Evangelism Coach

First time here? Thanks for dropping by. Get our Monthly Newsletter and get a free article on hospitality. Keep your evangelism passion high by subscribing to my Feed.

Bob Lotich, guest blogger for ChurchMarketingSucks.com gives a list of reasons to run from a church.  In it, he discusses visible clues that as a visiting guest he’s able to pick up on in a few repeat visits.

• Everything was Mediocre
• The Place was full of strife
• Unwillingness to Adapt
• Tickled the Ears
• Not Led with Passion.

From Chuck Lawless, Billy Graham School of Evangelism

· Evangelism in many churches is about believers responding to a guest who first visited the church rather than their proactively sharing Christ.  If the non-believer (whom we may not know personally) makes the first move, we are then ready to respond with the gospel. 

· Evangelism is sometimes reduced to “invite others to church, where someone else (the preacher) will tell them about Jesus” — and even then more corporately than individually.  In that case, nobody does personal evangelism.   

· In some congregations, evangelizing takes place more on the international mission field — as essential as that task is — than in a church member’s neighborhood.  The same believer who travels overseas to speak of Christ through a translator often leapfrogs his own unbelieving neighbors who speak the same language.   

· Despite the New Testament emphasis on laity, many churches still relegate evangelism to hired clergy.  As one church member told me, “We pay them to do that because they’re the ones trained for it.”  Personal involvement in evangelism is thus equated with putting a check in the offering plate on Sunday.

If you are one who likes to talk to strangers and you want some conversational items for travel rest stops, check out this list of evangelistic conversation bridges.

Ajith Fernando reminds us to get back to the priority of evangelism.

Leadership Magazine on Five Kinds of Christians.

Michael Spencer, in a post from May, writes:

“Neither do I condemn you. Now go, and sin no more.”

When the quality of God’s mercy in the Gospel no longer amazes you, you will begin to justify the dilution of amazing grace into religious grace, or moral grace, or grace in response to something.

Real grace is simply inexplicable, inappropriate, out of the box, out of bounds, offensive, excessive, too much, given to the wrong people and all those things.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Here is an outreach idea that a church is doing, in response to their local situation:

Church offers free coffee on Mondays.

The idea is to provide a gathering spot, a relational context where evangelism can naturally happen. Visitors do get a card with church information.

While not strictly evangelism as we define it here, it is one way that a church can connect to the neighborhood and learn of its needs. A church can raise awareness of its presence in the community. Personal evangelism can be an outgrowth of this.

Popularity: 36% [?]

A few years ago, we had the privelege of backpacking in Peru, on the Inca Trail, to the old city of Machu Picchu. Along the way, we got to learn alot about the Inca culture that built the city, and some of its beautiful architecture, likely from the 15th century AD (1450s or so).

Like the apostle Paul in Athens, we got to spend the day wandering around the remains of the city.

We learned about their spirituality as we wondered among their temple ruins. History books and archelogists fill in the story that these stones tell. We were filled with awe at how their stones were laid together without mortar, and with gaps so small that a sliver of paper wouldn’t slide between. We awed over how these buildings had withstood earthquakes because of the way they were engineered together. We were amazed at how their spirituality and architecture intertwined with building placement and design.

Among the ruins, one paricular stone caught my eye. It has been named the Southern Cross stone. It is a stone (pictured here) in the shape of the constellation in the southern hemisphere called the Southern Cross. Etched into this stone is the cross itself (not visibile in the picture).

The slope of the stone, and the direction of its apex points right to the red giant star that is in the Constellation.

Here in an ancient culture, a hundred years before the Spaniards came, is a foreshawdowing of God’s witness in the cross. Make of this what you will. To me, it reflects some spiritual thirst they may have had and felt drawn to the cross. Maybe they didn’t know what it meant, but it was a part of their spirituality. This stone sits near one corner of the principal temple at the site of Machu Picchu.

When Paul saw an “Altar to an Unknown God” in Athens, he used it as a bridge to explain the gospel. He knew they were spiritualy thirsty and weren’t quite satisfied. Perhaps these Incas were not quite satisfied with their spirituality either and wondered what the cross might have meant. It’s something already in the culture that we could use to help explain the gospel of God’s grace.

In our evangelism, we can use bridges to the culture that are already there. There is a sense of spiritual thirst that every person has, but some realize it more than others. Our culture bears some witness to this thirst and to where satisfaction can be found.

Let me ask you this?

What kinds of spiritual thirst have you seen or heard in people?

So what?

Next time you are in a conversation, listen for a spiritual thirst.

Popularity: 19% [?]