I have been wanting to start a new small group study on Tuesday nights. I am going to use the book 30 Days to Understanding the Bible by Max Anders. I am going to adapt the material into an eight-week study. My idea is to find new people to have this study with, preferably not church people. I believe that God is at work in the hearts of people around me. I just need to go and find where God is at work and join Him there. I believe if I can find people that God wants to make disciple makers out of, a good place to start with them is teaching them about the Bible.
In the past I have done a lot of door knocking. The approaches I have used have widely varied. My goal was to always share the Gospel with them and I believed that is what I needed to do. Today I tried something new. My approach was to try to find people to build a relationship with through this study. My focus is not necessarily to share the Gospel. If there is an opportunity I will jump at it but my main focus is to build a relationship thought this study. In the past I would go through a neighborhood and whoever answered the door I would talk to and whoever didn’t I would never talk to because I wasn’t coming back. There are so many neighborhoods in Las Vegas that I figured why should I continue to spend time in one area. I believe that I have been to over 15,000 homes in Las Vegas over the past few years.
As I went out today I only spent about 1 1/2 hours with my son. When I knocked on the door I introduced myself as a neighbor having a neighborhood study in a couple weeks and I’d like to invite them to join us. I told them the nature of the study and that I am a Pastor. The response was completely different than I have ever experienced. Some told me they were not interested but they really appreciated me being there. I’d always tell them to keep my number because I am just down the street and they may need to talk to a Pastor sometime in the future. Other seemed interested and they would let me know. Then there were others who were not home. I recorded all the information and then annotated it in Google Maps (take a look). I plan on going back to these homes over the next couple weeks until I have saturated my neighborhood (240 homes).
I am expecting God to do some great things through this. I don’t know what to expect but am hoping for at least three families to come. Then I’d like to duplicate this same thing in other parts of the city. I’d love to have these same studies going on all over the city during the week. I’ll let you know how this goes.
Please pray for me over the next couple weeks. Thanks.
