Water Fountain Evangelism

For some reason here at the Southeast Indiana Campus, I have become known as a good story teller. I am not exactly sure how this came about. I told a couple stories involving poop and me kissing my dad, and then I became the next Dr. Seuss. This past Sunday I had the great opportunity to talk to our middle school students about grace. Right before I came up to speak, Cody (the youth pastor) said, "You guys get the great privilege of hearing Charlie speak to us today. If you know anything about Charlie, you know he always has great stories for us." As I was walking up to speak, it hit me. I had no stories in my sermon...

Talk about not fulfilling expectations. But I thought the sermon went over pretty well besides talking too fast and burping into my mic. I always tend to downplay my ability to communicate. I get really nervous about speaking in front of students, but I think it is pretty healthy. Handling God's word is a pretty hefty task considering it has eternal ramifications for the listeners, and I realize I'm not as gifted in the area of speaking as some people. But I tend to use that as an excuse.

As I said before, I was able to preach at the middle school worship service yesterday. I was given the text in John 4 where Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman. There are several angles you can preach the text, but I was to talk about how the Samaritan woman went back to her hometown and told everyone about Jesus. I remember going to a session during CIY with my good friend David Heffren (I swear I mention this guy in every other post...so if you are a single lady reading this, get the picture. This guy is cool. Date him.) that talked about evangelizing in your schools. The guy talks about the Samaritan lady in John 4 and how Jesus asked her for a drink at the well, and he made this joke that we should just start standing by the water fountain at school. When someone would go to get a drink from the water fountain, we were to say, "Can I have a drink?" Let me just save you the trouble and let you know that this strategy of bringing people to Christ does not work. You'll only receive weird looks and people just start using the water fountain on the other side of the hall...trust me.

So when preparing my message, I strayed away from "water fountain evangelism," but I did find something that I had never noticed before. After the woman goes back to her hometown to tell everyone about this Jesus guy, everyone comes out to hear Jesus for themselves. Then we are told that everyone living in the Samaritan town of Sychar believed in Jesus because of the woman's testimony and Jesus' words. When I read that information I didn't think much of it, but then I continued to read the next section just to get an idea of the context. The very next section deals with Jesus going to His own home area in Galilee, and they have a completely different reaction to Jesus than that of the Samaritan people. They wanted Jesus to perform these great miracles in order for them to believe in what He had to offer. Jesus even says in John 4:48, "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe."

After I read this it hit me. The Samaritans (who were considered "half breeds" by the Jewish people because they inter-married with Pagans) believed in Jesus because of his words. They did not need great miraculous signs and wonders; they wanted to hear the truth. The true blue Jews in Galilee needed something big and grand to have faith. This just blew me away because so often I feel like I need to have a great illustration or an emotionally driven story that makes everyone cry in order for them to respond to the Gospel. I feel like I need to have the perfect outline and all these fireworks to go with my message to make it effective. But after seeing the Samaritans' response to Jesus' WORDS and the woman's testimony, I realized that I just need to just tell the students about the Truth and the Holy Spirit will work in the students' hearts.

I have seen this play out in the past couple weeks. I am by no means a great speaker. I speak, so I guess that makes me a speaker, but the last two weeks I spoke to the Jr. Highers about grace and yesterday 3 students came forward afterward to say that they wanted to be baptized! I'm taking absolutely zero credit for their response to the Gospel, because all I did was relay the grace I have been given to these students.

So the next time you have a platform to tell someone about Jesus, don't worry about putting on a big show with awesome sermon bumpers and artwork (even though this stuff is cool!). Just speak the truth and let the Spirit do what it does best...work in the hearts of men and women!