Waking Up in Jerez, Spain

[Composed by John Stewart]

“Evangelism”—The practice of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ
“Evangelist”—A person who proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ
 
As the sun rose this morning over the Andalusian Hills, after a good night’s sleep from a long journey, we are feeling refreshed and blessed to be in Spain to speak at a conference on evangelism.
 
Our friend Tim Robnett, who spent years with well-known evangelist Luis Palau (known as “the South American Billy Graham”), organized the conference and invited Laurie and me to speak. The conference consists of European and American evangelists, with people coming from as far away as Poland.
 
For us, this will be not only a time to teach and train Christian leaders, but to also find out about other ministries and see how we can come along side them, especially to help them reach university students and professionals with the Gospel. We also look forward to learning from their experiences so that we can develop the most effective methods of promoting an intelligent Christian faith.
 
Laurie and I, as lawyers with specialized training in Christian Apologetics (“presenting reasons why Christianity is true”), engage in evangelism, because apologetics is a species of evangelism. Some evangelists focus on reaching a person’s heart, explaining how we all fall short of the glory of God, yet how Jesus died for us so that by trusting in Him we are given eternal life. We focus on explaining why Christianity is true, providing evidence for the reliability of the Gospel accounts, especially evidence that Jesus rose from the dead as a miracle confirming his claim to be the only way to God (John 14:6).
 
We hope this will be a rewarding time of making new friends, and encouraging those who are on the front lines to reaching unbelievers with the Gospel. Please pray that those attending will become better equipped to carry out their calling, and that Laurie and I will be refreshed in the focus of our calling.
 
For me (John) when we get back to the U.S., it will be a quick turn-around, because on November 27 I head to Africa, with conferences in Burundi and Tanzania. We will give you more details of this mission trip shortly

Meanwhile we ask for your prayers for our time in Spain, but also for wisdom in pursuing a tremendous new ministry opportunity that has opened up. At this point we cannot provide any details, but suffice to say that the Lord appears to be leading us in a direction that will require some major and exciting changes.

Thank you for your interest in Intelligent Faith, and both your prayer and financial support that keeps us going.