In OM in Belgium, we talk about evangelism as “wide sowing” because we want to see a HARVEST!!
Our vision is to see each person in Belgium have a chance to respond to the Good News of Jesus, and to see the Kingdom of God expand across Belgium.
Why do we do this? Because Jesus left this as our mission (Matthew 28:19-20)... and because many people in Belgium haven’t heard what the Good News of Jesus Christ is all about. So we want to be bold and courageous and reach out to those God puts on our hearts and our paths.
We want to evangelise - share this Good News -Â in creative ways and in relevant ways. We want to follow where God is moving and listen to how the Holy Spirit wants us to work alongside Him.
Creative ways:
We want to engage in evangelism in creative ways, being open to new ways of doing things and looking at different ways that we haven’t explored before. We also want to engage in evangelism in creative ways because we know that the arts speak deeply to the hearts of the Belgians. We know that most Belgians have had some sort of arts training and have a deep affinity and appreciation for the arts. We know that by using the arts to evangelize, we are speaking truth directly to their hearts, and not just engaging their heads. So we want to tap into this resource and take advantage of the many creative gifts on our team.
Relevant ways:
We also want to engage in evangelism in relevant ways because we want to reach each Belgian or person living in Belgium with the Gospel in a way that speaks particularly to their life experience. We want to go past the stereotypes that Belgians might have of religion and religious people, and expose them to the powerful, life-changing relationship that Jesus offers us.
Also, many Christians in Belgium want to evangelize but don’t know how or are afraid to. So we want to be practitioners in evangelism and we want to be able to disciple others in evangelism.
We also want to keep learning what it means to evangelize well in our Belgian contexts. We want to keep learning how to evangelize creatively and relevantly. And in this time of growing online opportunities, we want to learn how to take advantage of this tool to reach out to people through social media and other online platforms.
We continue to be creative and relevant through long-term evangelism projects (arts ministry, prison ministry, relationships, ...) and we continue to develop short-term opportunities (Easter campaign, arts experience, visiting teams, ...), remembering that short term events always play into the larger, long-term vision.
All of this will lead, with God’s help, to the establishment of vibrant communities of Jesus followers all across Belgium.
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