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Mission Network News reports that e3 Partners (formerly EvangeCube and Global Missions Fellowship) has modified their EvangeCube tool to work with children. 

They have a tool useful for Sunday school programs, Children’s Church, After School Bible Clubs, Vacation Bible Schools.  It’s called the Kids EE Cube, which seems to be based on the Evangelism Explosion Script. 

There are a variety of scripts that one can use to help you explain the gospel in simple and clear terms.

Each script has its critics and endorsers and it’s not our point here to argue or debate it.

Last month, I wrote an article about gospel scripts.   The main point is that you should know at least one script so that you can explain the gospel simply and clearly. That is your “Default setting.”

Let me ask you this?

When was the last time you shared the gospel with your default setting?  Consider posting your story to our Evangelism Encounter discussion group.

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I’ve been reading Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.  The book looks at principles and practices of transformational development.

The book explores poverty, causes of poverty, and calls the church to action in engaging broken systems that cause poverty.  He lays forth a strong case that poverty is a “deficit, entanglement, lack of access to social power, powerlessness, and the lack of freedom to grow” (Myers 81). 

Poverty is a complicated issue that involves all areas of life — physical, personal, social, cultural, and spiritual.

I live and work in a country where poverty is more visible than the suburban America where I lived before. 

• I walk home from church and a single mother with children are asking me for money or food. 
• I walk to church, I see a unkempt homeless man with a distorted and twisted foot sleeping on cardboard next to the barbershop. 
• Walking home from class, I see people picking through the trash to recycle what can be salvaged.
• The building maintenance man lives on an annual salary of $6K a year, working 48 hours a week.

The gospel is relevant to people such as these.  But what difference does evangelism make in their life?  Can it lift them out of their poverty? 

This is the question that Myers seeks to get at in this book. 

For example, he presents a simple chart about solutions to the cause of poverty (p.81).

View of Cause	Proposed response
Poor are sinners	Evangelism
Poor are sinned against	Social Action, justice
Poor lack knowledge	Education
Poor lack things	Relief / social welfare
Culture of the poor is flawed	Become like us / ours is better
Social system makes them poor	Change the system

Certainly poverty has many causes and many possible cures.  

I’m simply wondering about the role of evangelism in transforming a culture, transforming a system.  Certainly the gospel can transform an individual, but can that transformation seek to change the systems of poverty?

Order your copy of Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.

Other books we are currently reading:

• Questioning Evangelism, Randy Newman
• They like Jesus, but not the Church by Dan Kimball
• Confessions of a Reformissional Rev by Mark Driscoll
• Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey, Rick Richardson
• Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism (Real Life Evangelism Series) by Martha Reese
• Discipling the Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures
• unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters

Let me ask you this?

What role can evangelism play in reducing poverty?  That’s a big question, but perhaps one we can discuss here.

Popularity: 43% [?]

I visited a church website this morning.

The church was announcing the start up of an evangelism group.

I like the idea — a group of people gathering regularly to encourage each other to do evangelism.

This is an idea that I suggest to help develop evangelism training lab-time in your congregation. Get a group of people together to meet and discuss their evangelism encounters during that week. We are trying to start an on-line version of this — the Evangelism Encounters Discussion Group.

Wanting more information about this group, I checked the website.

I looked for a contact us page or form (see my contact page).

I looked for a contact email for the group leader.

I looked for a contact us email.

In vain.

There was no way of contacting the church via email through their website. All I found was a phone number, but who wants to call the church the morning after Thanksgiving? Will I remember to revisit the site on Monday?

Closed Doors Keep People Out

To help prevent visitors from getting frustrated about your website, install a contact us form, or use a email generator to create a link to send an email. There are several ones out there.

It takes a little html knowledge, but still gets your email address out there.

I know this isn’t evangelism per se, but helping people make contact with your church can facilitate the process of evangelism.

Let me ask you this?

If a visitor came to your website, could they contact you via email or a webform?

If you would like an evaluation of your church website, and information on getting your website ranked well in search engines, feel free to give us a call at 804-335-1445 or see our Contact us page for email.

Popularity: 33% [?]

The News-Enterprise, a newspaper in Kentucky, reports about a church that brings smiles to the neighborhood on Fridays.

Members stand on the corner, smile and wave at people.  It may seem a little cheesy, like hawking pizza or tax services, but there is an impact:

"Sometimes drivers stop and ask for prayer. . . "

There are other fruits of the effort.  Though not evangelism as we speak of it, it certainly builds relationship with the community.    You can read the article for more ideas as to how to do servant evangelism.

Let me ask you this?

What kind of blessing have you been to another person today?

Popularity: 29% [?]

Internet Evangelism Day has released an updated version of their Tool to Evaluate and improve church web site design to reach outsiders.

I have visited many church websites myself and here is what I find.

• Cheesy organ music playing automatically.
• No staff information.
• No service times on the front page.
• No pictures of people.
• A church logo, with flashy stuff that says click here to skip intro.
• No directions
• No website at all

I’m part of a generation that thinks: look on line first, before I pick up the phone.  If you want to connect to the next generation, have a decent, usable website for your church.  To quote Scott Ginsburg "If you are not on the web, you don’t exist."

Over at Church Marketing Sucks: They link to an Art of Mission survey results of users visiting church websites.  It’s got useful information about what some churches are putting on their site:

• Service times
• Staff directory (I personally like to see mugshots). 
• Doctrinal statements (for those independent types)

An interesting result: nearly 20% of those surveyed mentioned that there was no information about the Christian Faith on their website.    Nearly 50% don’t offer podcast.  I’m working on understanding this so that our church here in Panama can podcast.

Here are some other resources I have found to help you with your web work.

• Church Blogger
• Church Communications Pro
• Church Marketing Sucks
• Chris Forbes, Ministry Marketing Coach.

Let me ask you this:

What can your church do to improve its website?

Popularity: 37% [?]

How Friendly is Your Church?

Most churches consider themselves a friendly place.

But to visitors, making a first time visit to a new place, with a new set of people they don’t know can be an intimidating visit.

In this article you’ll encounter

• How a simple oversight drove a family away from church for the last 40 years.
• How the power of a hospitable welcome can overcome the awkwardness of visiting a new place
• Tips on helping a congregation become more welcoming to visitors.

This was originally published in Net Results Magazine in the October 2007 issue and I have their permission to post it here.

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Popularity: 51% [?]

Migrating Evangelism Coach

Over the weekend, I’ve attempted to migrate this blog to a Wordpress environment. 

I say attempt, because only the major portion of the move has happened — migrating over 150 posts, comments, and images. 

Where did your feed go?

Hopefully, those using Feedburner to subscribe to the EvangelismCoach.org feed should have no problem. 

Not signed up yet for the feed?

Subscribe to Evangelism Coach.  You can add Evangelism Coach to your favorite reader, or even get automatic emails. 

The advantage to using a reader or email subscription is that you don’t have to remember to keep coming back to the web site. 

If you are not using Feedburner to deliver your feed, you’ll have to update the feed address to: http://www.evangelismcoach.org/feed/atom/

There seem to be some widgets to make that work automatically, but I don’t have the technical know how to do that yet.  I’ll save that for another entry.

What’s next?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding features and content to help advance the work of EvangelismCoach. You’ll see the blog roll reappear, a new bookstore opened, and some free content available by email.  Wordpress will give us the means to interact much better than we had at our old host.

Have a great weekend and Thanksgiving week.  Travel safe.

Popularity: 24% [?]