The Gospel and Innovation

Many times we try to innovate to engage people with the gospel, but surprisingly, the simple gospel and God's Word work without our innovations!

Think about it - God's Word has been working for thousands of years, without our help or innovations. We weren't even born yet, and God was at work. Billions of people around the world today profess faith in Jesus Christ, without our help or innovation skills.

Don't get me wrong - God inspires innovations and he calls us to proclaim his message so that "by all means we might save some." But we must always remember that there is an incredible amount of inherent, Holy Spirit power when we preach the Gospel.

Paul called it the sometimes, "foolishness of preaching." For some reason God has chosen to endow his salvation plan on his people as they speak about what He has done.

Several friends and I spent time at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association headquarters in Charlotte, NC this past month in preparation for using their training at Ignite - Student Evangelism Conference in September. One of the staff there shared a really cool story about the effectiveness of the simple, inherent power of the Gospel:

They have an evangelism website sharing the Gospel and purposed for introducing people to faith in Jesus Christ called PeacewithGod.net. The recent reports show that many thousands of people have given their life to Christ in just a short period of time through the main website with videos and illustrations. Yet more than double the amount have responded to Christ through the basic PeacewithGod.net mobile site that contains simple script and no videos or illustrations.

Many times God uses the foolish things to shame the wise, and the simple things to show that it is His power at work, and not ours.

How have you seen God use simple things to display His power in your own life, or in those around you?