When Jesus told His followers to go and make disciples, He meant you too. As part of the work of fulfilling the Great Commission, Global Outreach Day (G.O.D.) seeks to inspire believers throughout the world to share the gospel on one particular day this month.
“The main thing is we want to mobilize every believer,” says Werner Nachtigal, co-founder with Stephan Gaengel of G.O.D.
To help facilitate this, G.O.D. sponsors a worldwide evangelism campaign to provide Christians around the globe with the opportunity to share the gospel with at least one person on a fixed day: the last Saturday in May. This year it’s May 30.
“Every last Saturday in May, we are calling the whole world to evangelize,” says Nachtigal. “If we could mobilize 500 million Christians to share the gospel, maybe we could reach in one day more people than Billy Graham ever did.”
In the three years since the initiative began, G.O.D. has reached about 75 million people with the gospel. In 2014 alone, G.O.D. mobilized believers to witness in more than 93 nations, and 40,000 churches were trained in evangelism.
Some of those reached have been in awe of the signs and wonders that accompany G.O.D.’s message. In the Dominican Republic, doctors reported that three people were healed of HIV and one from tuberculosis. In Pakistan, Gaengel says a paralyzed man was healed when he received Christ.
Although the idea is to inspire Christians to witness on G.O.D. day, the organization’s ultimate goal is to equip Christians to be mighty warriors who witness all year-round.
To achieve this, they offer evangelism training for church leaders who in turn train members of their churches, encouraging them to share the gospel with at least one person a day even after the event has passed. “The training will change their lives and the training will keep them from getting discouraged,” Nachtigal says.
This training involves four steps: 1) how to communicate with people so that the gospel sounds interesting and clear, 2) what the gospel is (and what it isn’t), 3) how to lead people to the Lord and 4) how to follow up so converts can become disciples. With this training, Christians lacking the gumption to share the gospel previously can adopt an evangelistic lifestyle.
G.O.D. brings this training to a different country each year. Last year, they focused on Nepal where they saw 76,394 conversions and 4,631 new churches planted.
In 2015, G.O.D. will focus on North India where 200,000 villages have never heard the gospel. —Jenny Rose Curtis