Robert Youngblood
AFA assistant digital media editor
April 2019 – When believers don’t feel their “holiness meter” matches the requirements necessary to reach out and share the gospel, they miss the fuller life God desires for them.
“The individual Christ-follower first has to learn to love the lost,” David Schaal told AFA Journal. Schaal is national director of Citywide Outreach for Encounter Life, the U.S. initiative of Every Home for Christ.
“We want everybody to encounter the life Jesus meant for them, for the unbeliever to receive the life of forgiveness, grace, and new life with Him, that abundant life,” Schaal added. “But we also say [it is] for the believer to experience and encounter a life of participating in God’s mission.”
Canadian pastor Jack McAlister founded EHC (first known as World Literature Crusade) in 1952. Since then, EHC has delivered 3.6 billion gospel messages to more than 1.7 billion homes worldwide.
Ambitious goal
Encounter Life’s goal is for every U.S. home to receive an understandable gospel presentation within the next 20 years.
“That’s 144 million homes,” Schaal said. “That’s my job description. And I believe we’re going to do that. Last year we reached 13 million homes.”
Encounter Life’s free training for churches and individuals who feel prompted to help fulfill the Great Commission can be accessed online, on-site, and an Outreach app. Schaal said the ministry is able to do this because of the generous donors to EHC. EHC is one of 150 charter members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which currently verifies around 2,000 organizations.
When EHC decided to begin sharing the gospel here in the U.S., there were two major concerns. First, pastors, who often love the work of EHC, might be skeptical of their congregations’ willingness to evangelize as it is done in other countries.
Appropriate training
“Let’s not assume we will do the same thing [as is done] in other nations,” Schaal said. The second concern was the reluctance of U.S. Christians to share. Schaal conducted research for his seminary doctoral degree on their hindrances in sharing their faith.
“Eighty-five percent of those who responded to the survey,” Schaal said, “wanted to share but had some kind of barrier to sharing.” Thus Encounter Life’s second concern was addressing this dilemma in a way that assists believers to overcome those barriers and feel qualified to share the gospel.
Schaal explained: “The 85% are saying ‘Wow, I never knew evangelism could be like this.’ This is a starting point in sharing their faith, stepping out, and engaging people in spiritual conversations without being pushy or feeling hypocritical.
“We want the church to encounter that, the fulfilling and satisfying times of sharing the gospel with an unbeliever, of sharing Jesus’s love, [and encountering] life by joining
Jesus’s mission.” 
Light and salt for U.S.
“I believe we are about to see God move in an unprecedented way right here in America,” says Dr. Dick Eastman on an Encounter Life video. “God has put it on our hearts to see every person in the nation receive a personal face-to-face presentation of the gospel.”
Eastman is international president of Every Home for Christ, and Encounter Life is the customized U.S. initiative.
“We serve the local church,” said David Schaal, a director of Encounter Life. “We’ve developed our training for those who love Jesus. They go to church, go to Sunday school, and are involved in the work of the church, but are just not engaging in spiritual conversations.”
Encounter Life offers a four-week training series based on the woman at the well, a series pastors use to reignite their congregations’ love for the lost, or a free Outreach app anyone can use to track progress in personal or group evangelism.
Learn more at encounterlife.com or ehc.org.
