locating persons of peace
- Filed under: Christianity, church planting, community, culture, evangelism, Gospel, Great Commission, incarnational, missional, missional living, New Testament, post-Christendom, relationships
- Date: Feb 6,2010
In a recent post, J.D. Payne, Associate Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism in the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, talks about finding a “person of peace” — a concept that finds support from passages such as Luke 10:5-6; John 4:28-30, 39-42; Mark 5:18-20; and Acts 10:24; 16:15, 30-34; 18:8.
Payne says this:
The concept generally refers to the first few people who come to faith and are able to carry the gospel faster and farther throughout the population than the church planting team.
When approaching a large population segment, people group, etc., the church planting team should not be asking the question, “How can we personally evangelize all of these people?” Rather, they should be asking, “How can we reach a few people with the gospel, and equip and return them (Eph 4:11-12) to reach their families, friends, and acquaintances?”
Due to the landscape of post-Christendom in North America, church planters now find themselves as essentially missionaries as they plant the gospel in their mission field. To assist the planter-missionary in locating a “person of peace,” Payne encourages people to use the P.A.W. approach: Pray, Act, Watch.
Payne again:
Though this paradigm is not a linear model–but rather all three aspects, at times, are happening simultaneously–for the sake of explanation, I will address each aspect individually.
Read Payne’s description of the P.A.W. approach here.
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