A person never knows where resistance to Kingdom growth will come.  Occasionally it develops in the least expected places.  Satan’s resistance is expected; but when he subtlety uses the church leaders, well then he has succeeded indeed.  Please let me explain.

While my family and I were missionaries in Peru, I served as a Director of Missions for the port area of Lima.  During our first stateside assignment, I was asked by the Peru mission to become certified in the Continuing Witnessing Training evangelism program so that I could return to lead the evangelism training for the entire country.  As I returned to Peru, I devoted my first efforts to the four churches and two missions with which I worked.  Quite unexpectedly the pastors of the churches were completely resistant to the idea.  Needless to say, I was baffled.  For six months I tried again and again to get their permission to lead them through the evangelism training.  I realized that if I could not get these pastors on board I would have little success in getting the rest of the pastors across the country to participate.  The future evangelistic efforts of the entire Peruvian Baptist Convention rested on these four pastors.  Not being willing to give up, at our next monthly pastors’ conference I once again asked permission to lead them through the evangelism training.

Realizing that I would not stop urging them to go through the training, one of pastors in frustration responded, “Yea, OK Brother Conerly, you can lead us through this evangelism class.”  To this I replied, “Brother, this is not a class.  We already know more about evangelism than we practice.  This training is designed to get us and our members out of the churches and into the streets telling people about Jesus Christ.” 

To this retort, his eyebrows went up; this man was my pastor.  Up until this time, these pastors held to the idea of evangelism training as classes held in the churches to give instruction to members.  They had not connected the training with intentional practice.  As these men concluded the training, something began to change.  An intentional attitude for winning the lost manifested itself in them.  Two of the four churches had to enter into building programs within three years of the decision of those pastors to train their members and get them outside the church and into the community.

What caused this change?  Was it the new evangelistic class materials?  Was it the small group training?  Was it the fact they acted together and held themselves accountable for training and mentoring members in their churches?  No one thing can be singled out.  Yet, one thing is for sure.  If those men had not met regularly and purposefully and decided to get their members out of the church and into the streets, the growth experienced in those churches would have never occurred.

And here, in the Baptist Association of Greater Baton Rouge, our members have told us that they want more evangelism training.  But, we, and they, already know more about evangelism than we practice.  What would happen if we intentionally got our members outside the churches and into the community demonstrating what we know about Jesus Christ?

Oh yes, the man who reluctantly gave me permission to lead the evangelism class, a few years later became the first salaried Evangelism Director for the  Peruvian  Baptist  Convention  leading  the entire convention to evangelize the lost and start new churches.  His name is Alberto Hernandez.  He also became the first missionary sent by the Peruvian Baptist Convention to a foreign country–-the USA.  He now serves as a Catalytic Church Starter among the Hispanic population in central Pennsylvania.