Archive for the ‘evangelism’ Category
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.
The Art of Church Hospitality
Welcoming Visitors
in Your Midst
Date:
Tuesday, September 9, 9pm EST
Can’t make this seminar?
Get our Newsletter to get future announcements!
For full and complete registration details go to:
http://www.evangelismcoach.org/free-online-seminar
Popularity: 2% [?]
Comments (0) Posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008
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% [?]
Comments (0) Posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008
Looking for practical evangelism tips? Here are a few. Links will take you to further explanations and articles on these items.
Evangelistic Prayer
1. Seek the Father’s Heart — (see Getting Emotionally Worked Up)
2. Offering yourself for God’s use in sharing your faith.
3. Regular Prayer for those who don’t know Christ.
See Also:
Position Yourself
4. Find a way to be a blessing to others
5. Live Authentically in public and in private.
6. Build genuine relationships
See:
Proclamation:
7. Choose a gospel script.
8. Practice the gospel script until you are comfortable with it.
9. Discover your story
10. Learn how to use questions in a conversation
See also:
For help with any of these through 1-1 coaching, see also Personal Evangelism Mentoring
Popularity: 4% [?]
Comments (1) Posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008
(Note: Whole series is listed at the end of this article).
The month of August smashed all traffic records for this website with the series on How to Welcome Church Visitors.
Website statistics
Back when EvangelismCoach.org first got started it took nearly a 365 days to reach the first 10,000 page views.
Because of the How to Welcome Church Visitors series, we blew past 10,000 page views in under 45 days.
Last month alone had 2x the normal traffic volume.
I’ve got nothing to bench mark against, as I’m not yet aware of another ministry like Evangelismcoach, giving away as much information as possible so that
the Church may be ignited in the power of the Holy Spirit to passionately fulfill God’s call to reach the nations.
RSS Feed
The number of feed subscriptions (where people get new contact delivered to them automatically) has shot up another 20%.
If you are not sure what a feed is, read What is RSS?. Otherwise grab my feed and you can get content delivered straight to you in your reader or by email.
Newsletter
Another surprising growth spurt has been seen in number of subscribers to our newsletter.
I tweaked the signup page a little to make the registration process much easier and have found that in just one month, I’ve had a growth of 25% in the subscriber base.
A word of thanks
The reach of this ministry continues to grow.
Faithful readers who visit, grab the feed, get the newsletter, use the tell a friend button, and emailing articles are the human side of the advance of this ministry.
Your loyalty is a blessing to me.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that this ministry would be so global. I see God’s hand of blessing upon it, and my I continue to be a tool in His hand to help the church.
I’ve had the privilege of communicating with many of you on the phone or by email. I appreciate the words of support you share with me in this ministry and how you have become a champion of this ministry, regularly sending articles to friends and pointing your colleagues to this website. To you all, I say thanks.
Upcoming Free Online Evangelism Training
As a result spike in traffic patterns, we have scheduled our next free online evangelism training for September 9 on How to Welcome Visitors.
It’ll take these concepts and then some and provide some practical training, free. More details at the free online evangelism training page.
How to Welcome Church Visitors Series
Here is the entire series in a single link page
Popularity: 4% [?]
Comments (0) Posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
I spent a little time reviewing the Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Order and found these little gems.
Church’s Role in Evangelism
G-3.0300a
The Church is called to tell the good news of salvation by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ as the only Savior and Lord, proclaiming in Word and Sacrament that
- (1) the new age has dawned.
- (2) God who creates life, frees those in bondage, forgives sin, reconciles brokenness, makes all things new, is still at work in the world.
G-3.0300b
The Church is called to present the claims of Jesus Christ,
- leading persons to repentance,
- acceptance of him as Savior and Lord,
- and new life as his disciples.
G-3.0300c
The Church is called to be Christ’s faithful evangelist
(1) going into the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all he has commanded;
(2) demonstrating by the love of its members for one another and by the quality of its common life the new reality in Christ; sharing in worship, fellowship, and nurture, practicing a deepened life of prayer and service under the guidance of the Holy Spirit;
(3) participating in God’s activity in the world through its life for others by
- (a) healing and reconciling and binding up wounds,
- (b) ministering to the needs of the poor, the sick, the lonely, and the powerless,
- (c) engaging in the struggle to free people from sin, fear, oppression, hunger, and injustice,
- (d) giving itself and its substance to the service of those who suffer,
- (e) sharing with Christ in the establishing of his just, peaceable, and loving rule in the world.
The Responsibility of a Church Member
G-5.0102
A faithful member accepts Christ’s call to be involved responsibly in the ministry of his Church. Such involvement includes
-
a. proclaiming the good news,
-
b. taking part in the common life and worship of a particular church,
-
c. praying and studying Scripture and the faith of the Christian Church, . . . . .
The Responsibility of the Session
G-10.0102a
The session is responsible for the mission and government of the particular church. It therefore has the responsibility and power
a. to provide opportunities for evangelism to be learned and practiced in and by the church, that members may be better equipped to articulate their faith, to witness in word and deed to the saving grace of Jesus Christ, and to invite persons into a new life in Christ, in accordance with G-3.0300
Popularity: 4% [?]
Comments (0) Posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Personal Evangelism Book
Many of us know people who seem to have a simple time sharing their faith.
When we think of the successful evangelists we know, many seem like
- easy and out going extroverts,
- who have no problem talking to strangers,
- or causally talking about faith with everyone at the family reunion.
No fear in them at all.
However, many of us can be paralyzed by our Evangelism Fears. There are different Fears of Evangelism
Introvert Evangelism
But what about those who are more introverted? How do we share our faith?
This is the question that Evangelism for the Rest of Us: Sharing Christ within Your Personality Style, Mike Bechtle, seeks to address.
“God designed us with a specific purpose in mind.
The reason?
So we could do what He wants us to do, in the unique way that nobody else could do it.
Why should we try to do it differently? … When introverts spend time trying to function like extroverts, they’re doing more than just wasting time.
They’re actually robbing themselves of the very tools God gave them to do his work.”
However, most programs designed to teach evangelism assume that a person is outgoing and confident in situations like talking to complete strangers in a public setting.
“I’ve found that when I try to share my faith in unnatural ways, my fear gets larger and tends to stop me from sharing. That kind of fear almost always signals that I’m sharing out of guilt instead of compassion.
But when I share in ways that fit with God’s design for me, a creative tension compels me to look for new ways to move forward.
Compassion drives me to look for unique, appropriate ways to make a spiritual connection.”
Bechtle really seeks to develop a way that those of us are a little more on the introverted side can still feel pretty natural in sharing our faith.
The book doesn’t really go into the mechanics of sharing your faith (your Personal Testimony, God’s story, any gospel scripts illustrations).
Rather, he seeks to show introverts conversational settings where they can feel comfortable in talking about their faith.
He does seek to show biblical methods of evangelism, and conversational skills that are matched to your personality.
Over all a good read and one that is worthy of your dime.
Order your copy of Evangelism for the Rest of Us: Sharing Christ within Your Personality Style, Mike Bechtle from Amazon and EvangelismBookstore.com
Popularity: 4% [?]
Comments (0) Posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
Are you looking for ideas of what to put in a welcome folder for church visitors?
Choose the Church Visitor Folder
The easiest form is to use a pocket folder such as the one pictured.
Many churches will choose to have them professional printed with the church logo and contact information on it.
Pick a color that goes well with your marketing design.
The pockets makes it easy to put your contents in it. Assembly is easy.
Personally, I like the ones with the business card cut out.
Instead of the pastor’s business card (which can be in a folder or attached to the visitor letter), stick in Business Cards that Church members can give away.
Preparing the Church Visitor Packet
A few ideas of what to put in the welcome packet for visitors. These are things that I have seen and appreciated.
You know your local ministry context so use what is appropriate. All of these may not be useful.
- Letter of Greeting from the Pastor with an invitation to return the following week.
- A summary of the church’s vision and dream.
- Audio recording from the Pastor — a popular sermon, or a more in depth greeting.
- General information brochure on the church’s ministries.
- A brief history of the church , or the denomination if that is deemed important.
- Announcement flyers of public events such as fall festivals, Christmas Programming. Not notes from your Evangelism Committee meetings.
- Information on the membership process of your church.
- A coupon to turn in at the welcome center on next visit for a free token of appreciation like a book or mug or gas card.
- Marketing piece for current sermon series.
- Information on how to get sermon series via podcast or website,
- Invitation to an on-line follow up Survey for First Time Visitors about their experience of your church’s hospitality.
- A brochure that explains the gospel simply and clearly and points visitors to a page on your website that shares more information.
The quality of whatever goes in this packet is part of the first impressions that you will make for on a church visitor. Make sure your photocopies are clean, crisp, on decent weight paper (such as 24lb). A fourth generation photocopy of a dot matrix letter in courier font is just not acceptable. 
A word about audio recordings in Visitor Packets.
We recently received a cassette tape of the sermon. We then discovered that we don’t have a cassette player any more.
Not in the car.
Not in our house.
We haven’t used a cassette is several years and forgot that we didn’t own a player. All our stereo systems have gone to CD or MP3.
Consider a offering a choice: cassette, CD, DVD, or a link to a free MP3 download on the church’s website.
Distributing the Welcome Folders to Visitors
During our visits in different churches, these visitor packets have come to us in a variety of ways:
- We have found them ourselves.
- The members that have invited us will bring us one.
- Greeters that recognize us as visitors give them to us.
- Told to get one from the Welcome Center on the way out.
- When prompted, we raised our hands and ushers gave one to us.
Let me ask you this?
If you use visitor packets, would you share with us in the comments put in your welcome folder? How do you distribute the church welcome packet?
More Info:
Want more information to welcome church visitors? See our series: Welcome Church Visitors.
Update: This post has gotten a lot of attention thanks to people posting it to
- Their Facebook profile,
- bookmarking it in Delicious,
- and using the tell a friend button
- And linking to this from their own blog
to cast this out to a lot of their social networks. I want to say thank you for doing this.
For those of you coming here for the first time, thank you. Check out our series on Welcome Visitors, and see some or top links at the footer of this page.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Comments (3) Posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
