Opportunities In Evangelism

Evangelism: Loren Phippen
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Good Neighbor Centers

Our Good Neighbor Centers continue to minister to the needy in Wichita. They provide food, clothing and most of all, the Gospel. Our Good Neighbor Centers are in continuous need of our support. They are always in need of food and clothing. Between our centers, we minister to approximately 250 people per week. Our centers can always use donations for food. The dollars you give to the centers are stretched greatly due to the ability to buy food at the food bank for 16 cents per pound. Our Good Neighbor Centers also need your help. Work projects are always available and youth groups are extremely valuable in reaching the youth of those neighborhoods.

Disaster Relief

Much progress is being made toward equipping our new Disaster Relief Trailer. We have had several large donations to be used for outfitting the trailer, and a great deal of planning and searching for the proper equipment. All of the team members are becoming familiar with the different types of chain saws and their uses. After we get the trailer up and going we will have training here in Wichita for volunteers to be certified as a disaster relief chain saw volunteer. Today I received a very nice certificate from KNCSB recognizing the volunteers from HOKSBA for their services during the hurricanes of years past.

Evangelistic Mission Trips

I just returned from Indianapolis for an Inner City Evangelism event and the SBC conference. The ICE event took place from June 1 to June 7. Twenty five street evangelists from the ICE team worked with five inner city churches in Indianapolis. Each church had "prayer walked" their section of town and many church members went door-to-door witnessing. After the block parties on Saturday, we prayed with 649 people to accept Jesus as their personal Savior. There were also over 100 decisions during Cross Over Indianapolis and many others were reached during the convention. This was a great event and many of the church members were trained and are now excited about sharing the Gospel. Next year the ICE event will be in Louisville, Kentucky just before the SBC annual meeting. Please put that on your calendars now and contact me for more details. Also, start thinking about the Mardis Gras trip in February of 2009. Please help us pass out tracts and share the Gospel in that spiritually dark place. At the convention, Dr. Chuck Kelly of New Orleans Baptist Seminary sincerely thanked us for making the trip every year. There is also a possibility of an ICE event during the Democratic Convention in Denver. Please contact me if you would like more information.

River Fest

The 2008 RiverFest is over and we had a great time this year. We had 12 evangelists from around the country helping us. They also helped train some of our church members. We had over 90 decisions for Christ. Team Impact performed twice at the Eldorado prison, twice at the juvenile detention facility, and once at River Fest. Over 10,000 tracts were handed out and also 20,000 cards advertising the Team Impact event. We estimated that nearly 1,000 people were in the parking lot at Metropolitan to see the Team Impact performance. We also had several great music performers. This year we made some great strides in reaching the Goth and Juggalo kids that congregate under the bridge on Douglas by McLean. After we fed them, we shared the Gospel with the whole group. Several of our ICE team members were able to connect with these lost and needy kids. The WMU ladies provided hot dogs, snow cones, chips, and homemade cookies. The snow cones were a big hit as was the moon walk. Please start planning to participate in next year's event. My prayer is to have enough church members to partner with the ICE evangelists during their time here. This is a great way to get comfortable sharing the Gospel.

Celebrate Recovery

One of our churches has recently started a Celebrate Recovery Ministry. They are having a very good response and are seeing fruit from this effort. This is a great outreach ministry tool to our community.

Please contact Loren or Mark if you have any questions. Our prayer is that we would have several more churches doing Celebrate Recovery all over Wichita.

Detention Facility Ministries

We are continuing to minister in some of the area's youth detention facilities. There is a real opportunity for ministry at the juvenile facilities. These youth need to hear about our Lord and see His love in a real way. Youth leaders and workers over 21 are the ideal prospects for this ministry. Not only could we minister to them in the facility, but it would open contacts to plug them into our churches afterwards. Please call me if you have an interest in getting involved.

ICE

I am considering an Intentional Community Evangelism event in Wichita in the near future. My plan is to make this a project for my doctoral dissertation. The Intentional Community Evangelism strategy is one that can be very successful. The process lasts several months and includes training in different areas of evangelism, prayer walking, and follow-up at the end of the event. My vision is to use this strategy to form an ICE team here in the Heart of Kansas Association so that we would be available to help churches here and around the area. This will help us all be more comfortable in our witnessing.

Evangelism Rally

The evangelism rally this year will be at Immanuel Baptist Church at 6:30p.m. on August 24th. We will start at 5:00p.m. with an associational missions fair. If you are interested in participating in the fair please let me know. Our speaker this year will be evangelist Brian Fossett. Brian lives in Northern Georgia and preaches all over the world. He comes highly recommended. His website is www.brianfossett.org and has a lot of information about Brian and his ministry. I talked to him at the SBC conference and he is excited about coming to Wichita. Our associational worship team will lead us in worship before Brian brings the message. See you there!!!