There’s a curious exchange between Jesus and the man who had the legion of demons driven out from him at the expense of a large herd of pigs. The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with Him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return home and tell how much God has done for you’ (Luke 8:38).
There’s every indication that he is committed and sincere about following Jesus, and certainly his life has been transformed. Yet he is turned down and told to go back home. Why?
Perhaps it is because Jesus has something better in store: to return to his own people – those who have known him all his life – with his unique testimony of God’s transforming power. A life transformed within a community is a powerful witness; it has a credibility and immediacy that is hard to deny.
Witness in their own neighbourhood
Research from 2014 shows that 62% of regular church attendees are middle class and 38% working class, despite the fact that 47% of the nation are working class. Since 2014, London City Mission’s Pioneer programme has trained gifted evangelists from deprived or neglected communities to witness to Jesus Christ in their own neighbourhoods.
Sadly, many of these people will not be seen as obvious candidates for Bible college. Yet I have seen that, because of their background, they have been able to be an effective witness in their communities.
Olly
Take Olly, for example. He grew up in Hounslow and as a teenager he would regularly smoke weed, spending his time getting high. But when he became a Christian, he felt a burning desire to share Jesus with people. So he prayed and God answered him. He started on our Pioneer programme in 2015 and continues to thrive as a full-time missionary with London City Mission. He recently shared a story with me about his ministry during lockdown.
‘I have been holding daily Bible studies online each evening. One man (who I hadn’t seen for ten years) asked to join and said he was a ‘spiritual person’. After a week of joining us and hearing me preach on Jesus being the Way, the Truth and the Life, and how you can’t accept the Father without accepting the Son, he decided to call me after the study. He started to ask questions about Jesus’ deity and humanity, and then later on messaged me: ‘I have handed my will over to Jesus for the first time, instead of a god of my own understanding.’
Olly continued: ‘This has brought me great joy – and the amazing thing is I found out he lives at the end of my road, and yet it takes isolation to reach him with the gospel.’
People like Olly show us the value of churches breaking out of their comfort zones and reaching out to people from diverse backgrounds. God loves them and has a plan for them, and as people who have experienced God’s saving grace in our own lives, we must remember to see them as God does. They are made in the image of God and their life matters. Everyone is equally valuable in the eyes of Jesus so we must find ways to share Jesus with them so that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can make disciples, that make disciples.
