OBS Lecture Day 4: Finding The Man of Peace

Activity: (For each student) present your inductive Bible study outline of chapter 3 of the book of Ephesians.

Finding The Man of Peace

One of the major problems of OBS or any type of Bible study is in making the contact with unbelievers. Who do we have bible study with? How can I find out who is interested in hearing the Gospel? How do I go about making contact with people?

I call this part finding the right “niche” because we have to identify the people who are open for the gospel, those with whom we can freely move and freely share the gospel. One of the major failures of leaders in the OBS method is that they have not found the right people to share with.

If we are going to share the gospel with people who are not interested in the gospel or the Bible, chances are, they will not listen to what you are saying and even if they start, they probably will not finish the course. And all your labors for two months will be in vain.

But don’t worry. If you have experienced this kind of problem, you are not alone. I also experienced this before. And upon analyzing my mistakes, I found a problem in my former method. I was not searching for ripe fruit. Farmers never harvest their crops until they are ripe, because if they do, the fruits will have a very little use or none at all.

It’s the same thing in OBS. We have to find the right people first, the ripe fruits. We have to identify the right niche, our target people. Having the right target people will enable you to do OBS with very minimal problems or none at all.

But how do we identify the right niche? Here are some of the people in the Bible that will help us identify the right people, people who are ready to listen to the word of God.

Neil Cole, author of the book “Organic Church,” has identified examples of good soil and bad soil from the Bible.

Good Soil:
1. Bad People (Luke 5:32). “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
2. Poor People (James 2:5) “Listen my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?”
3. Young People (Matthew 18:3) “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
4. Those searching for God like the occults and in other religions (Matthew 7:7) “Ask and you shall find”
5. Uneducated and powerless people (1 Corinthians 1:27) “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. And God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.”
6. The insignificant, the discriminated against, and the “nobodies” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29) “And the based things of the world and the despised…” “God has chosen, things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that nom an should boast before God.”

Bad Soil:
1. Intellectuals, people of influence, and those of high social status (1 Corinthians 1:26) “For consider your calling, brethren that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble.”
2. Good “moral” people (Luke 5:31-32) “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
3. Wealthy people (Luke 18:24-25) “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

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