I recently wrote a post about finding your calling in life and doing it with excellence.  I think I pointed out that I felt like everyone has a calling in life - not just people who are involved in full-time ministry.  Since we are all called by God we should do everything we can to satisfy the Great Commission in our own personal calling - translated: we should be ministering to people and reaching people for Christ through our daily lives doing whatever we find ourselves doing.  For most of us that is working. 

Reaching people for Jesus is not something that is only done by full-time pastors and evangelists, and not something that only happens during the worship hour on Sunday morning.  The apostle Paul went out to the Synagogue and the Marketplace to reach people for Christ.  That’s right, the marketplace. 

We learn about this in Acts 17: 16-17,  "While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there."

Paul reached the people where he found them and where he found himself.  He also used what they knew to tell them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  What do you mean, Tripp?  He found the alter to the unknown god and used that as his entrance into their religious world view to fill in the gaps about their unknown god, who is God Almighty.  You can translate that to how the church should respond to the culture today to say, the church should be in tune with the culture so we know what matters to the culture, we understand their religious world view and by knowing that, we can present the Gospel to them in a way that they will find engaging and that will have an eternal impact on them.

Keep in mind, we (those of us saved by grace) are living "in" this world but we are not "of" this world.  I am not, in any way, advising that we should sin to reach people for Christ; but, that we should be willing to step outside of our way of seeing and doing things and look into what a lost and dying world sees.  How much more could we accomplish for God if we knew our audience and what type of message they will respond best to?