Evangelism Coach

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Today’s non-Christian 20- and 30-somethings are big fans of Jesus but are less thrilled with His followers and the churches where they worship. Pastor/author Dan Kimball reveals their six most common perceptions of Christians and the Church, what they wish church was like–and why you should be listening to these emerging voices.

From Outreach Magazine.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I found this post today that has already written out several questions that one could consider as they self-evaluate their evangelism style and methods. Its focus is on church based evangelism, and increasing community awareness that your church exists.

In this link are 5 ideas for reaching people:

1. Direct Marketing
2. Mission Teams (teams from other churches; e.g., to hang door hangers, to “prayer walk” or “prayer drive” an area)
3. Servant Evangelism (showing God’s love in a practical way to the people in your city; e.g., handing out water, granola bars, etc. with invite cards)
4. Events (non-threatening, easy to enter events; atmosphere of Christian hospitality)
5. People Inviting People

These are definite church based evangelism strategies.

Direct Marketing would be stuff like billboards, commercials, mail pieces, phone book, etc. From statistics that I’ve got buried in my stuff somewhere, this is only about 2-3% effective, if that.

The most effective form of the 5 above is personal invitiatoin. Again those same stats that I have buried somewhere show that 80-90% of people attend church the first time because of the invitation of a friend.

The actual statistics are on my laptop which is in the shop at the moment. Its giving me errors like “missing operating system” and stuff like that. I’ll give the citations when I get my laptop back.

Steve Sjogren also has a series on marketing vs. evangeslism. Here is one post.

Let me ask you this?
What is your church doing to raise its visibility in the neighborhood?

Popularity: 13% [?]

National Presbyterian Conference
August 31 — September 3, 2007
Nashville, Tennessee
Gaylord Conference Center
Pre-Conference Events: August 29 and 30:
For full details, follow this link.

I can’t tell you about the theological bent of this conference, but wanted to get the information out there. I won’t be able to attend this year’s event.

National Outreach Convention
November 7-10, San Diego California
Click Here for more information

Popularity: 16% [?]

I found this following questionarie for your church committe to evaluate how welcoming or visitor friendly your church is.

The biggest one for us when we first did this was #3. Church entrance.

The regular attenders used the side entrance, and only first time visitors used the front door, which was never unlocked. Once we realized this, we put signs up to mark the entrance and how to find the sanctuary. Our office was the old manse (the house across the shared driveway), but only signs would tell the visitor this.

Download

Download a copy of this Church Hospitality Assessement

A Hospitality Audit

___ Is your church easy to find? Do you need new signs on major roads near your church?
___ Is your church’s name easy to read from the road?
___ Is it easy to tell which entrance to use for the church office? For the worship center? For Sunday school and evening programs?
___ Does the exterior and overall appearance of your church look well maintained and attractive?
___ Does the landscaping need attention?
___ Are there a few parking spots close to the building which are reserved for the disabled? For guests?
___ Are the sidewalks, the entrance, and the interior spaces of the church easy to navigate for persons in wheelchairs or with other mobility concerns?
___ Are the restrooms all clean? Without rust or mildew? Do you have lotion and tissues available?
___ Are all rooms in the church clearly marked? Are there clear directional signs to classrooms?
___ Are there stacks of old bulletins, old magazines, or out-of-date church brochures which should be discarded?
___ Are there current, attractive handouts or brochures to give information about your church which would be helpful to guests?
___ Are the bulletin boards current? Guests are in fact more likely than regular members to read the bulletin boards!
___ Are there any rooms which need to be cleaned? Painted? Do some rooms look too institutional? Do you have old linoleum or tile that should be replaced with carpet?
___ Do you have adequate lighting in hallways, classrooms, and the worship center?
___ Are the rooms for infants and toddlers both attractive and clean? Do you have older bedding and toys which should be replaced?
___ Are extra copies of curriculum and Bibles in the classrooms? Are teachers prepared and trained to welcome guests?
___ Are the instructions in your bulletin and worship service clear to guests? Remember that you could have guests who have not been to any church before coming to yours.
___ Are large print bulletins available? Is hearing amplification available?
___ Do you have mints available for persons who experience coughing or a dry throat during the service?
___ Do the announcements and/or joys and concerns time contain “insider” references which would make a guest feel excluded? Do people identify themselves before sharing?
___ Do you have a name tag system that is current and that is utilized?
___ Do you have greeters positioned at the entrances to the church? Are greeters and ushers prepared to welcome guests? Do you offer training in hospitality for greeters and ushers?
___ Are all members of the congregation prepared to welcome guests? Have you provided training in hospitality?
___ Are refreshments available at a fellowship time and/or during Sunday school classes?
___ Do you have members who go out of their way during the fellowship time to greet guests and introduce them to others?
___ Are members of your church prepared to extend brunch or dinner invitations to your guests?
___ Do you have a system in place to respond to guests within 48 hours of their attendance by leaving a small gift at their homes? Freshly baked cookies or bread, a devotional booklet, flowers, or a mug with your church’s name are all possibilities.
___ Have you interviewed people who have recently visited your church and asked them for feedback on their experience? Have you talked both to people who have continued to come and to some who only came once?
___ What other areas should you consider?

© 2007 New Life Ministries. Permission is granted to reproduce this audit for use by local leaders in any congregation. For all other uses, please contact New Life Ministries at 1-800-774-3360. Also visit our web site at www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org for other self-assessment tools.

Download

Download a copy of this Church Hospitality Assessement

See more articles in our Hospitality Series.

If you would like more information about evaluating your hospitality, and consulting with your leadership to help you improve, feel free to give us a call at 804-335-1445 or Skype at WalkmanPTY. 

Popularity: 39% [?]

This week I met a friend for coffee at the local Starbucks. He and I have had a long ongoing discussion about faith. He would consider himself an ex-Christian, having had some rough experiences with how Christians do things.

When we first met a few years ago, he was very angry about all things Christian, the church, God, Jesus, and the Bible etc. Yet in the two or three years since that first meeting, he’s mellowed out to the place of forgiving the church for how it’s behaved.

His criticisms about Christianity and his driving thirst to explore other world religions are an outgrowth of bad personal experiences with the church. He is propelled to seek understanding and dialog – a thoroughly postmodern commitment to tolerance. He has no desire at this point to put a stake in the ground and claim one for himself.

His quest is not one for truth, but for understanding, as if those hairs can be split.

Surely there are questions of truth buried in there, because religions make truth claims and ultimately, one does have to decide what is true. Christianity makes truth claims, and like any world religion ultimately makes claims upon one’s life. What my friend is trying to do is avoid allowing any religion to make a claim upon his life.

Can one really make a decision to be indecisive? Is it intellectually credible to never make up your mind about the truth claims of any religion? He would argue that it’s not doubt, its not even skepticism. It’s not atheism, which is built on belief in God’s non-existence. It’s a refusal, I think, to believe anything.

By not deciding to claim any truth, he prevents any truth claim from having control over his life.

Let me ask you this?
How would you continue this discussion with my friend? What questions might you ask to further the discussion and help foster spiritual thirst?

Popularity: 22% [?]

I came across some interesting posts today.

This one talks about relational evangelism in a rural church and why its more effective than other forms. It’s written by a pastor in rural Virignia. Most of the time when we are doing workshops, the typical churches represented are city or suburban churches.

The other one, I’m just not sure about. If it’s not crossing some line of taste, it sure is dancing on it vigorously. It’s evangelism in the strip club. Of course, no pun intended I’m all for reaching people who ordinarly wouldn’t come to church, but this seems dangerous. Maybe because I’m a guy.

But how is the danger different from talking with drug users and dealers on the street corner, or walking with prostitutes at night and talking with them? How is the danger different than talking to people with various other addictions and sin? These are still people who need Jesus.

Jesus hung out with tax collectors and sinners, people that most of the religious leaders likely wrote off and avoided to avoid spiritual contamination. Are strippers the modern day tax collector equivalent? Just wondering . .. . .. .. . .

Popularity: 10% [?]

I’ve read some stuff on emerging churches, and by no means am I complete expert on it. However, I’ve read enough to be fluent on what it is and where it might be going.

One issue that comes up for our context is evangelism and emerging churches.

Scott McKnight, one of my former professors at seminary, and now a college teacher offers this warning.

This emerging ambivalence [in emerging churches] about who is in and who is out creates a serious problem for evangelism. The emerging movement is not known for it, but I wish it were. Unless you proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, there is no good news at all—and if there is no Good News, then there is no Christianity, emerging or evangelical.Personally, I’m an evangelist. Not so much the tract-toting, door-knocking kind, but the Jesus-talking and Jesus-teaching kind. I spend time praying in my office before class and pondering about how to teach in order to bring home the message of the gospel.

So I offer here a warning to the emerging movement: Any movement that is not evangelistic is failing the Lord. We may be humble about what we believe, and we may be careful to make the gospel and its commitments clear, but we must always keep the proper goal in mind: summoning everyone to follow Jesus Christ and to discover the redemptive work of God in Christ through the Spirit of God.

read the entire article here: Five Streams of the Emerging Church. I recommend the whole article because I think it fairly portrays the Emerging Church.

A reaction:

A blog writer that I found today offers this reaction:
There are a couple shifts in EC theology that cause them to arrive at different methods of evangelism.

First, What is the Gospel? Most in the EC have shifted focus from the Epistles to the Gospels to understand the nature of the gospel (Emerging Churches, 48). Hence, the gospel is “simply put, Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was arriving” (EC, 53).

Second, this shift of focus from cross to kingdom does not eliminate evangelism, but it does help reduce the modern, individualistic, consumeristic gospel that is packaged and sold as “Jesus died for your sins so you can go to heaven.”

The EC maintains the truth of Christ’s passion and redemption and retains the belief in the uniqueness of Christ and his sacrifice, however the emphasis has shifted. Repentance still means changing ones direction and reorienting oneself toward God, but the recognition of the inauguration of the Kingdom of God by Jesus takes central focus. What results is that evangelism is word AND deed.

The author cites this book: Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures

What do I think?
The Emerging church has a good focus on “belonging” before belief.

The danger that McKnight points out is that if the focus is on belonging, than helping people come to belief in Christ may be neglected. To call people to repentance is a call to change belief in many things: who is Lord of my life, what authority will rule my life. The call to repentance by definition requires an either/or decision that will cause some people not to want to belong. Some groups may choose to neglect the call to repentance simply because of the potential harm to the sense of belonging. Some groups may so focus on belonging that they neglect calling for a committment to Christ — everything is acceptable because belonging is more important than belief.

On the other hand, the emerging church allows people the time and space to discover what they believe in a safe context of community. Most traditional / mainline types require belief (here meaning full agreement to a set of propositions) before belonging. “You are not one of us if you have not made a decision, said a prayer, and / or get baptized. Until you do, you cannot serve in our midst, play an instrument, or even work in the tape ministry or homeless shelter with us.”

The strength of the emerging church is allowing people to belong first while discovering their faith in Christ.

I do believe that evangelism happens in emerging churches. The form is very different than what prior generations may have become accustomed to. It is word and deed. However, in some places, evangelism may not happen because its just a neglected priorty.

Let me ask you this:?
Put the Emerging churches aside. Do you do evangelism at all either in your daily walk or in your church?

Popularity: 23% [?]