Jesus says, "Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." John 2:35
Click the explanation you want now, of why and how Jesus wants us to deal with persons who are seeking faith but have not yet found Him:
A. Deal Wisely with the Seeker who Is Not yet Firm in the Faith
B. Aim for a Widespread Movement to Christ by Working through Existing Relationships
C. In Pioneer Fields Do Evangelism in a Way that Fits the Culture of the Working Class of People
D. Help Believers to Recount the Great Redemptive Events, in Stories of Scripture
E. Help New believers to Pass on the Good News at Once
F. To Enter a Neglected Community Seek a Man of Peace and Work Within his Social Web
G. Form New Churches or Cells Inside One’s Network of Friends and Kin
H. Where Large Meetings Are Illegal, Form Tiny Groups
I. Give Ample Time for the Holy Spirit to Convince an Entire Family
J. Help Seekers to Affirm Verbally the Essential Gospel Truths
K. Avoid Manipulating People into Making Emotional Decisions
L. Count New Believers as the Apostles Did, After Being Added to a Church by Baptism
M. Follow Up Conversion with Baptism as Soon as Is Practical
N. Assure New believers at Once that You and God Love and Accept Them
10A. Deal Wisely with the Seeker who Is Not yet Firm in the Faith
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Jesus says, "Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." John 2:35
The purpose of this chapter is to explain how Jesus wants us to deal with persons who are seeking faith but have not yet found Him. Let us consider evangelism from the viewpoint of those who have the most to gain or lose, the seekers or pre-Christians, to help them find Christ.
Mr. 'Traditionalist' has taken a course in systematic theology and tries out his new vocabulary on his non-Christian neighbor. He speaks with big Latin words that almost no one understands, in a voice that sounds like he was giving a sermon to a huge crowd.
Mr. 'Foresight' hears him and comes to the rescue, "Please. We ordinary mortals do not understand a bit of what you are preaching. Let folks learn in a language they understand."
Find in
John 4:25-42 a clue to the type of people that are most likely to respond to the gospelThe Samaritan woman said, "I know that Messiah is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us."
Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am He."
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find Him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?"
They came out of the town and made their way toward Him. Meanwhile his disciples urged Him, "Rabbi, eat something."
But He said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought Him food?"
"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.."
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world." (NIV)
The religious Jews despised the Samaritans who had less economic and political power. But Jesus found them to be more responsive than the rich and powerful people of Jerusalem.
Find in Luke 10:3-7 a clue to the type of person to seek first when penetrating a new community:
Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, `Peace to this house.’ if a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. (NIV)
From its outset, a movement to Christ among a neglected people requires evangelistic methods that fit the local culture. A wise missionary will be sensitive to anything that needlessly offends the people, especially in the way that believers worship and witness. Patterson learned this by observation:
At first we found it hard to get Honduran men, especially heads of households, to attend the new churches or to trust Christ. The mature men would come and observe the worship through a window, which showed a hunger for spiritual things, but seeing only women and children, he would shrug and walk away. How could we get these mature heads of families to give us a hearing? How could we get them to talk about it with each other and with their families? We met to discuss this and the Hondurans gave the answer.
We asked our wives and other women not to take highly visible positions of leadership, and we made it a point to talk first to the male heads of households. Soon the men started attending services. After a few years more men than women were attending, and it became a men’s movement, something new for Honduras. We dealt with heads of households as Peter did with Cornelius and Paul with the Philippian jailer (Acts 10 and 16:22-40).
Even before the men knew Christ, we would help them to tell Bible stories to their families and friends. The stories spread among the people.
Take a moment now to think how you can help your people win more people for Christ.
10B. Aim for a Widespread Movement to Christ by Working through Existing Relationships
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
The fact that Jesus is knocking at people’s door becomes good news and travels along the same lines as gossip, between family members and close friends. Churches reproduce spontaneously wherever there is popular interest in the gospel of Jesus Christ. "Popular" does not necessarily mean that the people like it, but that it is of the people. People are interested in it, talk about it and even about it. The common people—not just religious types and clergy—are concerned about the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. Some will reject it, but everyone is nevertheless concerned about it.
God does not view persons as isolated individuals. He sees a seeker as part of a wider network of friends and relatives. Except for hermits who isolate themselves from the world, every person has such networks. To imitate Jesus in His incarnation, believers must step outside their church buildings and missionary compounds to work with the people, rather than developing ever-bigger programs to attract people to the church. You must work within family and social structures, rather than always bringing new believers into our own organization to find Jesus. You must spend time with them in their homes, listening to them and giving to them a model for evangelizing that they can imitate at once and pass on to their people.
Such "incarnational" evangelism imitates Jesus who emptied Himself of His divine glory and power to become a man, to experience things from our viewpoint, to identify with Jewish culture, and to draw near to "tax collectors and sinners." Similarly, you must empty yourself of your cultural prejudices and draw near to those of other cultures. You must work within existing webs of relationships, within families and with new believers’ and seekers’ networks of friends. Patterson explains how he used such a community approach:
When we penetrated a town for the first time with the gospel, we found it unwise to rent a room for meetings and invite the people to come where we were in control of everything. We could feel secure but they could not. On one Christmas Eve, for example, instead of inviting them to a celebration in a rented hall, we visited them in their homes and joined in with them in their festivities. Well, not in all their festivities! We made ourselves "vulnerable". We took them baked goods or some other small token of friendship, rather than inviting them to an "outsider" meeting without their friends and family, where they would have felt uncomfortable.
An enemy of this kind of incarnational evangelism is the missionary’s desire to control the process, mistakenly wanting to evangelize where he feels secure and can do everything his own way. He wants to invite seekers and new believers to his house, or to place that he rents or to a restaurant where he can pick up the bill, so that he remains in control. The missionary may feel at ease, but the seekers feel insecure. Thus he extracts them from their network of friends and family and brings them into a new social network of his making. Such evangelism by extraction was neither Jesus’ way nor that of His apostles. They evangelized where they were not in control. Peter evangelized Cornelius’ social network under Cornelius’ roof. Cornelius was Italian, so Peter and his Jewish coworkers had to eat non-Jewish foods for several days in Cornelius’ home. The Jewish Christians in Jerusalem scolded Peter for that (Acts 11:1-18). God had given to Peter a disturbing vision to prepare him for that.
Ask God how you can help your people to see how He wants the gospel to flow through them to their relatives and friends.
10C. In Pioneer Fields Do Evangelism in a Way that Fits the Culture of the Working Class of People
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Workers must popularize the gospel so that its message can flow from friend to friend and from relative to relative. One way to speed the process is to use creative, artistic methods of communication among the people. Find Christians who are artists, story-tellers, writers, jokesters, dramatists, poets, interpretive dancers, painters or journalists who can put the good news into a medium that will help the message to flow from one person to another. Patterson recalls,
We sometimes used poems to spread the gospel. It was not always good poetry, yet even the toughest men liked it anyway. We also used skits and simple dramas. No one memorized dialogues; they simply acted out the ideas or read their speeches directly from the Bible. We would get non-believers to take minor parts, in order to get close to them and to build relationships. In a reenactment of the parable about a prodigal son, we let local volunteers play the fattened calf. Another read a poem that might have been spoken by the father as he stood scanning the horizon, waiting to see if his son would return.
We also put biblical doctrines into simple, affordable comic books that reached many people. That does not work for every culture and is no longer as useful in Honduras as it once was. But for the initial penetration of the gospel, it got us past our first barriers to the people.
Today, they have also developed their own style of sacred music and have composed many dozens of sacred songs, which greatly enrich their worship.
If you are an evangelist or you train evangelists, you should master the apostolic practice of incarnational evangelism. Since it is universally applicable, missionaries should try it before using Western or institutional approaches. Few people come to Christ or form new beliefs through the written page or from preached sermons. In most cases the Spirit of God uses friends or relatives.
Ask yourself honestly if you are relying too much on methods of evangelism that are difficult for the average believer in your churches to imitate and pass on. If so, ask God to help you embrace ways that are simpler and easier to use.
10D. Help Believers to Recount the Great Redemptive Events, in Stories of Scripture
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
All religions of the world—except Christianity and original biblical Judaism—start with a philosophical view of God and ethics. Confucius, Buddha, the holy men who wrote Hindu beliefs, Joseph Smith and Mohammed were all mystics who meditated. They contemplated the cosmos and life, then came up with new ethical and metaphysical systems. Over time those systems evolved into widespread religions. Christianity’s origins are the opposite. No major doctrine originated simply out of some mystic’s mind. All basic truths of Scripture have grown out of historical events, including the following:
Creation
The fall
The flood
Babel
The pact with Abraham
The miraculous escape from Egypt
The giving of the law
The breaking of the law
The promise to David that an heir would sit on an eternal throne
The division of the kingdom
The exile and protection through Esther’s diplomacy
The return from exile
Jerusalem and the temple rebuilt
The expulsion of idolaters and reform under Ezra
Jesus’ birth and childhood,
Jesus’ baptism, temptation and calling His disciples
Jesus’ miracles, teaching and transfiguration
Jesus’ arrest, trial and death
Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to glory
The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
The new church in Jerusalem and its witness
The Jewish persecution and birth of Jewish churches
The conversion of gentiles
Churches multiply throughout the Roman Empire
Paul, John and Peter, imprisoned, write letters to new churches
As you recount to others these historical events and the facts about God and His work that are evident in them, the Holy Spirit will use these truths to bring people to repentance and to transform them. The inspired applications of those events written by the biblical apostles and prophets should form the basis of your theology. First, tell the stories; later tell the doctrinal meaning that builds on the historical facts. This is how the prophets, psalmists and apostles wrote their poetry, prophecies and New Testament letters.
The more distant a culture is from the Christian world-view, the more we have to tell Old Testament stories to prepare the people to understand Christ’s redemptive work. Old Testament stories enable potential believers to grasp the following truths, among many others:
Recount a story from the Old Testament to introduce a concept in its earthly form. For example, to teach the need for a sacrifice for sin by a substitute, recount Abraham’s offering up of Isaac or the sacrifices required in Leviticus. Then add the corresponding spiritual application from the New Testament. Church planters should develop an extensive repertoire of Bible stories that furnish biblical foundations for every major Christian truth and duty.
If a people group already has a worldview with one all-powerful and perfectly just Creator, then you can start with the basic stories of redemption in Christ. Recount Bible stories about the gospel. Oral communication of the gospel, including stories about conversions and healing, is normally the cutting edge of people movements to Christ.
Where the people have a purely pagan worldview, they need a more basic preparation. Begin with Old Testament stories that reveal the holiness of the supremely powerful God. Recount events of Scripture that the people can begin at once repeating to their families and friends. In most cultures, people will repeat these stories, provided you tell them in a way they can imitate. Do not start with a philosophical explanation of the gospels. That will come later.
Stories that are easy for new believers to repeat as they witness in turn, include key historical events of Jesus’ life:
Other stories that help new Christians to grow in the faith are:
Stories that reveal the historical foundations for the holiness of God include:
The flood. Genesis, chapters 6 - 9, teaches God’s holiness as seen in his sending of the flood. The ark can serve as a picture of Jesus’ salvation. By faith we enter into glory by being with the risen Christ the same way that Noah’s family and the animals entered into the ark with Noah in order to be saved from God’s punishment, as described in 1 Peter 3:18-22.
Allow the Holy Spirit to use this story from the Word of God to convince people of the danger of their sin before God, and of the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to save them.
If people believe in Jesus in the same way that Buddhists or Muslims believe in their religion, — for cultural reasons without repentance — then they lack the Spirit of God. The best evangelists, those most often used by the Holy Spirit to bring others to Christ, are usually new believers. Show them how to explain to their family and friends that Jesus is God’s Son and that he died and rose again to save us.
New believers do not need at first to understand detailed doctrines about how Jesus’ death and resurrection save them and their friends. They need only to repent and trust Him. They will do that when the Holy Spirit stirs their hearts through your witness about Christ. Witness by the Holy Spirit’s power, and He will use your words to convince people of their dangerous estate. The infinitely holy God will not tolerate sin forever. Do not teach about holiness as simply another item in a list of God’s attributes. Rather let the Holy Spirit use it to awaken the fear of God in them. He is so good, and humans are so evil by comparison, that He must punish their sins. Seekers will see this, if we will recount Old Testament stories in which God punished men’s sin.
Stop for a moment to plan in a definite way how you will use stories and help others also to do so.
10E. Help New believers to Pass on the Good News at Once
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
You must witness for Christ in a way that the gospel will flows easily from friend to friend and from family member to family member. To make the gospel easy to pass on requires several things:
If the people lack an understanding of one all-powerful God and Creator, or that He is absolutely holy and must punish evil, then we must lay a foundation. We must help them to understand these realities by recounting Old Testament stories.
Use a method of witnessing that new believers can easily imitate and pass on as they witness for Jesus. Help them to relate in a simple, direct way the good news of their conversion as well as historical Bible accounts. Story telling is a popular medium in all cultures, and almost anyone can do it.
Scoggins discovered how to let the gospel flow freely among friends and relatives:
We learned the need to focus on a particular people group and subculture. Good things happen, when you keep new believers in a loving relationship with their unsaved, pagan friends, and when you take Christ to others instead of inviting them to come to us you. Then you can start a new congregation within their social network. We stopped removing new believers out of their social network and transplanting them into one made up of the church planting team members who are outsiders from the new believers’ viewpoint. We now help them to tell Bible stories about salvation and to witness to their unsaved family members and friends about what Jesus has done for them.
10F. To Enter a Neglected Community Seek a Man of Peace and Work Within his Social Web
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
"When you enter a house, first say, `Peace to this house.’ if a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house." Luke 10:5-7 (NIV)
The ‘man of peace’ is any respected person whom God has prepared to help you enter the community. God will channel His good news through this contact, as he did with Cornelius, Lydia and the jailer, as recorded in Acts chapters 10 and 16. Such persons of peace can put you in contact with their family and friends and help you to pass the gospel on to them immediately. Sometimes the persons of peace do this even before they know Christ, as in the case of Cornelius.
We must not separate new believers from their friends or relatives, except in the case of drug addicts or alcoholics whom you must help to keep away from those who abet their addiction. Do not alienate them from their unbelieving friends by forcing them to identify socially only with a congregation made up of outsiders from your church planting team.
Think now about the new area that you are working in, or soon will. Who are people of peace? Do you need to search more?
10G. Form New Churches or Cells Inside One’s Network of Friends and Kin
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Keep the church planting task group members and other outsiders a minority at meetings during the birth phase of the new church. If a husband reads and discusses the Bible and prays with his family, encourage him to bring in neighbors and friends to take part with them. A missionary or member of the church planting task group might attend this "gathering meeting" to help them get started, but often it is better not to do so. Let the new leader do as much as he is able, and meet with him and other new group leaders at another time to prepare them to lead their own meetings. Older mature believers should not come to these first "gathering meetings" unless they bring along unbelieving friends or relatives.
Do not be afraid to start small. When two or three people in a social network come to Christ, encourage them to meet as a "community" on Sundays or on a day more appropriate in the culture. As their group grows, it will practice church body life in these "community meetings," centered around the Lord’s Supper. Later they will add other vital activities.
Stop and think--what heads of families should begin now to gather their loved ones and friends to pray and talk about Jesus?
10H. Where Large Meetings Are Illegal, Form Tiny Groups
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
To get started, two or three persons can meet for worship and Communion (Matthew 18:20 and Acts 2:46-47). Such tiny groups normally grow quickly.
The size to which you can let groups grow depends on the degree of security needed. Some governments set a limit to the number of people whom they permit to attend an unregistered meeting. Where many people come to Christ in tiny gatherings, extensive growth comes by letting such tiny groups keep multiplying.
Do you need to hold meetings secretly? If so, ask God to help you keep meetings small and multiply tiny groups.
I. Give Ample Time for the Holy Spirit to Convince an Entire Family
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Present the gospel in a meaningful way several times before asking for a commitment or suggesting baptism. Most seekers need to hear about Jesus several times, often over several weeks, while the Holy Spirit illumines their hearts. Scoggins found the need for perseverance in evangelism:
For Muslims conversion sometimes takes years. This fact requires our persistence. We pray for wisdom for how to continue with a contact that is open. We avoid "shaking the dust off our feet" until a person has obviously rejected the message. As long as we see progress we persevere. Even when they appear to fall back, we patiently explain the way back through repentance. To evangelize Muslims, we pray to discern their spirit. We also pray that they will see true Christians as the ‘sweet fragrance of life’ to those who are saved and the ‘stench of death’ to the lost, in (2 Corinthians 2:14-16).
Pray for a moment for unsaved family members among your people, and ask God how you can help your people better to reach them.
10J. Help Seekers to Affirm Verbally the Essential Gospel Truths
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Help seekers to grasp and repeat the basic historical facts of the gospel. Especially do so with heads of families who will communicate the gospel to their wives and children. These essential historical facts are:
When a seeker believes, you should try to reach and baptize the entire family. A husband normally precedes his wife and children. In some churches elders authorize him to baptize the others of his family.
Stop and think if your people are communicating the essential truths of the gospel, as well as their own testimonies of what Christ has done for them. Do they need help?
10K. Avoid Manipulating People into Making Emotional Decisions
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Western evangelists sometimes manipulate individuals into making a logical, emotion-laden, personal decision. Few such individuals show evidence afterwards that the Holy Spirit brought them to repentance—usually less than five percent. A harvesting method that produced 95% weed seed would yield too few true believers to sustain church multiplication. Individualistic decision-making rituals, although they have limited effectiveness in some democratic, educated cultures, are foreign to Scripture and cause missionaries to waste time and energy. True conversion is not the result of a mere decision but comes from the repentance that the Holy Spirit gives to new believers. Conversion is moving from one kingdom to another, from darkness to light, from death to life. The consequences of such radical emigration normally are too important for a person to do all alone. A family should weigh and discuss them at length.
In Honduras Patterson first tried to evangelize with a Western decision making ritual:
We began witnessing in the common Western way, without lasting results. Evangelists who were effective in the United States came and held campaigns during our first years of work, and we arranged their meetings. But their methods proved ineffective in Honduras, and the seekers did not follow through. This forced us to look again in Scripture at what the gospel was and how the apostles presented it. We did not find there the Western emphasis on individual, crisis decisions. Rather, we found a strong emphasis on Jesus’ death, resurrection, and repentance, and on entire families coming to the Lord.
Think for a moment about the way you help people to receive Christ. Do many fall away afterwards? If so, you may be pushing them instead of letting the Holy Spirit draw them to Christ.
10L. Count New Believers as the Apostles Did, After Being Added to a Church by Baptism
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
Do not count the number of converts until they have done what Jesus and the apostles require from them. The apostles counted them only after they repented and were baptized into Christ and His body, the church (Acts 2:38-41 and Luke 24:46-48).
Much mischief occurs when evangelists count hands prematurely and report such as conversions, so they can raise more funds. Patterson reports:
After showing a film about Jesus in several Mexican villages, a mission agency claimed five thousand conversions and eleven new churches in their fund-raising brochures. I visited the area and tried to help follow up the new believers, but there were none. There were no churches. The evangelists had only held meetings to give away cassettes with gospel music to individuals who had "made a decision". When confronted with the facts, the organization’s officials refused to discuss them or to stop making the exaggerations. Such dishonest use of statistics by evangelicals reinforces the use of bad evangelism methods.
We taught our Honduran evangelists not to count converts until seekers had done what was the apostles required, as recorded in Acts 2:37-41, to repent of their sins, to be baptized and to be added to a local community of the people of God. Peter commanded this in answer to the question that faith begs, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Of course, the mechanical performance of these activities alone does not save people; they only ratify by concrete actions the faith in Christ by which God saves people.
Stop and plan how you and your coworkers will discern biblically which converts have truly been born again, and count them accordingly.
10M. Follow Up Conversion with Baptism and Communion as Soon as Is Practical
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
The apostles gave extensive instruction to converts after their baptism, not beforehand. An evangelist’s job is not done until a new believer is baptized and starts obeying the commands of Jesus. As seen in Peter’s actions, as recorded in Acts 2 and throughout the book of Acts, an evangelist’s duty is more than witnessing about Jesus Christ. Peter did not consider his work to be done until the new believers had repented, that is, turned from unrighteousness to new life in Christ, and were added to Christ’s church by baptism. Somebody’s mere acknowledging of gospel facts is a poor criterion by which to distinguish those in the Kingdom from those who are outside of it. Persons who have heartfelt belief in Christ and in Scripture start doing righteous works because of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, as demonstrated in Acts 2:37-47.
Some churches require seekers to complete a doctrinal course before their baptism. Doing that is an error, for it excludes illiterates and makes of baptism a graduation ceremony rather than the initial confirmation of repentance and salvation, as it is in Scripture.
New believers should begin celebrating the Lord’s Supper as soon as possible, even if they are only one, two, or three new believers in a new church. Since saving faith results in good works, they will have a desire at least to try. Make sure new believers do not confuse the cause and the result. A new believer obeys because he has been saved, for salvation does not result from his obedience but leads to it. We can expect growth—though not perfection—and obedience from the beginning. A true believer will joyfully obeys out of love for Jesus, not out of a legalistic sense of duty (John 14:15).
Stop and think about how long new believers must wait in your church--or the churches of those you train--to obey Jesus and receive the benefits of baptism and the Lord's Supper. If it's too long, plan now to do it the way the apostles did.
10N. Assure New believers at Once that You and God Love and Accept Them
Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 10.
New believers will find it easy to obey Jesus when they know He loves them; and they will believe this when His people in the church body show love for them. Assure them immediately of the Holy Spirit’s regeneration, sealing, and presence in their life. Do wait until you take them through a course of systematic doctrine about the Holy Spirit. Physically embrace the new believer immediately after baptism, and assure them with simple words such as, "You are risen with Jesus for all eternity, by the power of God’s Spirit in you!" Some pastors lay hands on new believers when they baptize them, as the apostles did in Samaria, as a physical sign and assurance of having their having received the Holy Spirit, as described in Acts 8:14-17.
Wait until a believer has repented and been baptized before you offer formal acceptance into the church body as an adult member. Doing so will protect the assembly from "rice Christians" who, like ticks on a dog, are parasites on the body of Christ. Left unprotected, both ticks and dog will die, which is good for neither of them. However, true believers should be included as soon as possible, lest they die like abandoned babies in an indifferent world.
Please take a moment now to plan how you and your coworkers will assure new believers that God and His people have received them in love.
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