(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

All right, before we get started in the sermon, I apologize for the bulletins not being accurate on the inside of the bulletin. I didn't realize that mine was fine, the one that I was using up here. I found one more that actually was accurate on the inside, so I was having some printer problems at home. Hopefully those are all going to be resolved now, but you'll notice it's from all the information that you have, at least most people I think, it's from last year, so if you're wondering why it says Psalm 30 for the memory passage and things like that, that's why. So I accidentally, it didn't do the dual-sided when I printed the right one, so then when I went to print the other, I'm not going to go into all the details on it, I reused the front page from the year prior, and that's how that happened. But I'll be bringing back updated bulletins this afternoon, so you can keep your prayer request inserts and you can toss the bulletin that you have. I'm going to be bringing in accurate ones this afternoon if you're going to be back here this afternoon, so I apologize for that. All right, Matthew chapter 28, now last week I preached a sermon on soul winning and it was why we go out two by two, and this week I'm going to preach another sermon on soul winning, and it has to do with following up with converts, and I've had people ask me about this already recently, and I've had these plans, and I get busy, and I don't really do everything, but this one's really, really important, so I thank you for the people that have been asking me about this, because it is very important, I want to go over this, and we haven't really had an official plan, I guess you can say, on follow-up with people after they get saved, and we're going to start doing that, we're going to start instituting a new method for following up with people, and it's going to be still fluid, I guess you can say, you're going to have to apply it to yourself and use the tools I'm going to provide for you as you see fit, but before I get into all these, I'm going to go through all the details at the end of the sermon and just kind of go over the specifics and exactly how we're going to accomplish this, but I just want to use this morning to go over biblically why we should be following up with people, investing in people, more than just preaching the gospel unto them, we really ought to be doing more, and this is an area I think we could definitely use some improvement on, and we're going to look at some scriptural evidence for this, obviously I think it probably already should make sense to you, and there's a million verses that we could go to in general, but we're going to look at some specifically, starting off with Matthew 28, of course at the very end of the passage, this is what's known as a great commission, right, this is after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he gives his command unto the disciples, and he says in verse 19, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo I am with you all the way, even unto the end of the world, amen. So obviously, and in Mark 16 it talks about preach the gospel to every creature, this is something that we're supposed to be doing, we're supposed to be going out and preaching the gospel, but you know, it doesn't just stop at getting people saved, because part of this also is baptizing, right, we need people to be baptized in the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Ghost, and we need to teach them and teach them all things whatsoever I have commanded you, so these things all ought to be happening as the great commission or the great commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples to go forth and do, now the way that we do these things also isn't necessarily done at the individual level every single step of the way, like you're not going out and getting someone saved and just baptizing them right in the spot and then just teaching them at their house, right, that's not the way that we're conducting that business. Now the command is to go forward and to end up doing all these things and accomplishing all these things, but how we do that, obviously there's a method for that, and I'm not going to get into the baptism thing, but I believe that there are certain people who are deemed to be baptizing people, not just your average person, and that's a whole other sermon in and of itself, and then also the teaching and the discipling, you know, the main portion of that is going to be done here at church, because the vast majority of the teaching is going to be coming from the preacher who's preaching God's word and doing that teaching. Now it doesn't mean that you shouldn't or couldn't also be working with people individually and kind of talking about the Bible, but in general, most of the teaching is going to come from individual Bible reading as well as stuff with your family and then coming to church and getting teaching here as well. So I just wanted to point out, though, in Matthew 28, it's more than just soul winning, right, and there's more to it than just soul winning, and as you've seen from even just from our statistics, you know, our baptism numbers isn't very high, and I'd really like to start seeing more converts coming and joining and being discipled in our church. Now, we've got a lot of things to struggle against, but we could be doing more. I definitely think we could be doing more. Turn, if you will, to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, because what we're doing when we're preaching to gospel people, obviously, look, the most important thing, the number one thing is making sure that souls don't go to hell, hands down, right? That is the most important thing. So I'm not one of these people that, you know, that expression where it's like, oh, well, you're just leaving a baby to then just die or whatever, like you have this new birth but then you're just going to die. Look, that new birth is not going to hell, ever. So if you never do any discipleship but you're winning people to Christ, you're definitely doing a lot, okay? So that is the priority, number one, is getting people saved. But we don't want to neglect the discipleship and baptism and everything else. We want to do those things, too. But if you're going to put a priority on things, hey, whether or not a person's soul is going to heaven or hell is the most critical thing, absolutely, without doubt. However, why don't we add to that? Because if all we ever did was just preach the gospel and get people saved and we never focused on getting people baptized and getting them to be disciples, then how are we ever really going to grow and multiply and reproduce? If we're not training new soul owners, if we're not training more people to go out and do our work, we're only going to be limited in our scope of what we're able to accomplish to just the numbers we have right now. We need to be able to bring more people in and train them and disciple them and get them doing what we're doing right now. I mean, it just makes sense, right? We've got to go through the whole process. And part of that's going to be like, okay, great, you're saved. Now we've got to get you baptized, right? Get baptized and start coming to church and start getting trained and discipled. Ultimately, ideally, that's the way things would go. Ideally, every salvation would result in a person going, okay, great, now I want to live for God because he saved me. And come in and get baptized, great, I'm excited to get baptized and start coming to church and start learning and growing. That would be ideal. Now we don't see that happening a lot. And a lot of that has to do, I believe, just with our culture in general. There's a lot of reasons for that. And I'm not going to get into all the different reasons for that. So there's things that we're fighting against. But we can do more. We can do more. Because doing nothing and doing something, there's going to be a big difference there, I think, in the results just by going from not really doing anything to ever follow up at all with someone who gets saved and actually trying to do something. But what I want to point out in 1 Thessalonians 2, we're going to read through this passage a little bit, is trying to get the spirit and the attitude and the mindset that the disciples had, that we see in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, towards people who are lost, primarily first of all and foremost in giving the gospel. But they didn't stop at giving the gospel. You notice when we read through the New Testament, it's not just a bunch of people getting saved. It's churches being established. They're going forward and doing a great work. And it's way more than just salvations. They're not going into all these foreign countries and only just getting people saved and then nothing else. Churches are being started. They're getting planted all over the place. And then they go back and they confirm the churches. And this is the work and the ministry that's actually being done. They're making converts and then discipling them and spawning off these brand new churches. And this doesn't happen overnight, obviously. This happens over decades. And we read a lot of the work that's done in a short period of time when we do our Bible reading, but it still spans many, many, many, many, many years. This isn't something that just happens real quick. But let's read this, because it's important to get our hearts and our minds right to be the most biblical. And I think once we have that part done, then doing the rest of the work that we might be lacking in right now is going to be easy to do if we have our hearts and minds in the right place. So look at verse number one. The Bible says, For yourselves, brethren, know our entrance in unto you that it was not in vain. But even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. Now you're going to notice as we continue through this. The emphasis is on the gospel and where the emphasis should be. On the gospel. He's saying, you know our entrance in, so when we first came unto you, you know how we were. You know that we were shamefully entreated at Philipp, either speaking to people in Thessalonica right now, but you're saying, we left this place and we were being shamed and they weren't treating us well at all. And then we came here, he says, but we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. There was a lot of people fighting and trying to hold them back for preaching, but they did it anyways. So you know how we came to you, it wasn't necessarily easy, you had a lot of obstacles, but we were still here doing it. And we may face some obstacles, you may face obstacles from people trying to prevent you from going soul winning when you're out there preaching the gospel, whether it be some management company or whether it just be neighbors or other people trying to stop what you're doing. There may be some contention, but we need to be bold in our God to speak the gospel and to continue and to let people see that. Verse 3 says, for our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in godliness. We're not being sneaky about this, we're not trying to be, you know, use guile and trick you into doing anything, we're not trying to sell you anything, you know, we're not trying to make merchandise of you, but we're coming to you honestly and openly and preaching the truth and preaching light. He says, but as we were allowed of God, verse 4, to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God which trieth our hearts. For neither at any time used we flattering words as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness, God is witness, nor of men sought we glory, neither of you nor yet of others, when we might have been burdensome as the apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children. So the way that they approached the people of Thessalonica, he's saying, you know what, we were gentle with you. The way that a nurse is with the children that she's nursing, hey, that's how we're treating you, we're treating you as these new converts, we're treating you as new believers, you're hearing the word of God, you know, hey, it took us some boldness and contentions and everything to get to you, but now we're going to deal with you gently and lightly, but caring for you. And that says in verse 8, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, look at this, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were dear unto us. This is that attitude of loving people to the extent to where it goes even beyond not just giving you the gospel, because there's love in giving people the gospel, right? We go out and we love people by warning them of hell, by trying to show them the good news, the free gift, salvation, eternal life, hey, it's available to you. That takes some love, you know, to love other people, to go out and take time out of your day and make your sacrifices and go forth, and especially go forward with contentions and to deal with everything that goes along with that, but it doesn't stop there. We ought to have a heart and an attitude that goes beyond just preaching the gospel, but loving people so much that we're willing to impart our own souls also, because you're dear, because you're precious, because you're precious in the sight of God, hey, we're willing to give of ourselves and to give of our own souls unto you. This is the attitude that they had to the people in Thessalonica. It didn't stop with just giving them the gospel. They didn't just go over there and say, great, we had a bunch of people saved, and that's it. They said, no, we want to help these people, we love these people, so it's not just, you know, we didn't just want to give you the gospel, but we really want to see you succeed. We really want to see you grow. We want to see you grow in God. We want to see you get taught and trained, and we ought to have this type of a heart and this type of a vision for every person that we lead to Christ. You want to see that person grow. You want to see them succeed. You want to see them get planted. You want to see them get rooted up. You want to see a man, wherever they're at in their life, if you could just come to church, get baptized, start growing, start reading your Bible, man, it's exciting the changes that can happen in a person's life. Obviously it starts with that eternal change, that's a huge change, that changes the direction of eternity forever, but how about then also being able to steer the course of their life to be one of blessing of God in this lifetime, and one where they can rack up some more rewards in heaven, and just lead a better life here by getting plugged into church, and us knowing that, the soul winners here, we know this. We know this. It's one of the reasons why we go out and preach the gospel anyways. We know that's true. We know God's good. We know His laws, right? We know it's way better to obey God than to disobey Him, so let's try to impart that on other people as well. And let's consider them and go, man, you know, this person, they may have a lot of problems in their life, but you know, if they come to church, they can start actually living a much better life, a cleaner life, a life that's pleasing unto the Lord, amen. But you don't have that desire unless people are dear unto you, right, if you actually care about them. Just look at that person and go, man, praise God, you're saved, but come to church now. That's just the beginning. And even when we're talking to people, let's treat it as this is just the beginning. Try to make that point with people. You're just starting your eternal life now. You may be 50 years old, but you got saved today. Now is the beginning of the rest of eternity for you, and your destination is secure, but now it's, you know, you love God, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Verse 9 says, for you remember, brethren, our labor and travail for laboring night and day because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preach unto you the gospel of God. Again, the gospel is the main focus, but if you notice from verse 8, it wasn't just the gospel either. Like, they care about them so much that they're trying to do everything they can, and even just indicative of the labor and travail. Now, it's going to be a lot of work, and what I'm going to be asking you today is more work. It's more work for you to do because you know what we're not going to do? We're not going to replace soul winning with the follow-up at all. We're going to maintain the soul winning and then add to it, and if you say, well, I can't add to it, well, then keep going soul winning, but I would say make the time and check your heart because I think everybody has the time to do it. You do. You have the time. What do you do with the time? Everyone has decisions to make. We all have the same amount of time in a day. We all have obligations to meet, and we all have areas of time that you can cut. Everybody does. And the Bible talks about people who make the sacrifices for Jesus. Even going as close to home as your home, your family. The Bible says that no one has left fathers or mothers or sisters or brothers or wives or children for my sake in the gospel, but they should be added unto them, brothers and sisters in houses and all this stuff with tribulations in this world. That commitment, that desire, hey, God's going to bless you for that. But if we look at our life, you probably don't even need to bring it to that level of having to cut out family time in order to do this. I bet there's other things that you have time that you do that you would be able to say, yeah, I could shave off some of that time. I could shave off some of the internet time. I could shave off some of the whatever entertainment time. I could do some of this, some of that to try to get some of this work done. I mean, honestly, what I'm presenting to you and what I'm going to be presenting, it's not going to be very much time at all. It's not going to be a lot of your time, and it's going to be up to you how much time you invest in it, ultimately. Just like anything. Just like it's up to you how much time you invest in soul winning. Just like it's up to you how much time you invest in reading your Bible and praying and everything else that we know we're supposed to be doing, it's up to you. I'm not even putting any recommendations on the amount of time you really invest, but I'm going to help give you some tools that we'll go over in just a minute here now. I want to finish off reading 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 10 says, you are witnesses and God also all holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe as you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father doth his children. Exhorting, comforting, you know what those things mean, right? You're encouraging, trying to get people motivated. And this is where the follow up is going to come in. We got them saved, now let's encourage them, let's comfort them, let's try to get them built up to be able to say, hey, you want to come to church? And then charge every one of you, and sometimes you're going to let people know, hey, you really ought to be in church. We're going to try to encourage, we're going to try to be tactful, but then with some people you're going to need to also just bring up the fact that the Bible says it's a sin not to be in church. And there's different ways of dealing with people and there's different types of people and people respond differently to different types of persuasion because obviously that's what we're doing. We want to persuade people to get right with God after they're saved, we want to persuade people to come to church, we want to persuade people to get baptized, we want to persuade people to do the right thing. And we're bringing forth the light, we're bringing forth the word of God, so yeah, we're going to try to persuade people and there's nothing wrong or bad about that either. And I try to be as upfront as possible with people too saying, hey, sometimes I'm preaching the gospel to someone, look, I'm going to tell you right off the bat, I don't believe what you believe. I'm not going to try to trick you here at all, I just want to tell you why I believe this and why I believe that's wrong because we're not trying to use guile or deceit or be tricky. I was telling Brother Peter about a guy I gave the gospel to yesterday that came over to my house and he gave the wrong answers but then after I had gone through the whole gospel with him he said, oh yeah, I believe that. And I was like, you know, but when I started talking to you, you said this and that, you know. And he said, he's like, I thought you were just trying to trip me up and like ask me some trick questions. Now it still doesn't make any sense, right, like you still gave the wrong answer. But with some people there's only so much you can do. But my point is this, there are a lot of people out there that do try to get gotchas and put you in trick situations. I don't try to do that with people. I said, look, I wasn't trying to do that with you. And obviously he knew that later on. He said, oh yeah, as you started talking I realized that, you know, you weren't doing that. But there are plenty of people out there that do use guile and do try to set traps for people and get them to say something. We don't need to do that. And you know what, if you do that, like don't try to get people caught in a trap where you can go back and be like, huh, see, what you said, you know. We're not setting a trap. We want to know what they believe. And if they say something different, like this person that I said, well, I mean, you said you did obey the Ten Commandments, right. So if someone's saying that, that's not a gotcha. I was just asking what you thought you had to do. We're not trapping anyone at all. But you know what I mean, I hope you know what I mean, of people who do kind of lead people down the wrong path just to set a trap for them to get a gotcha later. We don't want to do that. I mean, it's not effective. We're not trying to use guile, just be upfront with everything. If they say, yeah, you know what, you believe it, I don't believe it's like that. I think it's actually easier than that. And that's why I told this guy. I said, you know what, I think it's a lot easier than what you just said. Because what you said there, I don't agree with that. But that's how we need to be dealing with people. But then we're comforting, we're exhorting, and then charging them and letting them know, hey, these are commands. You know, baptism's a command. And you show them where they commanded people to be baptized. Going to church is a command. We know in Hebrews 10 that we're not supposed to be forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a matter of some is. And then verse 12 says that you would walk worthy of God who hath called you unto his kingdom in glory. See, that's the goal. We want people to walk worthy of God. He's called you. You've answered that call. You put your trust in Jesus. Now you need to start walking worthy of that and exhorting people, encouraging them. That's part of the process, and it ought to be part of the process. Turn if you would to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. And I want to emphasize that in order to do this, it may not even require a whole lot of effort. Because sometimes even just a little effort can go a really long way. One phone call may be even enough to make the difference to let people know, wow, this person actually cares about me. And that can make a difference. And the Bible teaches us in Jude, at the end of Jude verse 22, the Bible says, and of some have compassion making a difference. The way you reach people sometimes they're required to have compassion. Maybe they tell you something when you're given a gospel to them before they get saved. They just had a death in the family. That happens sometimes. We talk to people that are just experiencing a death, or they just lost their job, or someone's sick, or they're going through some type of trouble. And I think God leads us to people like that oftentimes, because they're going to be more receptive to hearing the word of God. But then you can have compassion on them and make a difference in their life. Contact them again. Hey, how are you doing? I know you just had this death in the family. Are you OK? And look, I'm not saying these things as a gimmick just to get people in the church. So don't take it as such. We ought to genuinely care about those people. But I understand how this world works, and I understand how busy we all are. It's easy to go out soul winning, and in the moment, man, you really do care about that person. And you know it's the same reason why in the moment they really do care about the things of God. And when they say, oh man, I'm going to come to church next week, I believe that. And I believe most people are sincere when they say that to you. And how often do you actually see them show up? Why? Because in between, a lot of things happen, and a lot of people get busy. And the way to understand that is, if you had someone saved last week or two weeks ago, why don't you go back and think about that? How many times did you even think about that person after that day? Just think to yourself, how often did you think about that person or those people? Did they ever cross your mind even one more time after that day? If not, they should. Not they should. And this is part of training ourselves to have the right heart towards the people that we win to Christ. Now I'm not a big fan of wasting time, which is why we're going to do things in a particular method. But we do need to invest time. And sometimes when you invest time, it ends up being a waste. That just happens. That happens no matter what you do. You invest time and resources into different things. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. But here's the thing. The success of somebody coming to church and getting plugged in is huge. That is huge. It's almost as big, or could be potentially as big or bigger. It's hard to put these on the same playing field, but someone getting saved is huge. Their eternity has changed. But think about someone becoming a soul winner. How big is that? That's why you see what I mean. Obviously, someone's eternal destination, it's kind of like, well, how do you get more important than that? But what about someone who then can lead 1,000 people to Christ in their lifetime? That's pretty important. So this is what we're dealing with here. This is the type of attitude that, while, yes, absolutely getting people saved is the primary thing, it's the most important thing, trying to get people encouraged and in church and motivated and get them to walk in the Spirit and come to church and get baptized. Very important. Very important. How do you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 9, look at verse number 19, and again, this goes along with that same mindset that we saw in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. Verse 19 of 1 Corinthians chapter 9, the Bible reads, for though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all that I might gain the more. This is the mindset. You say, you know what? I'm free from all men. I mean, no one has control or mastery over me, but I'm making myself a servant unto all that I might gain the more. I'm going to be humble, and this is, again, the attitude of when you care for someone and you want to be able to impart even your own soul unto them, you could contact people, hey, is there anything I can do for you? What can we do to help you out? And I've seen this in practice. You know what I see in practice? It really goes a long way. And I've experienced this too. So having a mindset of being a servant unto all means you lead someone to Christ, but they don't have any transportation. You know, I'll pick you up and take you to church. You give me a call, or better yet, I'll call you, and if you want to come, I'll pick you up. And you know we do that. We've done that in the past. We do that here. And we ought to have that mindset of being servant that we might gain the more. And we've had people come and go that we've, I mean, we've had other people, Brother Peter helped out a lot. I don't want to go through all this. There's a lot of people here. A lot of people here have already invested in other people and bring them, and you know what? That's going to take up some of your time to do that, but it's worth the investment. I mean, you can see the growth in people, and it is worth. I mean, if it's just a matter of me taking an extra 10 minutes to pick somebody up or 15 minutes or 20 minutes, but they're now going to be coming to church regularly, and their life is changing, and they're making different decisions in their life based on what they're hearing from the Word of God, and their life is starting to take a new direction, it's worth the 10, 20 minutes that it takes to do that little bit of saying, well, hey, I have a vehicle after observation. You don't. I'll help you out, and I'll be a servant unto you. I'll be your chauffeur. I'll come pick you up. It's worth it. Now I know it's not always possible, so I'm not trying to ask you to do things that are just kind of beyond your capabilities, but we've got a whole church of people here. And I think we can probably attain what we want to attain here, but let's keep reading here in 1 Corinthians 9, because that just sets off the pace for the rest of this passage. Verse 20 says, and unto the Jews I became as a Jew that I might gain the Jews. To them that are under the laws, under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without laws, without law, being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ, that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak. I have made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you. Now again, the context, this is referring to the gospel and trying to get people saved, but this can also be applied to still having that same level of care to saying, hey, I'm going to be a servant or a minister for this person so that they can succeed. I mean, how many times in the Bible do we have to see this, of having that mindset of putting others, of esteeming others better than yourself? Just like John the Baptist said, hey, he must increase and I must decrease. And having this concept, hey, we're pointing people to Christ, let's try to help them succeed. And you know who's greatest in heaven? Is the one that's the servant, that's the minister of all. Which is why when Jesus came, he didn't came to rule and reign and have people minister unto him, but he came to minister. We can go on and on and on about this concept and this mindset in the scripture, but we need to put it into practice. And let's put it into practice with people who are brand new children of God. Let's care about them. And there's multiple ways that we can do this. Now, before we even get into that, I'm almost done, turn if you want to Luke chapter 17. There is a certain reality that we have to deal with. So as with everything, we do what's right because it's right. We should have our heart right. Now, we can't just always let the results dictate what's right and what we ought to do. Now, we don't always ignore the results, right, because if we're way off base on something and this is just never working, nothing is ever happening, we may need to take a look at what we're doing. Just like with preaching the gospel, right? We know that God's word doesn't return unto him void. We know that he that goeth forth, weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. We know that that's true. So we know that if you're going out and preaching the gospel enough, it may be rough areas, it may be rough time, but you're going to see people get saved. Because the word of God, that's the power of God unto salvation. So it's not in us, it's in God's word. And if you're just never seeing anyone saved, then you're probably doing something wrong. And I'm going to say the same thing with getting some disciples and encouraging people. If you're never seeing anybody being able to come, then we're probably doing something wrong. So if we're doing something wrong, now, but that being said, it doesn't mean that, oh man, we're going to do this and now our church is going to double because we're going to have all these people coming in church. Look, I've been doing this for a long time. That's still not going to be the case. But if you put nothing out there, you're going to get nothing in return. That's guaranteed. I mean, that's, you know, if you just hope for the person to come to church, we know what the results of that are. Small. Now, some people may come and they do, but it's small. I think we do a better job. But look at Luke 17 verse 11, the Bible reads, and it came to pass as he went to Jerusalem that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers which stood afar off, and they lifted up their voices and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go, show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and with a loud voice glorified God and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks, and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed, but where are the nine? There are not found that return to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. Now obviously this passage isn't talking about follow-up, but what it does demonstrate is that when people are healed, you would say, oh man, they were all healed. They all, just like Jesus said, hey, where's the rest of them? Weren't there ten that were healed? Of course, they all should return and be like, thank you, I was a leper and now I'm cleansed. I mean, I'm whole. That was a horrible disease, and I mean, thank you. And people would say, wouldn't that be what you would expect? It is what you would expect. But is that the reality? No, that's not always the way people are. But the important truth out of this, and this is what people who like to say, oh, you say you're getting all these people saved, they're not really getting saved because they're not coming to church, they're not doing this. That doesn't mean they're not saved. Just like these people, they were cleansed. Jesus said that they were, Jesus cleansed them. God's word says that they were cleansed. And yet, Jesus' moral is like, well, where are the rest of them? Because it's only right that they should come back. Just like when people get saved at the door, hey, they should be coming to church. They should be getting baptized. They should be doing all those things. They should be devoting their life unto Christ completely because of what he did for them. Of course. You know, that would be our reasonable service based on what God did for us. But is that what happens? No. It's not right that that's what happens, but that's the reality. So we also just need to keep this in mind so that we don't get discouraged. Because we're going to be putting forth effort. We're going to be trying to do more to help people come to church. But they're not all going to come. They're not all going to get plugged in. It's not all going to happen. But you know what? It will sometimes. And if we're doing things right, we'll start to see better results than we currently are. Set your expectations appropriately. Now when I say that too, don't have a bad attitude about it. You know, I've brought this up before too. And just like you guys hear it all the time, I brought up earlier in the sermon, you know, people could get excited. Oh man, I'm going to go to church next week. This sounds great. I'm so happy. But things happen. And so when I hear people say that, I'm always hopeful, right? I always pray. I pray, God, work in this person's heart. Don't let any obstacles come up. Please allow them to be able to come. Please remind them, you know, stir up their spirit with the Holy Spirit to be reminded about their salvation and to come to church. And these are the things we ought to be praying for people to do. But I'm not surprised when they don't come either just because of experience. It's not because I'm not, you know, wanting them to or even expecting them to. Everyone that says they're going to come, I'm expecting them to come. But at the same time, I know what reality is like, that they, you know, if we just look at statistics, they probably won't. So we don't want to get down on that if we understand the reality. I mean, even Jesus healed 10 lepers, and only one came back to even give him thanks. And even that person that came back and gave him thanks, it doesn't say that he just started following him now and became a disciple, but at least he gave him thanks. We need to set our expectations appropriately. Second Corinthians chapter 12 is the last place I'm going to turn to, and then we're going to go over a little bit more of the details and the practicality of what we're going to do. Second Corinthians 12, verse 14, the Bible reads, behold, the third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not be burdensome to you, for I seek not yours, but you. You see, I don't seek your wealth, I don't seek your stuff, I seek you, for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children. And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you. Again, that same mindset from the Apostle Paul, hey, I'll very gladly spend and be spent for you, because I care about you, because you're dear unto me. I'm going to impart my own soul unto you. I love you. I care about you. I want to see you grow, and I want to see you develop and become fruitful in the Lord. But look what he says here, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. And this is just another fact. Sometimes people are going to walk all over you. Sometimes people are going to take advantage of you. Sometimes people are going to stab you in the back. But that doesn't change that we still do what's right. It may be disappointing, and it may hurt, and it may become discouraging, but try not to let it become discouraging. Just have courage in the Lord and know that you're doing what's right. And those things are going to happen. And when you put yourself out there, yeah, people will take advantage of you. I've had it happen before. You try to help people financially, you try to help people in other ways, you try to spend time and invest time, and then they just end up walking all over you or trying to take advantage of you or just completely ditching you or using you. And I'm just going to say, you know what, that's part of the Christian life. But not everybody is going to do that to you, so don't let one person who is doing things like that prevent you from trying to help others, because not everybody is going to be like that. Just like people who have a bad experience in a church, don't be like that person who just never wants to go to any church again, because they had a bad experience in a church. You have a bad experience trying to help somebody and bend over backwards and try to do something for them, don't just make that never want to do anything for anybody ever again. Be real with the expectations, but again, we need to have the right heart and the right mindset because if we start investing in people, which the people are what matters, the souls matter, the investment matters, we'll see a return on that, and I believe as a church we will. And you're not going to see it overnight and it's not just going to be, like I said, all of a sudden, oh man, there's all these people now, no, it's not going to be the way it works. But over time and over the years we should start to see, hey, this is doing more, we're picking up more, we're doing better than we were before, isn't that what we're trying to do? Shouldn't we always be trying to do better? I mean, I know that's the plan that I have with the challenges that we do. I want to make you better. I want to make myself better. Believe me, I don't think that just I'm perfect in all these areas. A lot of the things that I come up with I want to improve on. I want to improve on personally, so I make it a challenge for everybody. I want to improve on doing more soul winning. I want to preach the gospel to more people, and you know what motivates me? Having a challenge and having a commitment saying, you know what, I'm going to do this because if I didn't have that there I probably wouldn't. If I didn't have the soul winning times I probably wouldn't go. I need that. That's why I set the times, I say this is where I'm going and this is what I'm going to do, and you know what, if it helps me then hopefully it can help you too. So I think about these things just as much for you as for me. And this is something that honestly I used to do years ago a lot more consistently and a lot more regularly, and it's just kind of fallen by the wayside, and I could give you excuse after excuse as to why it hasn't been started before then, but there's no excuse needed because it just hasn't been happening and it's going to start happening now. So I'm going to forget those things which are behind and reach forward onto those things that are before. And as a church hopefully we can all work on this and improve, and what you have today is just the first iteration, and we're going to improve on this. And honestly this whole design, I copied this. I didn't come up with this on my own. I got this from Verity Baptist Church, Pastor Jimenez. It's a great design. I liked it, so I took it. I asked him to send me the file, and this was years ago. I liked that he did this and I liked that he had this because I didn't have this before and I think this is a great tool. Now we will end up modifying this a little bit because I wanted to have this ready to go today and I couldn't wait to get this perfect because I just wanted to get the ball rolling. So I didn't even change it from what it was, so we're going to go over this and I'll end up modifying this to better suit our needs for where we're at and what we're doing, but we've got something. Okay, we've got something. And this is something to take with you, and we've got pens in the foyer because this is a physical little index card we're going to take with you and you should all have one. If you don't, we can get one to you, but they were given to you when you came in this morning and it's two-sided, and we're going to start looking at the new believer follow-up card side that has name, address, city, state, you know, all that stuff, okay? So here's how we're going to do this. When you get somebody saved, right, or if you run into someone that is saved but maybe they don't have a church or someone who's interested in coming to a church that's saved. But this is designed mostly for new converts. That's what it's designed for. We're going to try to use it for that. Okay, look, if you want to broaden your follow-up other than what I'm saying, please be my guest and do so, okay? I just want to get some minimum going of work we can do. Now, after you talk to someone, and this is going to be hard to do, and I understand you may forget to do this because if it's not part of your normal routine, it's easy to go, oh, man, I forgot, I wanted to talk to him about this. Don't worry about it, but just try to keep to remember this next time to add this. And if you have these with you, maybe it'll, you know, put it somewhere where you're going to remember, oh, yeah, I need to bring this up. Maybe slide it in your Bible so that it reminds you, you see it when you're giving the gospel to someone, you're opening up and turn to verse, oh, yeah, I need to, if they get saved, I need to go over this with them. Okay, so the first thing that we're going to do, though, because we don't want to waste our time. Someone gets saved. One of the questions that you should ask them, the very first question is, so do you think you'd be interested in coming to our church? If they say, no, I already have a church, I'm not really interested in going to your church, okay. I would consider that to be kind of a waste of your time if they're telling you right then that they're not even interested in coming to church, why are you going to keep following up with them then? Because we don't want to waste our time. Just like we do when we go out and preach the gospel, if people don't want to hear the gospel, we're not just going to sit there and try to cram it down their throats. Okay, they're not interested, we're going to move on. It's the same way with this. So if they say, yes, I would like to come, okay, and look, you're going to have to use your own discernment on people as well. That's going to be part of this. And try to judge a person's genuine interest. Sometimes people are also just being polite. But give people a benefit of the doubt, too. Don't assume that people are lying. Use your discernment. But the next question is going to be, okay, well, would you be okay with giving me some of your information so that I can follow up with you before church next week? Or whatever, right? Just say, is that okay with you? Can I get your name and your phone? And look, there's name, address, city, zip, phone, all this stuff on here. You don't have to fill all this stuff out. Now there's a purpose for this, and we're going to get over to it on the other side. But even just a start, if you just got their phone number, and you know what, you can put their email address on here, too. That's not on here, but you could use that in the notes. Okay, and this is one of the things I wanted to modify. Like I said, it was getting late, and I just wanted to have this ready to go. We're rolling with it. Okay, I'm going to start making some changes, but we're going with what we got right now. And I've got this big, this is what I'm going off of right now. You should have one that looks just like this, just smaller. So try to get their contact information. And then you put the date on here of your first contact, so that you can have these organized for yourself at home. Because the plan here is that you are going to follow up with your converts. We're not going to have someone else doing all the follow up. Now maybe in the future we will have some people that can help with that. But for right now, you know, we all are going to be responsible for following up with our own converts. So at the very least, you're going to get a phone number. Now on the back, there's different pieces of information here. So obviously if they get saved that day, you're going to put down the date that they got saved. And the next three sections in these boxes, there's phone calls, handwritten notes, and personal visits. These are three different ways to follow up with people. Okay? And you're going to see some instructions on here. Again, that was copied. So use that as a guide, but it doesn't have to be some hard, fast rule for you. But these are designed now to write dates. So if you blank, splice, slide, these are just dates. Okay? So you're going to put in the dates of when you contacted that person, so you know for yourself. So if you're going to contact them, you don't want to bombard them, but you need to also remember, did I already, did I call them? I don't know. I don't remember. Oh, yeah, I did. You can, you know, this is going to be that method of tracking for you to know, oh, yeah, I did. I called them, well, it's been like, it's been like three weeks, because sometimes you may want to go back through these cards and revisit them and go, you know what? I only called this person once, and they didn't even answer. I'm going to try calling them again. Okay? It's a good thing to do. You can write, you know, handwritten notes, and if you have their mailing address, you can mail them something. Obviously if you're, if in the course of conversation, you're talking about something else, like some document, you know, something that, a documentary you think would be helpful for them, or some other information, you can mail that to them, or email them. Handwritten notes can also be an email, right? You can send them links, you can, you know, do things like that to follow up, or a personal visit. Now, personal visits, obviously, if people are driving like really far away, you know, people who live in South Carolina, and we're doing soul winning here in Atlanta, you're probably not going to be doing the personal visits. And I don't think that you should just sacrifice the soul winning time that we devote here to going and doing personal visits. Unless you have already established that they're going to be home, and there's a good reason to go and visit that person, but you've already made contact with them, then I would say, yeah, you know what? That could make sense to do that. But not just forsake all the soul winning, but at least maybe follow up there, and then say, okay, well, I'm going to do some other soul winning around here, and kind of kill two birds with one stone. But here's what doesn't work very well, and I've done this before, is the unannounced personal visits. It just doesn't work very well. Now, I can still maybe even do that occasionally. If you're still soul winning in the same area, it could make sense to go follow up with somebody that say, like, say we're doing an apartment complex, it's real big, and you got someone saved last week, and we're going back to the same place, you know, you know what? I'm going to go and just see if they're home. Hey, how's it going? How have you been? You know, we're having a service tonight, are you interested in coming to church? You know, we're here, I can give you a ride to church when we go back. Just something real friendly and real nice, right? That would make a lot of sense. But in general, what I've found is that, like, because I used to set times to go and follow up with people outside of soul winning, and nine times out of 10, they're just not even home. And a lot of times when they are home, it's interesting, but it's just kind of like that excitement that they had when you first talked to them and they got saved, it's just kind of like, what are you doing here, you know, just like, yeah, okay, well, thanks, bye, you know, just, that stuff happens, okay, so don't get discouraged by it. But that's why I don't like just doing these impromptu personal visits. I think that, because that ends up also costing you the most amount of time. So when we're going through this, you know, we're going to keep this in mind, and then did you send a new believers packet? We don't have those yet. I like them, we don't have them. So that's always just going to be a no, you know, I can put a date there, so that line doesn't even apply to what we're doing right now. And then at the bottom of the instructions, number one, absolutely, you ought to do this. Number one is pray for your new convert every day for one week or during the time in which you're actively following up with them. Keep them in your mind and your prayers, okay, and pray that God will allow, like I was saying earlier, you know, that there won't be any stumbling blocks, that they'll be able to come to church, that they won't get resistance from other family members just to help get them grounded and founded and settled, you know, early on. Pray for them. Number two says attempt to fill in each one of the above boxes at least once before moving on or giving up, right? So and again, this one, the personal visits, I would still put that as a user discretion on that. The phone calls is the number one priority because that requires the least amount of time and will help you to gauge any extra level of interest that they're going to have. So the phone call should be, I think, the number one means of communication because anybody can do that regardless of where you live, right, and you'll be able to get a better judge after talking to them like a second time after they're saved to see where they're at really. Because they'll also, if they were being polite with you at the door, on the phone you're not face to face, so if they really weren't interested, then they'll probably tell you on the phone. And that's okay. Obviously we want them to come and everything else, but again, use that, and that's what number three is, use that discretion and discernment in assessing their interest in coming to church because we don't want to be pestering people. That's the last thing I want to do. I don't want to be out there badgering people, pestering people because then we're wasting our time and their time and it's just not going to go well, right? When they say they're not interested, leave them alone, leave them alone. But we do want to at least put forward that next step. And this is a way, this is a means to help you keep things organized, and then if you get super busy one week and you're like, man, like you just didn't have the time to make the phone calls or whatever, you've got the card, follow up on the next week. But here's what I recommend on following up with the phone calls. I recommend calling on Saturdays, one, it's the most likelihood that they're going to be able to answer, and two, it's the day before Sunday. It also gives you a reason to call. So if you're wondering and saying, what do I say, or I'm going to call this person, what do I say? Like, hey, this is so-and-so from Strong Old Baptist Church. I talked to you last week, I came to your door, do you remember when I came there? And you'd said before that you might be interested in coming to church, so I just wanted to remind you that we've got church tomorrow and it's at 1030. Do you think you might want to come, can I give you a ride, is there anything I can do for you? And it also gives you an opportunity to say, like, if there's any special events coming up, hey, I just wanted to let you know we're having our anniversary weekend, there's going to be free food, there's going to be a bounce house, there's going to be this, you know. And there's always usually something going on, some type of an activity, something special, something unique, and we're doing some challenges, we're doing whatever. I mean, there's always a way to make that Sunday a special Sunday to come and visit. And you can even say, you know what, I'll take you out to eat. Hey, you want to come to church, we'll go out and grab a bite to eat afterwards. If you're able to do that, why not, right? Being friendly, being hospitable, being encouraging. And if they talk to you, you know, you should have notes on here, if they said something that's noteworthy, put that on there that you can ask them about to show that you're thinking about them, you're praying about them, and you care about them. And you could bring that up in a conversation, so how did that move go? I know you were just moving, how did, you know, whatever. If there's something like that, otherwise, just say, you know, you express interest, and I'm just following up. That's why it's also when you start, when you just start to get their information, is it okay if I follow up with you? Because then it's not weird that you're following up with them. Right? You don't have to worry about it, like, well, am I going to say, hey, I'm just following up with you. You know, you said you might want to come, what do you think? Does tomorrow look good for you? Because we've got these services. Oh, if 1030's not going to work, there's also a 4 p.m. Just remind them. Maybe they lost the invitation, who knows? Or maybe they just forgot about it, which happens a lot, I think. And if they're really interested, you could even ask, you know, hey, well, do you want me to give you a call in the morning, just to make sure, you know, you're coming, or, you know. Obviously, again, use your discretion, you don't want to be too pushy with people. You don't want to sound too awkward or too intrusive or too weird. But there could be a reason, especially if you're going to pick someone up, someone asks you for a ride, I always make sure and say, I'm going to call you, you know, at 9 o'clock or whatever, you know, depending on where they're at and where, you know, where I'm going and stuff, because I definitely don't want to waste my time before church going to pick somebody up. So I recommend, if you're going to offer rides to someone, you firm up the day before church and the day of church, and you let them know, hey, I'm going to be calling you, and if you don't answer, I'm not going to come and get you. I'm not just going to show up, because I've done that way too many times, way too many times of showing up to pick people up, and they're just not there. But see, I don't want to not offer people rides just because that's happened. But I am going to adjust the way that I deal with people. So I'm just going to share that with you so that you don't get stood up and waste your time, right? Say, okay, here's the plan. I'm happy to give you a ride, but I'm going to call you, and I need you to answer my call or text me or something and confirm that, yes, you are coming. And I will be there, and we're good to go. So there's probably a lot more I can go into on this, but I'm going to leave it at that. But this is just a tool. This is just a help, okay? Do with it as you want to. If you have some good ideas, do it. But that's not in the card. You got a notes section. Whatever you want in there, okay? But this is important. This is important, and we need to be doing a better job of this, and we need to take all just responsibility. And you know what? It also makes more sense to just talk to the people that you win to Christ, because they know you, than someone else who they've never even talked to calling you, like the pastor or whatever. Now, if someone says, can you please have the pastor give me a call, let them know. I'll pass that along. Pastor's real busy, but he can work out a time where he can give you a call. I will talk to people for sure, for sure, but let them know that I got a really busy schedule. But I am happy to talk to people. But that doesn't happen very often. But I mean, if someone really needs to talk to me, then I'll let them know. But if they want to talk to me just because they want money, I'd appreciate it if you could let them know that we don't have programs where we just give people money. And you could say it kindly, nicely, oh, our church is small. We don't really have those programs that offer rent assistance or whatever, okay? And we don't have to be rude about it. Just say things like that. But I get enough of those calls, so if we could send those off, I would appreciate it. But if you don't know why they want to talk, whatever, that's fine. I will talk to them. So this should be good. We've got a bunch of them. I'm going to do my best to keep these in stock and keep printing them. This is probably one of the reasons why the bulletins didn't come out right, because I was dealing with also printing out these cards. You don't need to know all of these. These are the things that I go through on a Saturday before church. But I'm going to keep these in stock. Hopefully it works out well. Try to use them this afternoon when we go out soul winning. And like I said, the best time is going to be to follow up before church service. If they say they're interested in coming to a Wednesday night service, contact them on a Tuesday night or Wednesday evening, like Wednesday at 5 or something like that, sometime where you think they'd be out for work, but right before, whatever. Use that discretion and try to plan it appropriately. I think God's going to use this extra effort, and we'll see more results of getting people baptized and getting them plugged into church. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for loving us. Lord, help us. We're here. We want to serve you. We want to serve people. We want to bring the gospel to the lost, and we want to just fulfill that great commission. We want to get more people baptized, Lord. We want to get more people trained and discipled. And God, we just need your instruction. I know these things are very simple, and we should have been doing them probably more diligently from day one, but we're doing them now. And God, I pray to you, please just help us to understand the areas where we can improve even further. God, we really love you. We want to serve you to the best of our ability. Give us the wisdom and the understanding to be able to do so with a better capacity. And Lord, help us just to be unified as a church in doing this work as you've already brought us so close together, Lord. We love you. To Jesus' name we pray. Amen.