Sharing the Gospel One Door at a Time

It started with the desire to do more to share the gospel.

This year, a group of college students at Heritage felt a strong conviction that they needed to be reaching the neighbourhoods that surround the college and seminary with the good news of Jesus. Out of this burden came the idea of going into the community of Hespeler to share the gospel – one door at a time.

Isaiah Bennett was one of the students who helped coordinate the student-led, weekly door-to-door evangelism efforts that started in the Fall. He explains that the hope behind this group was to find a simple way to engage students on mission in the community and share the truth and hope of Christ while studying at Heritage.

“Sometimes we try to overcomplicate things on how we’re going to reach our community, but by simply knocking on doors we thought this would allow us to interact with a lot of people in a short span of time in hopes of engaging in gospel centred conversations,” says Bennett. “Ultimately, we felt that the gospel is good news and has the power to bring salvation (Rom. 1:16), and because of that truth we can go out in confidence expecting God to do big things.”

In preparation for heading out into the community, students took part in a special training session held during Heritage’s Local Outreach Week in the Fall led by a visiting pastor. There the students learned a simple script and gospel presentation tool that was being effectively used at the pastor’s church when they started their own door-to-door ministry in their area.

With the tools in hand, Bennett says that the students got ready to serve by reading through Luke 10 together, which led them to be further compelled by Jesus’ call to send his disciples into the harvest fields. After reading Jesus say in Luke 10:2, “The Harvest is plentiful”, he says that the group had the confidence to start knocking on doors; trusting God’s work in their sharing of the gospel with the people they met.

“We believed in our hearts that God had prepared many people to receive the good news of Jesus Christ, but they just needed someone to share the gospel with them and that we would be those people,” says Bennett.

Though Bennett says that he and the other students were nervous to begin knocking on doors, he said that it was an opportunity to walk in faith trusting in what God would do through their efforts. Over time, the more conversations the students had with people, the more he says they saw God literally open more doors to spiritual conversations and give opportunities to pray with people and share Jesus with them.

After each and every weekly trip into the community, he remembers the students returning with great joy after seeing how God had worked in and through these doorway discussions.  Students would share stories of how God led many people to open up about their needs and brokenness, allowed students to pray for them at their doors, and helped people feel open to hear about the hope of Christ.

Bennett says that the highlight of the year was when one person they met turned from their sins and trusted in Christ at their front door.

“We all started to have a deeper hunger to share the gospel with people and a desire to see people trust in Christ that kept us going throughout the year even when we would have discouraging weeks,” says Bennett. “We may never see any of the results from the ministry, but we trust that there were many seeds planted and God will continue to grow some of those seeds.”