About This Course: This course is roughly arranged around Paul Little's Classic How to Give Away Your Faith: Revised Edition. Published by Inter-Varsity Press in 1988. In teaching this class, I would recommend that each learner have his or her own copy of 'Little'. The class leader will benefit from the suggested readings that accompany the lessons. The church library would benefit by having these books on its shelves. The Manual assumes familiarity with Little. It is not intended to duplicate the information presented in Little, but to reinforce and complement that information.

The goals of the course are:

To help the learner develop an attitude toward life and relationships that is evangelistic.
To give the learner the knowledge base that is foundational to personal evangelism.
To give the learner confidence that he or she is capable of being an evangelist/witness.
The strategy for this course is: To open eyes to see people as lost. (Matthew 9:35-10:1)
To open ears to hear their questions and complaints. (I Peter 3:15)
To open mouths to speak clearly as Ambassadors for Christ (II Corinthians 5:14-21)

This first chapter is introspective. What is there about us that qualifies us to be witnesses? What is there about us that qualifies us to be ambassadors for Christ? This chapter doesn't focus on being an aggressive ambassador, but an alert ambassador. We want to start to think of our mission as being at the heart of life and not as a project we accept for a scheduled time period and for a specified duration.

In this introductory section, there are three passages from the Bible that are important to think about as we consider how we will relate to the people around us.

The review of Psalm 51 address the kind of authenticity that is true to biblical Christianity and motivates Christian ambassadors. It will address how we live with God as important to our role and our success as ambassadors for Christ.

The look at I Peter 3 give us an approach to people that is helpful to us as we live authentically in a world that is not a friend to grace.

II Corinthians 5 gives us a theological base that explains how God makes us right in his presence and how our ambassadorship naturally follows from that position.