Gospel: Mark 16:15-18, Matthew 28:19-20 and Luke 24:46-48

[15] And He (Jesus) said to them (the Eleven), "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. [16] He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. [17] And these signs will accompany those who believe; in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; [18] they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover."
Mark 16:15-18

Discussion:

15. This verse contains what is called the "universal apostolic mandate" (paralleled by Matthew 28:19-20 and Luke 24:46-48). This is an imperative command from Christ to His Apostles to preach the Gospel to the whole world. This same apostolic mission applies, especially to the Apostles' successors, the bishops in communion with Peter's successors, the Pope and the Patriarch.

But this mission extends further: the whole "Church was founded to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth for the glory of God the Father, to make all men partakers in redemption and salvation.... Every activity of the Mystical Body with this in view goes by the name of 'apostolate'; the Church exercises it through all its members, though in various ways. In fact, the Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well. In the organism of a living body no member plays a purely passive part, sharing in the life of the body it shares at the same time in its activity. The same is true for the body of Christ, the Church: 'the whole body achieves full growth in dependence on the full functioning of each part' (Ephesians 4:16). Between the members of this body there exists, further, such a unity and solidarity (cf. Ephesians 4:16) that a member who does not work at the growth of the body to the extent of his possibilities must be considered use- less both to the Church and to himself.

"In the Church there is diversity of ministry but unity of mission. To the apostles and their successors Christ has entrusted the office of teaching, sanctifying and governing in His name and by His power. But the laity are made to share in the priestly, prophetical and kingly office of Christ; they have therefore, in the Church and in the world, their own assignment in the mission of the whole people of God" (Vatican II, "Apostolicam Actuositatem", 2).

It is true that God acts directly on each person's soul through grace, but it must also be said that it is Christ's will (expressed here and elsewhere) that men should be an instrument or vehicle of salvation for others.

"On all Christians, accordingly, rests the noble obligation of working to bring all men throughout the whole world to hear and accept the divine message of salvation" (Vatican II, "Apostolicam Actuositatem", 3).

16. This verse teaches that, as a consequence of the proclamation of the Good News, faith and Baptism are indispensable pre-requisites for attaining salvation. Conversion to the faith of Jesus Christ should lead directly to Baptism, which confers on us "the first sanctifying grace, by which Original Sin is forgiven, and which also forgives any actual sins there may be; it remits all punishment due for sins; it impresses on the soul the mark of the Christian; it makes us children of God, members of the Church and heirs to Heaven, and enables us to receive the other Sacraments" ("St. Pius X Catechism", 553).

Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation, as we can see from these words of the Lord. But physical impossibility for receiving the rite of Baptism can be replaced either by martyrdom (called, therefore, "baptism of blood") or by a per- fect act of love of God and of contrition, together with an at least implicit desire to be baptized: this is called "baptism of desire" (cf. "St. Pius X Catechism", 567-568).

Regarding infant Baptism, St. Augustine taught that "the custom of our Mother the Church of infant Baptism is in no way to be rejected or considered unneces- sary; on the contrary, it is to be believed on the ground that it is a tradition from the Apostles" ("De Gen., Ad Litt.", 10, 23, 39). The new "Code of Canon Law" also stresses the need to baptize infants: "Parents are obliged to see that their infants are baptized within the first few weeks. As soon as possible after the birth, indeed even before it, they are to approach the parish priest to ask for the Sacrament for their child, and to be themselves duly prepared for it" (Canon 867).

Another consequence of the proclamation of the Gospel, closely linked with the previous one, is that "the Church is necessary", as Vatican II declares: "Christ is the one mediator and way of salvation; He is present to us in His body which is the Church. He Himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse to enter it, or to remain in it" ("Lumen Gentium", 14; cf. "Presbyterorum Ordinis", 4; "Ad Gentes", 1-3; "Dignitatis Humanae", 11).

17-18. In the early days of the Church, public miracles of this kind happened frequently. There are numerous historical records of these events in the New Testament (cf., e.g., Acts 3:1-11; 28:3-6) and in other ancient Christian writings. It was very fitting that this should be so, for it gave visible proof of the truth of Christianity.

Miracles of this type still occur, but much more seldom; they are very exceptio- nal. This, too, is fitting because, on the one hand, the truth of Christianity has been attested to enough; and, on the other, it leaves room for us to merit through faith. St. Jerome comments: "Miracles were necessary at the beginning to con firm the people in the faith. But, once the faith of the Church is confirmed, mira- cles are not necessary" ("Comm. In Marcum, in loc."). However, God still works miracles through saints in every generation, including our own.

Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

by Brandon Vogt, Our Sunday Visitor

Introduction

When Pope John Paul II described the New Evangelization back in 1983, he said it required new ardor, new methods and new expressions.

Since then, perhaps no priest has embodied those qualities like Father Robert Barron of Chicago.

Through his "Word on Fire" ministry he has used blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, websites and mobile apps to spread the faith.

He's evangelized the culture through movie reviews and news commentary. And he released the epic "Catholicism" film series which has been seen across the world on both Catholic and secular television.

Our Sunday Visitor caught up with him at Chicago's Mundelein Seminary to discuss the New Evangelization, the new media, and what's next for him and his ministry.

Interview

Our Sunday Visitor:

In your opening message as rector at Mundelein, you laid out the seven great qualities of a new evangelist, of someone living out the New Evangelization. What are these seven marks?

Father Robert Barron:

First, you must have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

To evangelize is not just to share ideas - any theologian or historian could do that. It's to share a relationship, and you can't share what you don't have. Therefore, you've got to be in a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Second, you've got to be a person of ardor.

I cited that line from Aristotle where he said, "Finally, people only really listen to an excited speaker."

I've always thought that was dead right. If you're not excited about your message, you won't communicate it effectively. So you've got to have ardor.

Third, you've got to know the story of Israel.

Here I'm working with people like N.T. Wright and others who say that at the heart of evangelization is the good news that the story of Israel has come to its fulfillment - that the promises of God, as Paul said, have all met their "Yes!" in Jesus. When you abstract Jesus from Israel, you get the bland, spiritual teacher, the contemporary guru-Christ.

Back in the second century, there was a heretic named Marcion, a crypto-Gnostic who said, "Get rid of the Old Testament and its witness to an unworthy, fallen deity. Just keep Luke, and some parts of Paul." And the Church said, "Absolutely not!" to that proposal.

I tell my seminarians, "You need to say 'No!' to that as well." Marcion's Christ is evangelically uncompelling; you must propose the full story of Israel to be an effective evangelist.

Fourth, you've got to know the culture.

Here is Karl Barth's famous image of the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. When Pope John Paul II called for "new expressions," he was looking for new ways to express the faith to a secular society that has grown rather cold to the Gospel, and that has lost a sense of the transcendent.

This requires you to look for "seeds of the word." Within the secular culture, there will always be signs, seeds and indications of the Gospel. So find these seeds, latch onto them, and engage the culture.

Fifth, you've got to love the Great Tradition.

We Catholics don't subscribe to sola Scriptura. We don't operate by Scripture alone. Scripture is the heart of theology, yes indeed, but as Blessed John Henry Newman said, it "unfolds across space and time." It's like a great river that continually broadens and deepens. We know Christ better because we know him through Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, Chesterton, and through Michelangelo and Dante. To know the great Catholic theological and artistic tradition is key to being a new evangelist.

Sixth, you've got to have a missionary heart.

I told my Mundelein students, "It should bother everyone in this room that 75 percent of our own Catholic people are not going to Mass."

Vatican II said the Eucharist was the "source and summit of the Christian life." It wanted more people at Mass, not less. Yet now, 75 percent of our own people don't even go to Mass regularly? That's a tragedy.

These are souls who are in serious trouble. And I don't mean that simply in the ultimate sense of heaven and hell. I mean even now. There are many people who are lost, and it's because they've lost contact with God. As St. Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in God." There are all kinds of people in the secular world who are suffering, because the secular ideology is shutting down the longing of their hearts. So I told the students, "You must have a missionary heart; you must be passionate for souls."

Seventh, you've got to know and use the new media.

This explosion in technology is really unprecedented, at least since the time of Gutenberg. I tell my seminary students: "Know it; use it; it's in your blood. Your generation grew up with this. You grew up with computers, so use them and don't be afraid of technology."

OSV:

What advice would you give people on evangelizing through the new media?

Fr. Barron:

First of all, don't be afraid. There's a lot of fear surrounding this technology. People think, "I don't know it well enough; it can be abused; I might get negative feedback." And that's all true. But anything can be misused - computers, telephones, automobiles - but we wouldn't hesitate to use those things. It's the same with new media. So, don't be afraid.

by Mel Lawrenz

Debates about the philosophy and methodology of church ministry abound. In the middle of it all sometimes one fundamental reality gets forgotten: the church is the one institution in society positioned at the intersection of human need and divine resources. This is an enormous privilege and a sober responsibility of every church.

"Engagement" is bringing together God's supply and human need. It means closing the God-gap. Engagement has to be the driving dynamic at every level of spiritual life in real churches. Years ago I started to talk to the church I pastored--just as one church, one group of people looking for next steps in the new millennium--about four kinds of engagement.

1. Engaging with God (the life of worship and personal devotion).

That's what people need. That's what they want. That's what God has called us to do. Nobody is going to care a hundred years from now who had the biggest church, or the most-quoted catch-phrase. What will matter is whether we engaged with God.

2. Engaging with God's people (meaningful koinonia through small groups and other means).

A church can be and must be a movement of people coming together, living the shared life, finding grace in the other.

3. Engaging with one's community (imaginative ways to distribute Christian witness through involvement in social needs--decentralized; grass-roots, salt and light witness).

We must release people into the great mission--in reality, not just in words. In the world, but not of the world. The community of Christ infiltrating the surrounding community.

4. Engaging with the world (developing an awareness of and involvement in global mission).

An ordinary believer living an ordinary life in a small town in the middle of Nebraska can be a "world Christian." Joining a two-week mission team to do construction work in Costa Rica can open a believer to the horizon of God's great work in the world. But we don't need plane tickets to be world Christians. Our vision of the great mission is only as limited as our spiritual imaginations. When we tell the stories (and tell them well) our people will thank us for transporting them to a higher place where nations are not distinguished by crayon colors as they are on a map.

I started to ask the members of our congregation at least once a year whether they can say with honesty: I am engaging with God; I am engaging with God's people; I am engaging with my community; I am engaging with the world. Most people know where they are engaged, and where they are not.

Just look up the multiple definitions of "engagement" in the English dictionary, and the applications for church ministry are obvious:

Engage (en-gaj)...

• "to become involved in or participate in"
• "to pledge or to promise"
• "to assume an obligation"
• "to become meshed or interlocked"
• "to be attracted to or engrossed with"
• "to draw into"
• "to reserve to use"

Engagement is bringing together God's supply and human need.

It is the "bringing together" that is the transformational process for individuals and for a local church because it is extraordinarily easy for us to say we believe in divine supply and human need, but in our ministry we don't really bring together the supply and the need. Too often the church talks about God's great provisions (grace, salvation, mercy), but it is not applied in real and practical ways in people's lives. This has resulted in disengaged Christians and disengaged churches. A lot of talk, little action. Disengaged worship is when we are just going through the motions, when there is no God-encounter. Disengaged congregations have gatherings of people that could be engaged with each other in a revolutionary community, but somehow never get past cake and coffee in fellowship halls. Disengaged "missions" initiatives are merely writing checks and mailing them overseas. Disengaged evangelism keeps the gospel bound up in catch phrases that are increasingly meaningless to the non-believing world. Disengagement keeps us talking a good line as the church with little or no long-lasting effectiveness.

We preach to the choir. We feel self-satisfied. We affect no one.

Engagement is a call for the 21st century church.

Not because its our newest invention in making today's churches run well, but because it is the ancient way, so often forgotten, neglected, and layered-over with so many distracting ambitions. On the one hand we see a world more connected than ever before through technological communication advances, but what we learn in the end is how fractured and fragmented the world, our communities, our families, and we ourselves are.

One of the most important dynamics to understand (and the most exciting, I think) is the exponential effect they have on each other. Engagement is a movement. It is divine power reshaping human experience. God's resources brought into contact with human need is a work of God's Spirit that happens at all these different levels. And here is the best part: when we lead the ministry of a church as a whole, and when we bring these different kinds of engagement into contact with each other, they have an exponential effect. The energy of one kind of engagement is joined to the energy of other engagements and things really get out of control!

If a church tries to get a few hundred more people each year involved in small groups, that's a good thing. But if the energy of small groups is brought into the worship of the church, and global engagement is featured by story-telling in the worship time, and personal devotional life (engagement with God) is directed to community engagement, then the energy of each of these dynamics builds on each other. In other words, the whole church that mixes and matches and blends engagement with God, with God's people, with the community, and with the world, will discover a fire that feeds itself. A fire is never sustained when the logs fueling it are spread out and separated from each other. But that is our instinct in church leadership, to put spiritual life into categories and their own special rooms in the church.

Engagement is a way of life--for the believer, and for churches.

It is more than a program or task or project. It is social action and global involvement, but not merely so. Effective engagement with the needs of the world only begins as people are engaged with God.

by Randy Newman

There is a paradox about evangelism. Actually there are several but I'll only mention two here. It starts with the realization that evangelism is impossible. Jesus said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (John 6:44). Jesus also said, "Apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:15).

Given those realities, we need to see that evangelism requires at least two miracles. In my life, God must work supernaturally in order for me to say anything or do anything that could possibly connect to regeneration. In the life of the person hearing the gospel, God must work the miracle of raising them from the dead. (See Ephesians 2:1, "…we were dead…").

Thus, when we step into the process of evangelism, we are entering the world of the impossible. But our God specializes in doing the impossible.

So the paradox of evangelism is that when we remember that evangelism is impossible, we are more likely to evangelize!

We accept the fact that "success" is not dependent upon us. We understand that God uses both the human and the divine in the process (remembering, of course, that the divine component is so much more important). We open our mouths, knowing that God can actually use our frail attempts to accomplish the impossible. We speak with our mouths but we ask God to speak in ways far more powerful. We reason but we ask God to reveal. We proclaim but we know we're on a playing field with many other forces at work.

It's a paradox but a privilege.

Another Paradox of Evangelism

In the above article I wrote that the paradox of evangelism is that when we remember that evangelism is impossible, we are more likely to evangelize!

Here's the reverse of that paradox: If we think evangelism is supposed to be easy, we're more likely to quit.

There's ample support for the notion that evangelism can be easy or natural or "everyday" or smooth. Many books and seminars promote this perspective. But I don't find such support in the Scriptures.

Given the drama that Scripture describes when people get saved (they're delivered from the domain of darkness, Satan loses his stronghold, Jesus' is glorified, dead people are raised to life, etc.), is it surprising that evangelism would be difficult?

I wonder if some people portray evangelism as easy with the hopes that more Christians will jump in and just do it. But I find that more Christians are likely to evangelize if they accept that, for them, evangelism may always be difficult. I know that has been a breakthrough for me.

For many years, I kept waiting for witnessing to flow the way it did for Bill Bright. I had sat under his teaching and read his numerous books, especially Witnessing Without Fear. It's a great book… with a bad title. Bill Bright taught me a tremendous amount on how to start evangelistic conversations, how to transition other conversations to the gospel, and how to present the gospel message in a clear, concise, and compelling way.

But Bill Bright was an evangelist, if there ever was one, and I have other gifts. After hoping for many years that my evangelism would someday look and sound like Bill's, I finally accepted the fact that God gives different people different gifts.

This doesn't let me off the hook. Even non-evangelists need to share the gospel. That's why evangelist/apostle Paul told timid/pastor Timothy to "do the work of an evangelist."

But non-evangelists' approaches are going to look and sound different than Bill Bright's, Bill Hybels', and Billy Graham's. (Maybe it's all in the name!) For the rest of us, we may need to give up the hope that evangelism will ever be easy. As long as we expect it to be so, we'll second guess ourselves, experience discouragement, and perhaps, quit.

Witnessing with fear may be my motto (but I doubt that title would sell many books).

Here's another paradox of evangelism. When we accept that evangelism will never be easy… it actually gets slightly less difficult.

About Randy Newman

by Stephen Altrogge

It…is…so…frustrating!

You spend hours and hours with a friend, helping them work through the same issues again and again, helping them carry their enormous amount of baggage. You tell your son not to punch his brother for the bajillionth (1 followed by, like, inifinity zeros) time. You desperately pray for the salvation of your parents for five years, ten years, even twenty years. You bust your butt (or “bottom” as we say in my child-friendly house) to serve a difficult person in the church.

And yet, in spite of all your efforts, you don't see any fruit. It appears that your friend is still carrying the same baggage. You son is still throwing blistering haymakers and jabs at his brother. Your parents seem to be even less receptive to the gospel than in previous years. And that difficult person in the church is still being… let's see, how do we say this?… difficult. You're doing the work, you're not a slacker! (see What About Bob?). But you're not seeing any results.

What is the point of it all? Why should you keep investing yourself in a person when you are seeing zero fruit? Why should you keep working on a relationship that just doesn't seem to be working?

1 Corinthians 15:58 says:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Paul knows we will be tempted to think our labor is in vain. A waste. Absolutely useless. So Paul reminds us of the truth. Our labor for God is never in vain. Our work for God is never wasted. God promises that he will use our labor and sweat and tears for his purposes, to bring him glory. Even if we don't see results, we can be assured that God is working. Most of the time we have no idea how God is using our efforts. As Charles Bridges says:

Apparent must not be the measure of the real result…. There may be solid work advancing underground, without any sensible excitement; as we observe the see that produces the heaviest grain lies the longest in the earth. We are not always the best judges of the results of our Ministry. (The Christian Ministry, 73)

In other words, our perception of what God is doing in a person is often very different from what God is actually doing in that person. It may appear that nothing is happening in a person, when in reality, God is at work all over the place. We have no idea what God is doing quietly, behind the scenes. We have no idea how he is pressing, convicting, and shaping a person. We have no idea how God is using our labors to draw a person to himself. We usually are not the best judges of the results of our ministry.

So we must be steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work God has called us to. Be steadfast in raising, instructing, and training your children, even when it seems like you're on a wash, rinse, and repeat cycle. Be faithful in helping your baggage-carrying friend, even if it seems like the baggage is actually accumulating! Be abounding in the work of serving others, even when there is no thanks in return.

Why? Because YOUR LABOR IS NOT IN VAIN! God will use it. He will be faithful. Don't hang all your faith on visible results. We don't know what God is doing. We do know that our work is never wasted.

by Melissa Kruger

During my freshman year of high school, my older brother kept trying to convince me to come to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) with him. He was a senior and while I found it nice that he was actually inviting me to hang out with his friends, I had no desire to go to a big group meeting with him. Eventually, he persuaded me to come and slowly I became a regular attender at the meetings. Our FCA advisor was a young math teacher named Tracy. She was energetic and fun, as well as discerning and wise.

Both Tracy and her husband came to all of our weekly meetings and invested their time and energy into sharing the gospel with students. Over the next three years, I spent hours after school in her classroom planning events and working on Bible studies. We had ski retreats and beach retreats, as well as summer fellowship meetings.

By my senior year, I would often skip going off campus with my friends for lunch and just bring my sandwich up to her room for a chat. Her advice on dating, marriage, and raising children blessed me in countless ways and prepared me for life after high school. The greatest way she encouraged me through those years was by pointing me to God’s word in an effort to grow my faith.

Tracy was my first spiritual mentor. Neither she nor I would have called her that at the time. Our relationship was one that just happened as she chose to invest in the lives of students at the public high school where she taught. For me, she put shape to what it looks like to be a Christian woman. She challenged my ideas on what to wear, what to say and how to live a godly life. She put flesh on the gospel and lived it in front of me so that I could learn from her example.

Tracy greatly impacted my life as she was faithfully following Jesus in her own life. God called her to work in a large public school and she chose to invest well where He had placed her. She opened her classroom, her home and her heart to love students with the message of the gospel.

As we consider mentoring, it is important to realize that Christians have the power to greatly influence others simply by living faithful lives wherever God calls them. In fact, a large percentage of mentoring happens incidentally as we go about our days. Our places of employment, social gatherings, and neighborhoods offer opportunities in which we can faithfully mentor others without a regularly scheduled meeting or curriculum. By sharing Biblical truths and wisdom, we influence others by putting shape to what it means to live the Christian life. The advice we speak, the encouragement we share and the care we give are means by which God can work to spur on the faith of a younger believer.

Just before his death, Jesus spoke the following words to his disciples, saying:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
– John 15: 4 -5

If we want to live lives that informally mentor others, the most important thing we can do is to spend time with Jesus. One of Tracy’s most impactful statements to me was her continual reminder, “You can’t lead others to Jesus if you’re not meeting with Him yourself.” She taught me that the greatest strength of a mentor is not their personality, their insight or their boldness. The strength of a mentor is their connection to Jesus. Christ provides the nourishment, and we bear the fruit. The wisdom and insights gained as our minds are renewed by time in the word and prayer will be used to encourage others. The power of influence is Christ in us, overflowing to others.

About The Author:

Melissa Kruger serves as Women's Ministry Coordinator at Uptown Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and is the author of 'The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World' (Christian Focus, 2012).

by Randy Newman

In a paper I wrote on Weaving Evangelism into Discipleship, I suggested, for some churches and ministries, evangelism is an awkward appendage, disconnected from daily life. It feels similar to a house with only one room with electricity. On isolated occasions you go to that room, "the electricity room," whenever you need to access electric current. Far better to wire the entire house for electricity.

Likewise, far better to "wire" our Christian experience so that evangelism is woven into daily life.

Here are three ways to weave evangelism into your daily life:

1) Through your daily prayers:

Assuming you have a regular time for connecting to God through prayer (no easy discipline!), it is worth the effort to build in prompts to pray for non-believers. If you use a prayer journal, have a section where you list the "outsiders" God has brought your way. Perhaps you'll want to have a bookmark-sized card in your Bible with a list of names of your "10 Most Wanted."

2) Through specific prayers for specific people on specific days:

Why not include in your daily prayers (along with, "Lord, may I bring glory to you today…help me to resist temptation today…please open that door for the promotion at work today…etc.") something like this, "Lord, please bring non-believers my way today and may I recognize such divine appointments as opportunities to point them to you. Give me boldness, wisdom, and grace." Or, "Lord, what appointments do I already have set up with non-believers? Help me to see you as Lord of my daily schedule."

(I began that section with "Why not…" Well, I'll tell you why I don't pray that kind of prayer more often. Because I don't want God to answer it! If he does (and he's rather good at answering prayers), I'll probably be placed into the awkward position of witnessing. So…I do want to pray that prayer, despite the difficulties, but I often add an extra plea: "God, please help me to trust you in those situations that you design. May it be that your glory and the other person's salvation will be more important to me than my comfort.")

3) As part of your social networking:

You probably update your Facebook page or send out emails or tweet or engage in some other social networking activity on a pretty regular basis. Why not (see above) give some thought to how you might select a few non-believers and push the gospel-dialogue a little further. If evangelism can be a process and not only an event (I should probably blog about that sometime soon…check back…), then ask God for creativity to take the next step. It can begin with a prayer, "God, who's the next person you want me to check in with? What would be the next step? Is there a link to a website that I can send to them? Is there something in the news that points to the theme of redemption or forgiveness or grace or judgment or eternity?"

All of these steps require boldness. Ask God to help you reflect on all that he has done to reach you. Let that fuel your efforts to reach out to those God brings your way and weave evangelism into your daily life.