Reply To: Evangelism and Follow Up Discussion Board 2

[Ezeonugo02]

Name: Ezeonugo Ijeoma Chika
Course title: evangelism and follow up 108 LC
Essay 3 Topic: evangelism experience with Mr Henry

Sometime in July a teenager of 19 years old was employed in a laundry office next to mine. At first, he comes to my office to use my phone to call his boss because he doesn’t have a phone.
After a while I noticed by interaction and observation the following :-
A. He keeps wrong company.
B. He barely attend church.
C. He was looking up to his cousin who is his boss, trying to emulate some characters which I felt was not good.

Aspect of the conversation .
I began by finding out if he was a Christian, he said he was but I doubted him but felt we are not to be a jugde on salvation of an individual based entirely on his actions, I felt like there was time to take things slowly considering that it is working time and his boss will not be happy seeing him outside of his place of work. Then decided to follow him up and help him grow, concluding in my mind that time will tell if he was a Christian.

The main thrust of our conversation was trying to get him to be more aware of christian life, walking in it and leading him to Christ, If he wasn’t born again also because most people around him were living on the fast lane, I was also trying to get him to stay away from that way of life.

How did he respond to it.
He was open to hearing me out and responded very moderately whenever we had chance to discuss, opened to discussion and a few of the believes and stronghold he had was gradually being dropped and he looked forward to those uplifting discussions.

Problems encountered .
A. Because most of our chat occurs during working hours, we couldn’t chat much at any point in time.
B. There were challenges he was facing as regards to place of worship. His Mother forbids him from going to another church apart from hers and he didn’t like the mother’s church which resulted to him avoiding churches and he started spending weekends in his cousin/bosses home and he started to emulate his way of life which is opposite from what a Christian should be doing.

Decisions.
I wasn’t able to get him to make decisions to rededicated his life back to God, but he was interested in how to move forward in his christian life especially in getting a new church without offending his Mother or cousin, also our sessions was cut short because his boss shut down the business and he had to move, no phone number to use to contact him and he refused to give his mother’s number to contact him. He took mine promising to call when he gets another job.

Things I would have done differently
1. I wish I had more uninterrupted time to minister to him or done more with the time I had.
2. I would have love to led him to Christ again just to be sure. I never really emphasize salvation, because I felt following him up will be more effective considering he insisted he was a Christian (although he backslided), and I spend the little time we had trying to follow him up and fixing the church issues he had.
3. After he left I couldn’t call him again to know how he is faring, because I didn’t have his number and any means to contact him.
4. I would have spoken to his cousin on the need for henry to start going to church again since he spend most weekend with him, but the cousin was not opened to discussion and hardly around