Day 5: Reaching Out

Today's post is by Rachael Collins.

We spent the last day of our trip learning about people of other religions and the best ways to witness to them. First we talked to John, the preacher of Shalom Baptist Church. He enlightened us on the Jewish culture and how he works and started a church specifically to reach out to them. Then we visited with Larry, the leader of a free English learning class for people from southern Asian countries. He told us that once the students have learned enough English to understand, he starts teaching them Bible stories and slowly integrates them into deeper, Bible studies. Although these people are Muslim, they are usually very interested in what Larry has to say and often enjoy the Bible stories. Larry then challenged us to take some of his Bangladesh tracks into the prominently Bangladesh area, find someone working in one of the shops, ask them if they were from Bangladesh and then hand them the track. We all completed the task, glad to have had our first little taste of reaching people of other religions.

One thing that stuck out to me that John said was that we (Christians in the south) don’t normally try to convert people of other religions; we focus on the people who claim to be Christians but usually are not. He was not looking down on what we do, but encouraging us to expand our ministry and reach out to people with other religions.

Check out some Day 5 pictures.