Publisher's Synopsis
The Scriptures declare: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation." (2 Corinthians 5:17-19)This says that everyone who believes upon the Lord Jesus Christ has been made a "new creature." This cannot be disputed. We were once something and now are something "new." We were not made something new in order to live as we did before. We have been given a purpose. For God who has through Christ reconciled us to Himself, AND has given us the ministry of reconciliation! Most of Christendom is quick to believe and accept the first part of this Scripture and ignore the second. This is demonstrated in the following statistics from the Joshua Project. It says that America has a population of 326,297,000 and 26.82% is evangelical Christians who believe in gospel witness. This means that there should be a Christian population of 87,512,855.4 who actively work towards the common goal of gospel witness.If this is true, then every evangelical Christian in America would have to witness to 3.73 people for all of America to hear the gospel at least once. Let's reproduce this for the entire world. The Joshua Project puts the world population at 7,671,055,000. They say that 7.7% of the population are evangelical Christians. That means that 590,671,235 people identify themselves as Christians who are active in gospel witness. According to these statistics, if every evangelical Christian witnessed to 12.99 people, then the whole world would hear the gospel once. These statistics are mind blowing! How can this be? If you are following along with me, then you understand that there is a disconnect somewhere. Something within these statistics does not add up. Either most evangelical Christians are disobedient to their commission to go and make disciples. Or the statistics are wrong, and there are far fewer evangelical Christians than led to believe. Or this is a both-and situation where there are far fewer evangelical Christians than reported, and some are disobedient to their commission.Either way the problem exists that most of Christianity today doesn't know who the true God of the Bible and Jesus Christ whom He has sent is. Thus, the world doesn't know God. Nor can they know Him because those who say they know Him don't accurately represent Him, nor do they bear witness of Him. So then, how can those who are still enemies of God due to their sin be saved?We who are of Christ's church must know God. Not just for our salvation and personal growth, but for evangelism. Evangelism is not a method, it is personal revelation of who God is, what He has done, and what He will do. Our evangelism, regardless of our knowledge of Him or maturity in Him must come forth from knowing God.This is what the first book "Proclaiming The God We Know" of the series "Ministers of Reconciliation" is about. Growing in our knowledge of God for the purpose of being better equipped to witness of Him to a lost and dying world. Since we who are in Christ have been made ministers of reconciliation it is vitally important that we grow in this occupation. This book is written as a resource to help the Christian grow in their knowledge of God as it pertains to their gospel witness as ministers of reconciliation.
