Evangelism and Multiplication

By Joel Comiskey

Fall 2009

I have written a lot about large cell churches, and sometimes we forget that large churches are made up of unique individuals with personal testimonies. Let me give you one of them.

We moved to our home here in Moreno Valley in June 2001, after living in Latin America for eleven years. We developed a great relationship with our next door neighbors, Ed & Judy Carroll, and their two daughters, Heidi and Jenna. They came over to our house for barbecues and special occasions, and they invited us to their house for special gatherings. I often asked Ed if he had special prayer requests, and he was very open to share what was going on in his life.

About one year ago, we opened a new Life group in our home on Tuesday night, and I asked the Carroll family to join us. Ed replied, “We can’t make it on Tuesday night, but Heidi would like for you to baptize her.” I said, “I’d love to baptize Heidi, but in our church we have an eight lesson training course called Live for those those want to be baptized. I think it would be a good idea for your entire family to go through it–not just Heidi.” They agreed, and we started meeting at the Carroll house on Thursday night to go through Live.

The first lesson of Live talks about knowing God personally. There’s a prayer at the end to receive Jesus as Savior. I asked them to think about this prayer before our next lesson, and the next time we met together, they all said they had prayed the prayer to receive Jesus. We then continued to the next lesson on God’s Word, then prayer, the Church, lordship of Christ, living in victory, and other themes. For the last lesson we talked about baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Just yesterday, October 03, 2009, I had the privilege of baptizing Heidi in her own pool. Family and friends were invited. We rejoiced when Heidi came out of the water because she had obeyed God’s Word to express her faith publicly (Matthew 28:19-20). It looks like I’ll continue to take the Caroll family through the next phase of the training series.

It’s great to talk about the large churches, but we must remember that each individual soul is extremely important to God.

Joel Comiskey