Starting in December, we are planning to conduct the Saturday Evangelism by cell. I think there will be a lot of people who are nervous about the idea. Many people might feel that while worship, Bible study, volunteer work, and prayer can be done to some extent, evangelism is a burden. In particular, it can come as quite a fear to approach a strange person on the road, distribute evangelism, and talk.

As a pastor, I’ve been out to do mission works for years, but I’m still nervous. Of course, it is true that boldness and expectations increase more than nervousness if you keep going out. It was in 2012 when I started evangelizing every week. The Olympics were in London that year, and the London Olympics Missionary Competition was held for two weeks to spread the gospel to athletes and tourists. About 300 evangelists from the United States and Korea were trained and scattered around stadiums and tourist attractions to evangelize.

My job was to take charge of the entire street evangelism. I formed teams, sent them a place and route to evangelize, and went out together to evangelize every day. I finished the mission very pleasantly, but on the last day of the mission, the Lord said, “Young Joo, why don’t you continue this evangelism work?” He gave me such a strong heart, so I said I would, and since then, I have been keeping my place of evangelism on Saturday.
For three years, I only gave out a booklet related to the gospel. I couldn’t even dare to talk because I wasn’t good at English. Handing out the booklet takes five steps; it takes place in the order of prayer, eye contact, smile, blessing (handing out the booklet), and conversation. Just knowing this, it wasn’t difficult to hand out the booklet.

Then one day, a new church member from Australia joined the evangelism for the first time. As usual, I taught her how to distribute the booklet and started to evangelize, but then the new member started talking to everyone she met on the street and spread the gospel. Being impressed, I took courage and began to talk to the people I met even though my English wasn’t fluent.

I felt like I was flying away even after I finished distributing the booklet, but when I started talking, the joy doubled. Therefore, I began to emphasize speaking with people when handing out the booklet to the members of the evangelism team, and later I studied while reading related books on how to communicate while evangelizing. Now, it has become natural for me and the team to communicate and evangelize.

There are still many things to learn, but certainly, evangelism is something to be learned in the field, not in a classroom. There must be some fear at first, but if you come out once or twice, you will be able to experience the heart of the Lord who is happy with evangelism. It’s okay to just follow around, so take the courage to come once it’s your turn to count. I want to convey the joy of evangelism to our church members.