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It was post COVID when I saw the documentary Sheep Among Wolves and interview. What really caught my attention is they go out and engage people in conversation up to five times a day. That immediately captured me. I was wondering, how they do that.
Up to this point, the way I was doing it was through servant evangelism, acts of kindness. The only way that I knew of going out and connecting with people was through intentional acts of kindness, where you buy people’s coffee, you give away groceries, you pay down the cost of gas.
People:
“why are you doing this?”
You:
“well, we are showing you God’s love for free.”
People:
“Wow, that is amazing. Who are y’all with?”
You:
“Oh, here is one of our business cards.”
People:
“where are you located?”
You:
“Oh, we are over here.”
People:
“Well, I will come sometime.”
If we did connect with people, it was more getting them to come to church.
For an entire year, we watched Disciple-Making with David Watson the masterclass. Then in the beginning of 2022, we started doing discovery Bible study. We are talking about it. We have gone through training, but we are not actually doing anything. We said we are going to start having groups meet at the end of the worship service. We will cut the worship and sermon short, and have people engage. We did that for like two months.
Then we encouraged people to start discovery Bible studies. That was how I got involved.
In November of 2022, we did a six-week training. I asked the people in our church, how many of you want to go through this training and where you can learn to be missionaries out in the city and invite people to start meeting with you and form a group.
We have a slogan; we are not confined to four walls. How many of you want to go out and start a group with people who do not go to church? About 12 people.
Well, we were given a challenge. We did some very wonderful training again, looking at scripture to find a person of peace was, you know, Jesus’s mandate to go out.
Of course, we do need to build a life of worship. We often talk about living an up in and out life, you know, up in love for God, worship prayer in with your core people that already know God, like your disciples, but then going out and connecting with those who are not here yet, you know, making disciples. There was a lot of good, balanced information, but then we were given a challenge.
They taught us about starting with simple conversation, then moving to serious and then moving to spiritual conversation. I was beginning for the first time in my life to see a unique way of interacting with people in public, because again, my former way for 30 plus years has been acts of kindness, servant evangelism.
I buy people’s coffee. “Oh, hey, thank you. What are you doing that for?” “I want to show you God’s love today.” Give him a card, invite him to church and pray with them. And that is it. Now God was calling me to build a relationship with them. God was calling me to invite people to meet with me.
The way they were being taught to do it, see, it was a paradigm shift. It was like, you cannot put new wine in old wine skins. You must put new wine into the new wine skin. There was a complete paradigm shift for the believer, for the churchgoer. The paradigm shift is no longer, are we inviting them to come to us? We are inviting them to meet with us.
The team did a fantastic job training us as simple as being friendly. How is your day going? Then serious: they may say something about the economy or about their day is not going too well, which can lead into the spiritual. You lead into a question like, well, what is the biggest struggle going on in your life right now? Or they may even volunteer and talk about a struggle.
They taught us very well about how to navigate from simple to serious to spiritual conversations, finding the God need and the God need is in the struggle or in the challenge they are facing. Only God can meet that. Then asking the clarifying question, if they do talk about their struggle, asking the clarifying questions, what would you be willing to do? What would you be willing to give?
If you could be free of that, if you could be free of that anxiety, if that relationship that is fractured could be put back together. If you could be free of this stress that you feel about starting this new business, what would you be willing to do? Here was the problem. I felt completely insecure about it because I had never done that.
Only two of us were left. We were the only ones in the game because we were supposed to be reporting to our coaching group. How were we doing with simple conversation? Anybody can say hello and how is your day going? What our conversation is looking like moving to serious and moving to spiritual?
The way we help move in the spiritual and it is the Holy Spirit doing it, not us. We do ask strategic questions, and we ask what is the biggest challenge you are facing in your life right now.
Often, we lead with our own vulnerability. “I do not know about you, but I am being so challenged with my time right now. I mean, it is just kicking me in the rear end. I mean, do you struggle with something in your life?”
It opens the door for them to begin to talk about that. Then that is the opportunity once you ask the clarifying question. What would you be willing to do? What would you be willing to give? And they say, well, I do not know. Or I am not sure. Then say, well, I understand. Maybe if you feel you want to you want to know more, you want to get back together and I will be happy to get, you know, talk more.
If they say, I would be willing to do anything. I would be willing to give anything. Then you invite them on a journey. I would love to help. God wants to help you.
Avoid the three C words, Christianity, Christ, and Church. You cannot say Christianity because they have a version of Christianity that is different than the one that Jesus came to give us. They have a different view of what church is all about. You do not mention those three C words, but it is okay to say God.
God wants to help you with, and you bring it back to what they said, what their struggle was. I would love to, to meet with you and take you through a process that I believe is going to help you. Are you down for that? Do you want to do that? You must ask either yes or no, you are either in or out.
Who would say no to that? If they are in a place where they are struggling that just makes perfect sense to me.
Starting with whoever is around you.
Starting off with having conversations with people, you know, outside of the church, meeting them where they are, you know, starting with something simple, hey, how is your day going? You know being casual if you will. Then because you have been casual with someone, it could, in the same conversation, lead to something that is more serious.
You are opening that door to that serious conversation by you being vulnerable on your side of just opening your heart and sharing with them, hey, you know, this is what I am going through. This is how I feel, which allows them the permission, if you will, to respond back to you with the same kind of manner of, well, you know, this is my struggle where you are finding that.
That God need is a need that only God has the capacity to meet.
You are asking them if they want to do something about it with those clarifying questions, you know, like, what are you willing to give up to be free from that anxiety? On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad do you want to be free of this? How badly do you want to find healing in your marriage? How bad do you want to find freedom from that anxiety?
That makes sense because it really helps people to pinpoint how bad or how severe the pain is. That is usually correlated to their willingness to go on the journey that you spoke about. That is the linchpin to everything. We move into that place where we are inviting them onto the journey. We know that journey to be the discovery Bible study. The story set, where we begin the process of them discovering God.
I felt so insecure about doing this process because I have never done it that way before. I was pretending as though I was okay, but I was not. After three weeks of going through that and keeping that all to myself, I texted our underground disciple-making coach and I told him, to be completely honest with you, I feel completely overwhelmed.
He sent me back the most encouraging text. It was, he said, oh my dear brother, thank you for sharing this with me. I mean, it was just, I love that guy’s heart, man. Then he said, but then he challenged me. He said, he said, our, this is warfare. He said, face up, chin up, hands up. That was the turning point for me.
We must come to a place of desperation, but out of that, the Lord is going to lift us up. Then we must have people we are vulnerable to. We cannot pretend that everything is okay. Then I started accepting the challenge of going out every day, seeking to move from a simple to serious to spiritual conversation. Then at that time, I started praying together with a team of people Monday through Friday for half an hour in the mornings.
Then things started happening. I went out intending that there would be a movement from simple to serious to spiritual. Things started happening and people started saying, “I would love to get together.”
I started having meetings. Some of them were people that I had never met. I was meeting in coffee shops and talking and then others of them were people that I felt led to reach back out to who had gotten disconnected or who were disenfranchised with the church. I had former relationships with them. Suddenly, I had three groups, and then it grew to six groups, eight, and then ten.
Prayer together is power. I mean, prayer by yourself is important and it builds intimacy, but prayer together brings breakthrough. I saw a correlation of praying. I started praying more together with others. Then I went out with the intention that something was going to happen. I had a prayer team, and I would text the prayer team and say, hey, be praying. I am going out to have a spiritual conversation. I was just expecting something to happen.
Then the last thing I would say is to transfer the pressure from yourself to God, because you cannot make it happen, but he can. We are the voice, but Jesus is the word.
1. Pray with one another, you know, it’s okay to pray by yourself, but right now, who is in your sphere of influence that you are engaging in disciple making and partner with them on a regular basis, whether that’s through zoom or in person, preferably in person to mobilize your consistent prayer without ceasing.
2. Start going out intentionally to be able to have those simple, serious, and spiritual conversations. Make that a daily habit. If it is possible, I know that can depend on who you are and what your work schedule or family schedule may be. Living intentionally with those conversations.
3. Then trust in God, the Holy spirit, to be able to do the things that you are intimidated to do, because it creates pressure that Jesus does not intend for us to have.
Be the Underground Church
