My reading and study has driven me to read from Jim Henderson this week. Jim’s writing and service can be see at www.off-the-map.org
Jim Henderson defines an OA What is an “Ordinary Attempt?
Ordinary Attempts are stories chronicling a very non-traditional approach to evangelism, ordinary activities that you are already doing. Not a program, pitch or presentation, but a simple shift in how we view the people formerly known as lost.
OAs were born out of a desire to redefine evangelism, to make it doable for ordinary people. OAs are an attempt to nudge people across the starting line toward Jesus.There is no such thing as pre-evangelism. Therefore OA s are evangelism at the purest level.
This belief is based on what Jesus said “If you give a cup of cold water to a little child because you are my disciple you won’t lose your reward. Matthew 10:42. Our cultures equivalent of a cup of cold water is attention. OAs are free attention giveaways.God counts, notices and works with our smallest efforts (including praying behind peoples back or even noticing them) to carry people along toward himself.
OA s have been borrowed by others who don’t care about the evangelism but simply want to participate in free attention giveaways and intentional acts of kindness in order to make the world a better place or someones day a bit brighter. We welcome this practice as well and don’t see any conflict of interest regardless of what motivates people to OA it is better than not OAing.
What caused you to start thinking about?
Traditional evangelism isn’t doable. I wanted to find a way to make evangelism a normal part of my life a spiritual practice that was simple, memorable and didn’t require money, training a group activity or scripture memorization.
Give us an example of a time when you saw the value of OAs.Whenever I read your stories or Randys stories. When I sat in Randys Doable Evangelism class and heard a woman talk about“noticing someone and the group clapped for her. That is Jesus sized ministry.
How would you respond to this? - a nice idea but not the way the Bible tells us to share our faith.
They have read the script (actually only part of the script) but they definitely have not watched the movie. No need for much bible exegesis here. Simply watch Jesus life as if you were watching a movie and notice the number of “conversations he has (122 for those who are counting) and notice that only 8 of them were in the Temple .Pay attention the his small interactions and notice what he doesn’t do. Also notice that he lived and ordinary life for 30 years before going public in order to send a message to all of us ordinary types that having an ordinary life works for him. He only gave 10% of his time here on earth away to what we would call ministry- a standard most of us could aspire to even with day jobs.
What have you seen happening in churches whose members have started doing OAs?
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