are doing more evangelizing than ever, there are still approximately 2 million unchurched people in the state. 
   
Wilkins said Alabama’s population has increased by about 100,000 people in the past 10 years and in that same amount of time, Alabama Baptists have baptized 116,000. But he said that isn’t enough.
   
“We have a great challenge before us,” he said. “God wants us to do more if we’re to win our state for Christ.”
   
Using examples from Acts, he challenged convention messengers to increase the effectiveness of their ministries by imitating the apostles.
   
Citing the events at Pentecost in Acts 2, Wilkins encouraged pastors to start enjoying the work of the ministry again. A church takes on the character of its pastor, so enthusiasm for the work of the Lord is vital to reaching communities, he said.
   
In Acts 5, Wilkins noted that the apostles literally could not contain themselves when it came to sharing the gospel. “You could not shut them up about Jesus,” he said. 
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Does your community say that about your church? Some communities believe we have shut up because we just talk inside the church. Some of us have given up filling our Jerusalem with our doctrine.”
   
The events recounted in Acts 17 showed that the ministry of Paul and Silas often bothered people, Wilkins said. But to not “bother” people with the gospel was to sentence them to an eternity without God, he said.
   
“We can keep baptizing just about as many people as we are adding to our state and forget about the 2 million and let them go to hell,” Wilkins said. “If we keep doing what we’re doing, that’s what will happen.”
   
Wilkins also encouraged convention messengers to use every means at their disposal to share the gospel. 
   
“If Peter and Paul had all the tools at their disposal that churches have today, they would have used them,” he said. “Today’s churches have all kinds of tools at their disposal and simply fail to use them. When we do use them, we use them ineptly.”
   
But regardless of the resources involved, Wilkins concluded that the duty of Christians is simple — deliver the Word. “We need to focus on Intentional Evangelism,” he said. “Our job is to fill our Jerusalem with our doctrine, not to change people. The best thing you can do is go out and talk about Jesus.
   
“There are a lot of folks out there that need to hear from us. All over this state, there are people out there waiting for us to come.”