The Bridge Goes Global
An update from Jim Donohue, pastor at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, USA and the founder of the Bridge Course…
Sharing the gospel is one of the highest joys in a Christian’s life, but obeying God in this area is not always easy. Both pastors and church members know this. Our culture is growing more apathetic toward the gospel and is sometimes even hostile. This has contributed to the great de-churching of our country and others. Almost 40 million adults in America used to go to church but no longer do. Now church attendees are in the minority, so how will we fulfill our call to reach the lost? How will people hear the truth of the gospel?
By God’s grace, the gospel cannot be stopped, but our job as pastors is to stay nimble as we reach our communities. One tool our church has found surprisingly effective is the Bridge Course. Bridge is a 10-week course designed for non-Christians. It provides a context where guests can come and hear the gospel in a non-threatening way. Each meeting includes a meal or dessert, a video talk, and a discussion time. During the 10 weeks we tackle questions like: How good are you? Why does God allow suffering? Can we trust the Bible? and Why do we matter?
We have seen God use Bridge to reach thousands in our area and beyond with over 50 courses currently running.
Because Bridge is flexible, it works in a variety of settings including homes, colleges, retirement communities, halfway houses, prisons, high schools, workplaces, coffee shops, and more. Cross of Grace Church in Santa Anna recently celebrated 5 baptisms and all of them participated in Bridge.
The Bridge Course is easy to use. You can start small in a home, serving coffee and dessert, and using the videos. We’ve created a training video that provides key instruction and guidance, and it’s all free and available on the website, bridgecourse.org.
It also works well for one-on-one outreach. A woman named Joy in our church was a caretaker for an elderly man, Mr. Wagner. As Joy cooked, cleaned, and cared, she talked with him about Jesus and asked if he wanted to go through Bridge. So each day when Joy clocked out, they watched the video and discussed it. Through the course, God saved Mr. Wagner at 94 years old. Just a few months later, Mr. Wagner met his savior face to face. In that short time, his newfound joy led him to donate a significant sum to the Bridge Course in his will, which was a happy surprise for us.
One interesting development is the number of video views the talks are getting. We have over 100,000 video views from 156 different countries. We aren’t focused on numbers, but the thought of unbelievers hearing the gospel through any means is glorious!
As culture changes, fewer people are likely to come to church when asked. Although inviting someone to Bridge has a better chance of success, asking someone to simply watch a video has a very high success rate, especially if you send them the link. More and more, people access information on devices, so our pastors encourage church members to send individual Bridge messages to neighbors, co-workers, and relatives and ask what they think about it. As a result, many gospel conversations have begun, and people are coming to the course having gotten a taste for it from a video. We even have a special card (NFC technology) that can bring the Bridge website up on someone’s phone.
As the Bridge Course expands internationally, it’s been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Amharic. This summer Redeemer church in Delaware ran the first course in Chinese with 15 guests in attendance.
Recently, we finished filming the course in Spanish with our own Abelardo Muñzo preaching the messages with great effectiveness. We are excited to see how God uses this in the Latin world.
Let’s encourage our church members that evangelism is no drudgery, but the immense privilege of each Christian. We pray that this ready-made course can help you mobilize your church to bring the gospel to the lost. The Lord is with us and he will do it!
Interested in finding out more about the Bridge Course? Click here.
