tonyandkirsten.org

Building relationships with non-Christians and sharing the Gospel has never been one of my strong suits. Since going on staff a little over five years ago, it’s been a real struggle to consistently have unbelievers whom I am directly influencing. I’m finding that to be even more of a challenge now that I have a baby.

Our team is primarily doing ministry on a co-ed dorm floor, and we’ve discovered that a lot of young, unsaved college guys are weirded out by babies. The girls love her, but on a co-ed floor it’s rare to visit and not find guys and girls hanging out together. It’s kind of a six of one/half-a-dozen of the other type of situation, but I definitely don’t want to unecessarily get in the way of the outreach that is going on by bringing our daughter with us. If our team had something scheduled in the dorms like a Bible study that might work better than just random hang out time…but God hasn’t led our team in that direction at this point so it’s really not an option.

I’m sure I’ll be able to spend time at Willow without Madeline occaisonally, and it probably won’t hurt to bring her over to the dorms every now and then. But, I am thinking that if I truly want to have a “personal ministry” of outreach I’ll need to have other ways of getting to know people outside of our team’s outreach in the dorms. God may still give me some opportunities with freshmen girls that other people on our team are reaching out to, but more than likely I’ll be playing a supporting, behind-the-scenes role in their lives and it will be the girls who are still in school and living in the dorms that will have the actual opportunities to share with them.

I would suspect that at this point in my life it would be most effective for me to reach out to other young married women, with or without kids. And reaching out to that demographic might yield the added benefit of making some “peer” friends…since I hardly ever get to spend time with any other young married women. Even older-than-college single women might be a group I could have an influence with.

The problem is…how to develop this personal ministry “on the side” while I am still involved with The Rock and college ministry as my main focus? I don’t have tons of time, but I would probably have some time during the day to fit in a new activity or a couple of new friends. When Madeline gets older there will be activities I could take her to where I can meet other moms — everything from story times at the Library to play groups to “mom and me” swim class. But things like that are probably at least a year away. Our neighborhood is mostly college students and older people so I’m not sure there is a lot of this type of outreach potential with our neighbors.

So, do any of you have any ideas/thoughts/suggestions on how I can work to develop more of a personal ministry with non-Christians?