Jesus’ Story-Driven Messaging Strategy for Field Evangelists
We had the privilege and pleasure of spending an hour with Doctor Ravi Jayakaran, President and CEO of Medical Ambassadors International (MAI), to talk about a wholistic approach to discipleship. MAI equips individuals to be independent workers and evangelists in their own communities through integral mission, using a process they call Community Health Evangelism. During the podcast “Integral Mission and the Balance of Word and Deed,” we learned about the power of story as a Biblical approach that balances Word and deed in sensitive areas.
In this article, we’ll discuss what integral mission is and what it looks like in the mission field. We’ll talk about the challenges of sharing the Gospel in resistant areas, and discover how Jesus converted His first non-believer through the power of story.
What is Integral Mission?
Integral mission is defined both by what it is, and what it isn’t. It’s sharing the good news of the Gospel through both Word and deed simultaneously. Just as Jesus healed peoples’ physical and spiritual infirmities, integral mission treats both the physical and spiritual needs of a community together.
It’s not about addressing one as a means to get to the other, for example, digging wells so you can preach while you’re there. It’s about an intentional balance between Word and deed. Even when the preaching must be restrained for safety, the Word is still integrated with intentionality and care, it’s just more subtle.
Integral mission is integrating the entire physical and the spiritual together concurrently. Furthermore, integral mission goes beyond the individual or the immediate needs. It’s not about making provisions and then leaving. Integral mission programs are community owned, community run, and community empowering. It’s not dependent heavily on resources, but instead can self-propagate using existing community resources.
What Does Integral Mission Look Like
Ravi explained how the integral mission discipleship process can take many years from the time his team enters a spiritually empty or hostile mission field until the community becomes disciple makers.
To do this, missionaries implement MAI’s Community Health Evangelism (CHE) approach to ministry. CHE is built around thousands of lessons about health, community, and spirituality to turn sick, struggling unbelievers into healthy, thriving evangelists.
CHE’s framework for spiritual growth is founded on the Parable of the Sower, and that’s where we’ll focus today, keeping in mind that CHE is embedded in integral mission, and is therefore always striving to minister with a balance of both Word and deed.
Preaching to the Un-Preachable
The balance between Word and deed that defines integral mission is especially challenging when the team enters an area that is unreceptive or hostile toward Christianity. Missionaries must know how to engage resistant people and keep the entire team safe. Ravi explains how the team tells people about Jesus when you can’t say His name. He begins by explaining that while it may appear to an outsider as though there’s an imbalance of deed vs Word, the Word is still there.
“(There may be) greater focus on deed initially, but a slower and more decisive, intentional spiritual input, which could be in the form of using the example of the talking about a parable without saying, ‘In the Bible it says in chapter one, this is what Jesus said.’ (Instead) you just say, ‘A holy man shall share this story about two sons. One decided to get his share of the property and leave.’ That’s the way Jesus talked in the context and practice.”
“So, it’s definitely the seed without those specifications, and it’s incorporated, so it’s intentional even though deeds seem to be the predominant thing that you’re doing. Dealing with that at the same time, there is an intentionality of how the spiritual is also introduced and talked about. It’s more sensitive and how you do it.”
4 Fields of Evangelism
Ravi also gave us a lesson on the four fields of evangelism, an idea modeled after the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-18. The Parable of the Sower teaches us that each state of a man’s heart faces a specific challenge and has a certain need that must be addressed to grow in their faith. When applied to winning souls for Jesus, the Parable of the Sower gives us a broad vision, a purpose, and a plan for each field. Ravi explained how the four fields of evangelism provide a guide for missionaries to transition unbelievers into disciple makers.
“On the ground, the focus may be more the deed that is visible. I think to understand this more clearly one has to look at the concept of the four fields. It feels like four boxes, and we just start off with the first left top one. It’s an empty field. They don’t know anything about the Gospel, so those would be certain countries around the globe where the gospel hasn’t been preached. No one has shared the Gospel, it’s an empty field.”
Field two would be the one that’s seeded. Field seed has been planted. The Gospel is broadcast into the area and is beginning to sprout. It’s beginning to take root.
Field three is the one where the seed has sprouted. It started growing and all it needs then is watering, fertilizer, and stuff like that.
And then the fourth field is the field ready for harvest, and you know all that needs is a whole group of people to get in there and harvest; it’s ready.
So, if you look globally at the sort of fields that are resistant to the gospel, that is boxes one and two. Receptive and very receptive, that’s three and four. So, in the three and four kinds of communities you can be more open with your message approach. It’s very obviously balanced and visible in the community.”
Preach to Your Audience
In the Parable of the Sower, and subsequently, the four fields of evangelism, there is a focus on knowing your audience and speaking to their needs and in their voice. As a content creator, the idea of preaching the same Word of God differently, depending on the state of the believer’s heart, caught my attention.
Bloggers define their “ideal reader,” authors write to their “target market,” and marketers create a “customer persona.” Call it what you will, it’s simply about knowing your audience and meeting them where they are, just like Jesus does for all of us.
At Reliant, we believe the best way to relate to an audience, to meet them where they are, is for missions agencies and ministries to communicate through storytelling. So, I went to Scripture in search for how Jesus applied the four fields of evangelism. I discovered that, just as Jesus spoke to the crowds through the storytelling structure of parables, He also won souls for Heaven through story.
Jesus’s Story-Driven Messaging Strategy for Field Evangelists
Join me in John 4:1-42, where we find Jesus with His first convert, the Samaritan woman at the well. Let’s watch with anticipation as Jesus meets her where she’s at and leads her to salvation, not by preaching, but through stories, including her own.
Empty Field, Very resistant
In John 4:1-11, Jesus walks into an empty field, meets a resident, and plants a seed through a word picture, a story of what could have been. He began with a request for help and when she replied with “How can you ask me for such a thing,” He spoke to her felt needs using a word picture of living water. He plants a seed with a story of how people who drink His water will never thirst again.
Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans).
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Seeded field, resistant
The field has been seeded. The Gospel is broadcast into the woman’s heart and is beginning to take root. In John 4:12-15, Jesus waters the seed by speaking to her felt needs in order to reach her heart needs. He gives her knowledge of the living water she wants through a story of what could be.
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Sprouted field, receptive
The living water is a dream come true for the woman, and she wants what Jesus has to offer. Her faith has taken root, so now Jesus gives her the nourishment she needs. In John 4:16-20, He continues with another story—hers.
He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”
“I have no husband,” she replied.
Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
Sprouted field, receptive
The woman is convinced there is something special, something divine about Jesus, and she wants to know about His people. Her soul is ready for harvest, so in John 4:21-26, Jesus tells one more story, a story of a community where all believers will have living water for eternity.
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”
Harvested field, very receptive
Jesus told the woman stories of what could have been, what can still be despite her story of what is, and of what is certainly to come. She is convinced He is the Messiah! Through Jesus’s stories, the woman is transformed from a resistant unbeliever to Jesus’s first foreign convert and evangelist. In John 4:39-42, she eagerly runs off to begin her own harvest.
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Your Turn
For the longest time, I thought defining my audience for every piece I write was busywork, time better spent just getting to work putting words on the page. But I’ve learned that writing before I consider who I’m writing to and why, is like building a house on sand; it’s a mess that shifts all over the place. My stories all end with Jesus, but how I get there is different between each client and for every piece. Even if you don’t read His name in every project, He’s still there.
Whether by film, print, photographs, or in person, we should all strive to follow Jesus’s example to meet people where they’re at through story. What one piece of communication can edit today?
