Dietrich

MyLife Workshop is simply a tool to equip Christians in sharing the gospel. It runs in churches, homes, coffee shops, and bars around the globe. 

If you’re preparing to lead MyLife Workshop’s evangelism course, here are some tips to make it empowering and exciting.

1. Find the Right Location

People who are not connected to a church might be more willing to try out a course that’s in a neutral location. To effectively reach non-believers, we don’t want MyLife Workshop to be synonymous with going to church. 

Start looking for a location away from a church where guests can feel more engaged. The venue should be in a public place, but with some privacy, as personal and painful information is shared by participants. 

Some of our favorite options are coffee shops, parks, universities, schools, and homes. 

2. Recruit and Train Your Team

As you prepare for your workshop, surround yourself with other passionate Christians to help with prayer, administration and organization.

Proverbs 15:22 says without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors, they succeed.

After you’ve got your team, it’s crucial you take the time to prepare your hearts and minds for this course. Training will give each team member the confidence to host a dynamic, fun and engaging small group.

Great teams don’t just train once, they train before every MyLife Workshop to refresh their memory, get to know others on the team and pray together. MyLife Workshop offers a full training video that teaches you and your team to create the best experience for your guests.

Run through the course with leaders and other Christians to test-run it if you’ve never done it before. This will tease out any issues before you start.

3. Share Your Event

It can be really easy to be so caught up in planning MyLife Workshop that you forget to tell others about it. Spread the word in your own community and build excitement about your MyLife Workshop. Personal invitations from a friend are always the best.

Ask for the backing of the person who leads your church. They can help promote MyLife Workshop from the front and encourage people to get involved.

The announcement can be quick. It could sound like this:

If you’re a visitor or a guest here today—or perhaps you’ve been coming for a while but you’re not sure about Jesus or your relationship with God, we’d love to invite you to our upcoming MyLife Workshop. It starts on Tuesday, April 14, and runs for six Tuesdays. Come along, have some snacks, and ask any questions you want or just come and listen. If you’d like to find out more, head to the information desk.

Tip: don’t tell people to “speak to pastor X” or “chat to Rev W”, because if they’re guests they don’t know who that is!

4. Pray for MyLife Workshop guests

When we pray, God hears us – we’re starting a conversation with the creator of the universe. When you run MyLife Workshop, pray for boldness, compassion, and support. As we pray over our evangelism efforts, we know that God will answer in his perfect way and in his perfect timing.

Both hosts and team members who facilitate the group discussions should pray regularly for the guests in their group. As a team, you can pray for your group daily and before each session.

5. Follow-up

Regardless of the response of the guests, having a follow-up structure in place is imperative. Many guests would have heard enough to be interested but not committed yet, while some may indeed have come to the Lord.

The most effective mode of follow-up I’ve witnessed is the after-course Bible study group. This is a group specifically tailored and designed for new and non-Christians. This group will meet at the same location (if possible) the next week, at the same time, but utilizing a different format. It is helpful to bring the follow-up Bible study leaders to the front at the end of the course and briefly interview them. Even better is if these leaders have been hosts for the specific course, so people have got to know them.

6. Repeat Regularly

Consistency is key for this evangelistic strategy to gain traction at your church. 

When starting, plan to have a minimum of two courses within your first year. How many courses you run per year will depend on your own specific context, but we recommend running at least three within a 12-month period.

When a Christian uses MyLife Workshop to share the gospel, often a new culture of evangelism, hospitality, invitation, and prayerfulness develops.  If you are longing to see God do more, MyLife Workshop could be the spark of change to help this happen. 

Find out more about MyLife Workshop’s facilitator program and the impact it could have in your church and community.

We long to be productive leaders in ministry. But what is it that we are producing? Sometimes we go about achieving good results at the expense of the best result. What do I mean by that?

The Great Commission

We generate members in our churches, enlist workers for ministry areas, raise up leaders. We do these good things often at the expense of the best thing – making disciples. Jesus told us that disciple-making was the number one thing on his heart for his followers to be about doing. “Go and make disciples of all nations . . . “ Matthew 28:19).

The “all nations” are all unbelievers, both far away and close at hand. Disciple-making always begins before someone is truly a follower of Christ. Thus, the question for those of us in ministry will always be, “what are we making? And how well are we making it?”

A disciple is a person who has surrendered herself to Jesus as their Lord and Savior. In doing so they commence a journey that makes them into life-long learners of Jesus. From Jesus, they learn how best to love God and others, to mirror the life of God to a watching world. And, like Jesus, they know themselves to be sent to those around them who have yet to come to know him.

The Great Omission

Jesus’s instructions in the Great Commission are clear, but do we obey?

• 61% of Christians haven’t shared their faith in the last 6 months.
• 98% of Christians do not witness to nonbelievers weekly
• 95% of Christians have never led another person to God

The Bible tells us in James 4:17, “To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Yet for many, the Great Commission has become the Great Omission. Research has shown that 95 percent of Christians have never led another person to Christ.

It is a ‘great omission’ if we look at this text as though it were an option suggested rather than a command to be obeyed.

The full concept of going into the world and making disciples is to share your faith, lead people to Christ, and then, to the best of your ability, help them mature spiritually.

Obeying The Command

The Great Commission is not the “great suggestion.” It is the marching orders of the church, given by our Commander-in-Chief. But what exactly is it that the Lord has commanded us to do? It is far easier to obey a command if we understand clearly what the order is.

We are to “go.” And as we go, we are to make disciples. We are to baptize. We are to teach. Anything less is disobedience to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Francis Chan uses a great analogy of asking his daughter to clean her room.

Committing To the Great Commission

Every Christian is commanded to be involved in helping to reach the world for Christ. Each of us has an important, God-given role to play in helping to fulfill the Great Commission.

How are you influencing others to become followers of Jesus? 

Jesus didn’t give Christians an impossible mission. Sharing the gospel becomes a lot easier when you have a clear example of God’s presence and impact on our daily lives. I’ve developed a six-week evangelism course called MyLife-Workshop to help you share Gospel and invite others to explore what the gospel is all about.

It will be by our commitment to the Great Commission that others will know about God and find salvation.

Would you be willing to make the following prayer commitment to the Lord?

“Dear God, help me to remember that I am to be a Great Commission Christian. Remind me that, in Your strength and by Your grace, I am to do whatever it takes to reach the lost with the transforming power of the Gospel of Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Originally meant to help soldiers open cans and clean guns, the Swiss army knife has become the tool of choice for many of us. We love its versatility, compactness, multi-functional options – not to mention its shininess.

What Swiss soldiers needed in the late nineteenth century, 21st-century believers need in helping them winsomely communicate the gospel to secular people. MyLife-Workshop is the Swiss Army knife of kingdom-advancing courses designed to touch the heart of unbelievers with the gospel.

Research has shown that only five percent of Christians will ever lead a non-Christian to faith in Christ (Norton and Engel, What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest?). The vast majority of the 95% of believers are fraught with low-level self-esteem and high-level anxiety, and even fear when confronted with sharing their faith. 

What we need is hope. 

We need an easy and enjoyable way of sharing Christ with our non-Christian friends. 

MyLife-Workshop is that hope. It is designed for those of us who do not have the gift of evangelism, but long for our friends to know Christ and His saving grace.

How MyLife-Workshop Works

MyLife-Workshop is a six-unit course, centered around six metaphors: coin, book, bridge, music, band-aid, treasure. It takes people on a journey of self-discovery that leads to discovering what God has done for them in Christ. 

Originally conceived in Germany, it has been conducted over 1,000 times in fifteen European countries with stunning results. 

Like a Swiss army knife, MyLife-Workshop is unique in many ways. Most if not all apologetic-type courses begin with doctrine; who is Jesus? Is the Bible true? Is there a heaven? 

However, MyLife-Workshop begins with the life of the participant, tapping into self-love and what some would say is narcissism. Non-Christians are much more interested in themselves than in doctrine. Thus, the course employs autobiographical learning. 

As people learn more about who they have become, this self-discovery bridges into the gospel.

Our Approach

MyLife-Workshop is a pain-based approach to evangelism. It keys into the emotion that leads to cognition that leads to faith. In many Christianity 101 courses what non-Christians pick up on immediately is that they are second class citizens. They sense that Christians are better than them and want to lift them up onto a higher plane.

With its pain-based approach, however, MyLife-Workshop eliminates a two-class system and connects people with one another heart-to-heart. 

The MyLife Map becomes the template for the entire workshop. Participants begin to plot their lives on their personal map and develop that map from unit to unit. They craft something very personal that documents their lives as well as the gospel emerging out of their lives. 

Postmoderns love this approach.

Why?

Because it is developmental and open-ended. What postmoderns will not tolerate is prepackaged material. “Don’t give me answers to questions that you have already predetermined!”

Benefits

MyLife-Workshop thrives in a community setting. Participants are seated around tables of four to five per table (One could have fifty people in attendance, but they are always broken down into groups of four or five). After some self-reflection, they will share with one another some of the things that they have been thinking about. Often people come back to the next unit because of the quality of sharing they had experienced around their table group.

And like a Swiss army knife, MyLife-Workshop is easy to use. If you can push PowerPoint, you can facilitate the course. This means you do not have to be a gifted presenter or theologian, or evangelist. As a facilitator, you help people to discover truths for themselves that lead them to understand and often embrace the gospel. 

And perhaps most importantly for church planters, MyLife-Workshop is a way in which conversion-based churches can be planted.

The biblical model (Lydia, Cornelius, etc.) was always conversion-based. Fresh followers of Jesus formed the genesis of new churches. But the way we plant churches in the Western world is organizational, not organic.

By conducting MyLife-Workshops we can experience people coming to put their faith in Christ and follow Him whereby they become the nucleus of new churches. 

MyLife-Workshop – a fresh and fun approach to making the gospel relevant to secular people.

There are many reasons that Christians share for not being a witness for the Lord. However, many are simply excuses. God has equipped us and commanded us to be witnesses of what He has done for us in our lives. It’s time to stop making excuses and obey His command.

Excuse # 1: Saying The Wrong Thing

You may worry that you’ll say the wrong thing and move someone away from the Lord rather than toward Him! But as Christians, we know God is in control of every aspect here.

Evangelist Bill Bright said, “Success in witnessing is simply taking the initiative to share Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God.”

Don’t worry about convincing or converting, just communicate! Remember, as you share your story of how you met Christ, you are an expert! No one has the unique story that you have.

There are so many evangelism tools and resources out there today, that you can get help finding the right words to say. For immediate help, download this guide on five ways to start a conversation about the gospel.

Excuse #2: I’m Scared

Fear of the unknown and rejection are common. But throughout Scripture, God reminds us over and over we can be free from fear. His presence and grace grant us freedom from our fear.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 23:4

I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Psalm 34:4

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7

And in the moments you feel fear, pray for courage and ask God for boldness. Pray that God would open your mouth in situations where you would be tempted to be quiet.

Don’t accept the lie that God will refuse to help you until you build your own strength. That lie comes from the devil himself. Instead, ask God to replace your fear with His love and give you His perfect peace. 

Excuse # 3: The Person Isn’t Ready

If the person you share the gospel with isn’t ready, you are still helping them discover and explore the message of the Gospel.

But how can they hear the good news unless someone tells them?

It’s not your responsibility to “fix” anyone. God can do a much better job than we ever could. He’s had a plan all along.

By your good example, kind words, and honest communication of the gospel, you will have moved that person a little closer to the day when they might finally make that decision. There’s no wasted effort here.

Excuse # 4: I Might Offend Them

It’s common now for Christians to feel uncomfortable. You may even worry that you’re forcing your views on this person, or worse, you might offend them.

You’re not alone in that feeling. Barna Research found that three out of five Christian Millennials believe that people today are more likely than in the past to take offense if they share their faith – 65%.

But, your intentions in sharing the gospel aren’t to force your views. You are simply sharing a little of your life with this person. There’s a big difference between coercing someone and witnessing to them. 

Think of the disciples in Acts 4:20. “As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” 

These disciples merely spoke about what they saw and heard. We can model our evangelism efforts after them, and simply tell people what you’ve seen and heard in a friendly, non-confrontational manner.

The person you’re sharing with will be free to listen and ask for more, or they can change the subject. But don’t decide for them what they do or do not want to hear.

Excuse # 5: I Can’t Answer Their Questions

Everyone has questions. But when you’ve been asked a particularly difficult question, it can feel deflating and insurmountable. 

You can research common tough questions about the Gospel to prepare answers, and you can be ready to say “I don’t know,” if you really don’t know the answer. You can always ask the person you’re talking to if they are willing to meet later after you’ve had time to look into their question. This will also help you continue the conversation and plant more seeds of faith. 

The primary thing to remember while evangelizing is that God is in control, and you are not responsible for this person’s salvation. You can, however, speak and act in ways that make people more likely to consider the truth of Jesus’ claims.

Excuse #6: I Have Other Priorities

There is so much to do on any given day. Work needs to be done, and the bills have to be paid. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, returning phone calls, reading emails, reading, praying — I could go on about all the good things we need to do. 

And many of these things are time-sensitive. If I have a misunderstanding with my spouse, I need to take care of that immediately. If the project is due tomorrow, I need to write it right away. If we’ve got no food for tonight, I have to do some shopping and cooking now.

It is legitimate for me to make and fulfill many commitments in life other than evangelism. But do our other responsibilities become so numerous that we leave no time for evangelism? 

If we are too busy to share life-changing news, what things are we managing to make time for?

Jesus told us what our number one priority should be while on this earth. 

He told us, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ Amen.”

It’s time to stop making excuses and start spreading the good news of the gospel. If you need help sharing the gospel in a way that’s easy to understand, MyLife Workshop is there for you!

Sources:

https://www.barna.com/research/millennials-oppose-evangelism/

Christians already believe they should be telling others about Jesus, but traditional methods are no longer as effective in today’s post-Christian world. Thus, we may become frustrated, blame ourselves, or give up.

How We’ve Been Sharing The Gospel

Over the years, Christians have been developing tools and new ways to share the good news about Jesus Christ. A popular addition has been workshops and courses to help educate non-believers. 

The Alpha Course is a fantastic example and evangelistic gift to the Christian community. Alpha helps people experience community and journey together in a faith-seeking process. 

But, its structure is predicated more on theology than sociology. 

Although this evangelical course has been highly attractive, every day, it is becoming more out of reach for the next generations – millennial and Z generations. These new generations have little or no biblical knowledge, and that problem is only increasing.

According to Barna Research, “though Christianity remains a powerful force today, its waning influence in American life means that younger generations are coming of age in a country more secular than ever.”

The first thing a non-believer experiences when she attends an apologetically based course is the feeling of being a second-class citizen.

She’s sitting in the economy while the Christians are in the business seats. She doesn’t know the background of the words she’s hearing, and so they become confusing and frustrating. 

The non-believers quickly realize that Christians think themselves better off and that she is not in such a privileged position. 

So how can we reach people for Christ when they don’t understand the dense Christian vocabulary and theology that so many Christianity 101 courses like the Alpha course offer?

Emotions In Evangelism

According to author Timothy Keller, “Christianity needs to make emotional sense before it can make rational sense.”

Emotions are the missing piece in our evangelistic approaches because they underlie our springs of action. When we emphasize emotion and not theology, we eliminate inferiority among participants, both Christian and non-Christian. 

It is impossible to imagine life without emotion.

We treasure our feelings—the joy at a game or the fun with friends on a night out. 

Even negative emotions are important, such as the sadness when a loved one dies, the fear that overcomes us in a scary or unknown situation, or the guilt or shame toward others when our sins are made public. Emotions color life experiences and give those experiences meaning and flavor. They unite all of us, bleiveres and non-believers.

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.” – Dale Carnegie

Being able to interpret and react to the emotions of others is essential. It allows us to respond appropriately and build more profound, more meaningful relationships with our friends, family, and loved ones. 

The Gospel & Emotion

Emotions are volatile. They come and go, ebb, and flow like waves on a shore. Anything based on emotions will also rise and fall, grow and fade, wax, and wane.

Emotions may erupt and fade, but as Christians, we know true faith remains.

We can use emotions to help connect non-believers to the reality that God loves and cares for them and has a plan for their lives. This deep, emotional connection to the Gospel can be a compelling reason for people to give their lives to Christ. 

The Word of God is full of statements of the certainty of the victory of God. As we evangelize, we are inviting people into the triumph of Jesus Christ.

There are a variety of emotional responses when people come to Christ. Some people cry because of the joy they have experienced in the total forgiveness of their sins and the realization that they are now a part of God’s family. Some people simply rejoice with feelings of lightheartedness as though a heavy burden has been lifted. 

Are you ready to help the people around you experience those emotions? Click here to get started.

Emotion in MyLife Workshop

Dr. Schindler, a church-planting expert, was called to create courses that can enlighten and educate people about Christianity in a more approachable way. He developed the program MyLife-Workshop to help non-believers better grasp who they are as a person and how God plays a role in their lives. 

With MyLife-Workshop, you can love people where they are and encourage them to take the first step in their relationship with Jesus Christ.

Participants are asked to write down: 

• • Most significant people in their lives and events that have influenced them today
  • The most painful people and events they’ve experienced

After writing down their experience, course facilitators help participants discern how they’ve been shaped by people and events and see how their values have developed over time based on these people and experiences.

From there, ask them to consider their lives; if writing an autobiography, what title would they give their book if giving it one now? What would the chapter titles be? What about the future? What do you want to do with the rest of your life, and how will you get there?

A vital aspect of this course is the listening and self-reflecting process, preparing the hearts of participants before bringing the gospel into the mix. 

The course is focused on identity-making. 

Helping secular people think about who they are becoming and who they want to become is a powerful way to start sharing faith and the idea that God is an actual reality in life. 

Click here to learn more about the emotion-based approach to evangelism.

Sources

https://www.barna.com/research/millennial-spiritual-curiosity/

She was laid up in St. Josephs, wedded to a morphine pump and an oxygen tank. This was not to be.

Sara was a high profile commercial real-estate lawyer in New York City, making money hand over fist. Success came with a significant price tag – long hours, weekends for stellar clients, exacting precision in hammering out huge contracts. She was respected as a smooth-as-silk and tough-as-nails negotiator. Dr. Wagner was at the top of her game, had the world at her feet – until into her life – to end it all – came cancer.

She was down to her last minute. Breathing was labored. Her parents and her brother were at her bedside. Her chest heaved for one last time, and then the heart monitor went flat.

But Sara was regaining consciousness.

How long it took for her to survey her surroundings, she did not know. Angry shouting, high-pitched wailing in a twilight world were her first impressions.

Could this be? Was it true? Was this hell?

The Doctrine of Hell

“Of all the doctrines of Christianity, hell is the most difficult to defend, the most burdensome to bear, and the first to be abandoned,” writes Professor Peter Kreeft of Boston College.

We all struggle with the doctrine of hell. Despite how difficult the notion of hell is, we don’t abandon it.

Mark Galli, the editor of Christianity Today, writes,

“If it was left up to me, I would probably eliminate hell from our vocabulary because it does present seemingly insurmountable problems. But Jesus does talk about it as a reality, and he doesn’t seem to have any doubts about it.”

Jesus Spoke About Hell

Indeed, Jesus spoke unflinchingly about the reality of hell. In fact, Jesus speaks more often of hell than he does of heaven.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we hear Jesus referencing Abraham as he speaks to the rich man. Notice in contrast to Lazarus who is named and lying in the arms of Abraham and “the rich man,” who has no name.

He refers to “a great chasm has been set in place so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.” (Luke 16: 26). Eternal separation from God and His goodness is hell.

A Game-Changer

In football, an interception can be of such magnitude that it becomes a game-changer.

If, as many religious sociologists would contend, that 80 percent of Americans are non-professing, non-believing, non-Christians, then those like Sara who are on their way to hell are literally within reach of the local church. What we need is a game-changer.

MyLife-Workshop is a game-changer! It intercepts people on their downward trajectory away from God and in connecting them with Christ.

What makes MyLife-Workshop so useful like a life vest thrown to the drowning?

It is a course that is relevant to the secular person because it taps into their lives (predicated on narcissism). MyLife-Workshop is a pain-based approach to evangelism, which means that it is the emotion that leads to cognition that leads to faith. As such, it is holistic.

MyLife-Workshop is interactive, allowing participants to openly share their dreams and disappointments with one another. It is not a cookie-cutter course, with questions posed that lead to predetermined answers. The self-discovery and the developmental aspect of the course serve to make each participant’s MyLife-Map unique to them – and to the beauty of the gospel for them.

And, because MyLife-Workshop is powerpoint driven, it is easy to use, especially for those us who are not great communicators or do not have the gift of evangelism

As a church leader, Jesus is building his body through you, “and the gates of hell cannot stand against it (Matt 16:16). With MyLife-Workshop, you have a tool that can be a game-changer for people like Sara.

If you were around me this week, you know what you would hear me say?

 “Hey, I have a new grandson! He’s the most beautiful baby you could ever imagine. Let me tell you about Theo . . .”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep beauty to myself. Those that met Jesus couldn’t keep him to themselves either. In every way, Jesus was captivating.

Meeting Jesus

Philip meets Jesus for the first time, and he immediately goes to tell his friend Nathanael (John 1:45). 

The ostracized woman at the well meets Jesus and is blown away. She goes back to her village and shares her good news: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29). 

The man, healed after thirty-eight years of paralysis, “went away and told them that it was Jesus who healed him” (John 5:15). 

On and on it goes. Encountering Jesus, then and today, is meeting up with truth, power, and beauty.

Sharing Jesus Today

Today, we are still sharing about Jesus, just like the people who met him while he was on earth. But why are compelled to share?

Beauty

We share the Gospel because we have been impacted by beauty beyond imagination. No one has had an encounter with God in Christ that we have had. 

We all have our own story of how we were transformed by the Gospel, and God will put people in our path that need to hear it. There is power in our testimony. Share it. And in sharing our unique stories, we show how we have been restored and made beautiful in Jesus.

Truth

We share the Gospel because it’s true. Jesus is indeed the source of all that we cannot give ourselves – forgiveness, new life, adoption into His family, purpose in life that goes being this life, truth, and joy.

Good News

We share the Gospel because it is good news. Daily we are inundated by evil, sad, and painful stories. The Gospel is the truth of a God who became a man to die in our place to give us the life that God has purposed for us. That’s worth passing on.

To Give Comfort To Others

We share the Gospel because we can’t stand the pain that others are enduring who don’t know God. Jesus is the ultimate source of comfort and healing. We want our friends and family to know him. 

Which of your family members, friends or neighbors have yet to experience the hope and comfort that God offers?

Because We Are God’s Spokespeople

We share the Gospel because that’s what followers of Jesus are called to do. Jesus gave us the commission to go and make disciples of all peoples (Matt 28: 19). Doing what Jesus asks us to do is our way of loving him.

It Strengthens Our Faith

Nothing teaches a fisherman like fishing. Interacting with non-believers and sharing the good news helps us strengthen our faith, have greater confidence, and deepens our walk with God.

“…hearing of your love and faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints, that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus” (Philemon 5–6).

With all these reasons to share the Gospel, who do you want to share it with first?

If you need help sharing the Gospel, MyLife-Workshop can equip you. The six-week course leads people who are far from God to look at their lives in a new and fresh way. In doing so, they begin to see the Gospel emerging from their timeline. 

If you love people, love Jesus and long for ways of bringing them into connection with one another, MyLife-Workshop is just right for you.