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God sovereignly brings visitors to your church.

They can fall in a variety of categories:

• Reached/Churched
• Reached/Unchurched
• Unreached /Churched
• Unreached / Unchurched

Source: Breaking the Missional Code, Ed Stetzer, David Putman

But once people are first welcomed into your church, and the service is over, then what? 

The need to build bridges - a conversion to the church.

I see a big difference between Latin Culture, African American Culture, and typical North American Suburban Culture.  In the latter, we see the death of sense of relational community. 

Growing up, my community had a pool and a dock (as it was waterfront).  My last subdivision — we only knew one neighbor.

When we were first married and moved to Chicago, we started attending an Assembly of God and went to a Sunday school class for married couples, and socializing after the class, we had lots of things in common with 3 other couples: newlywed transplants from another state.

Then the phone calls began to happen.

• “Hey, Tom had surgery, come over and play cards.”
• “Hey, let’s go to dinner.”
• “Hey, let’s have a cookout.”
• “Hey, what are you doing. Let’s watch a movie tonight.”

Pretty soon, three things began to happen as we spent time together.

(1) We felt connected to the local church.

(2) We developed deep and intimate friendships that are now 15 years old.

This got started because someone took the initiative to get us together and we met over a meal and played cards. An act of hospitality.

How to help visitors connect:

• If you have small groups, have leaders intentionally invite visitors to their small group
• Invite visitors to your home for lunch or dinner (don’t worry about dessert or a spotless house — I heard a story this week about a woman who made her sister use a restroom at a gas station because her house wasn’t ready to receive her sister — sure, it needs to be clean, but not perfect)
• Invite visitors out for a snack / lunch / dinner or something with a group from the church.
• If you prayed with the visitor after service, make a phone call during the week.

Let me ask you this?

What methods do you use to help visitors connect with your church?

I’ll join the bandwagon of many of the blogs I read and reveal to you the Ten most popular posts based on pageviews during 2007.

1. Conversion Stories in the NT: Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch  (Part of the Conversion in the NT Series)
2. Evangelism Oozing from our Pores (on motivations)
3. Define Evangelism Series
4. Take the Risk, Offer to pray (most commented)
5. Hospitality Series
6. How to welcome Visitors during Christmas
7. I’d rather invite someone to a manure shoveling party.
8. 10 Reasons to Use a Local Coffeeshop
9. Beginning to share your faith.
10. Evangelism Bookshelf: Unbinding the Gospel

From looking at my counters, it seems the two most popular search terms to find Evangelism Coach was “motivation for evangelism” and “define evangelism.”  But this data may be skewered since I didn’t know how to start search term counts in until much later.  Search terms do offer wonderful clues to what people are looking for at this site and provide suggestions for articles to write.

Free Evangelism Coach Resources:

1. Evangelism Encounter Discussion Group — a coaching group on individual encounters
2. Article: Avoid First Time Visitor Nightmares — a downloadable article printed in Net Results, with study questions.
3. *** NEW ***  Monthly Newsletter.  It will be a monthly review of popular posts and include information on Evangelism Coach seminars and where our  ministry will take us.  Sign up for your copy and receive the First Time Visitor article.  If you have already gotten the article, you are on that list.
4. *** NEW ***   Down Load Evangelism Coach Brochure.  You are free to print and distribute this 4 color brochure as you see fit.

Next year, I plan on adding more free resources, a bookshop, and information on hosting an Evangelism Coach training session for your church or denominational governing body.

How does one develop an evangelism team in the local church?

In the denominational circles I run in (Presbyterian Church USA), this has been relegated to the Evangelism Committee, or the Witness and Service Committe, or New Member Committee, or the “Make up another name just to have a name that is not Evangelism” committee.

These committees focus usually on providing hospitality to visitors, follow-up on those who come to church, marketing the church. Important work, but not evangelism.

Some just meet and talk about what should be done without ever doing anything.

Quit forming committees.

Form an Evangelism Team that is actively doing personal evangelism.

How do I get on it?

The primary qualification is a “heart for the lost.” A person who weeps in prayer (or labors in prayer for those who aren’t emotional) over those who have not yet found a relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is a person who doesn’t have time to serve on a committee, but wants to be out in the world, engaging the world.

Recruit like minded people and you’ve got a team.

Skip perfection. All members can sow seed now.

You don’t have to be equipped first. Just go and do it. Learn as you try.

What does the team do?

Meet Regularly: A team could meet regularly to study one aspect of evangelism, encourage one another.

Prayer for Personal evangelism — each team member is involved in praying for the lost, praying for the conversations that will happen, and praying for the other team members.

Personal Evangelism — each team member is actively listening to the Holy Spirit for guidance as to who to talk with and how.

Debrief - Report on conversations, progress of friends, and sharpen each other to improve.

This coaching group can keep evangelism temperature high and continually motivate one another to keep at the work of the gospel.

Let me ask you this?

Do you know enough people in your church to start an evangelism team?

I’m not the first to point this out, but I’ve heard the expression: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Perhaps you’ve heard it too. Perhaps it’s a cliche that is beyond trendy.

But, when one person is excited about evangelism, and doing it, sharing their experiences, and reflections, other people begin to get the idea that perhaps “I can do this too. ”

When you are causing the evangelistic tide to rise, others will rise up and do evangelism.

You keep your evangelistic passion high, other’s will increase as well.

It just pours out.

When I preached every Sunday, I always had a new evangelism story — a book I was reading, a conversation I had, a prayer that I had with somebody. People around me began to feel more comfortable doing evangelism, and within a few months, people were telling me their own stories of conversations.

That’s where I learned to love evangelism coaching. Asking folks to recall the conversation, explore it a little more, think about how to do the conversation differently the next time a similar topic came about — just like a debriefing. Asking questions to help sharpen the skills.

As long as my evangelistic temperature was hot, the people around me warmed up to evangelism.

Stoking the Fires

How does one keep the fires hot? Let me give you 15 right off the bat. It’s not a linear list and not exhaustive, but here goes:

1. Keep your relationship with God strong.
2. Read the Scriptures, meditate on them as your day goes on.
3. Enjoy noticing God’s activity around you.
4. Regularly tell others about God’s work in your life.
5. Regularly engage in evangelistic conversations
6. Review them as part of your devotional life.
7. Read evangelism books.
8. Read and comment on evangelism blogs.
9. Participate in the evangelism activity of your local church
10. Share your evangelism stories with others.
11. Join an evangelism coaching group that meets regularly to review conversations.
12. Worship deeply.
13. Pray regularly.
14. Notice the people around you and pray for them.
15. Practice explaining the gospel clearly and simply.

Let me ask you this

What would you add to this list?

Mark Driscoll on video explaining the various themes on the Emerging Church. I find this a helpful summary of the ongoing conversation and a fair critique of it.

The Jolly blogger asks: “Why are church plants the most successful at reaching people and does my established church stand any chance of being renewed?”

Five ways to sharpen you evangelistic skills.

A pastor’s conversational encounter in a cafe. Get out of the office my friend and see who you run into.

Take a risk and pray. From a slide show on evangelism full of quotes from books.

Check out this quote on authentic Evangelism at Pentecostal Post-it Notes:

Quote on Conversational Evangelism:

“Actual conversations with other human beings rarely follow a script. So resolve now to be OK with interruptions, awkward pauses, rabbit trails, and even bursts of anger. Keep your agenda to love, but drop your agenda for how the conversation has to play out.” – Walter Henegar Evangelism for Dummies: The surprising gift of stating the obvious.

 

 

Next week, I’ll be teaching on Evangelism in Panama at the Youth with a Mission Base.  Pray for the work there.

This weekend, I’ll be preaching 3 services at Centro Cristiano Betania in Panama City.  If you are not in church on Sunday, you can listen to the live stream at http://www.stereoferadio.com/ at 8.30CT or 11:00CT.

Have a great weekend.

 

 

How can you pray for the work of evangelism?

Praying for yourself:

Jimmy Kinnaird has developed a useful prayer acrostic called “BOLDNESS” to help you prayerfully prepare yourself. This is an awesome acronym and a helpful structure.

Here are some things I pray for:

• To live a consistent and holy attractive life.
• To be authentic and honest as I go through life’s ups and downs
• To sharpen my skills as an evangelist
• To have appropriate boldness and courage
• To have the eyes to see the opportunities and open doors for conversation
• To have frequent conversations with people.
• To taste the "Father’s Heart" for people who don’t know Him.

Praying for others:

For starters, I have a list of names of people that I pray for regularly.  Using names brings to mind faces of people that I know and love and are apart from the outrageous love of Christ. It moves beyond a nebulous "them" to my friends — its personal.

Jimmy Kinnaird has shared another useful acrostic called "HEART" to help you pray for your friends.

Here is what I pray for:

• To reveal Himself and draw my friends unto Himself.
• To open their eyes to see the emptiness of life without Him
• To open their eyes to see their need for forgiveness, to remove the confusion in their mind, to grasp the meaning of the cross.
• To help me see what He is doing in their life.
• To hear from God about how to engage them in conversation — sometimes God shares some information.

Let me ask you this?

Take a moment, write down the names of people you love who do not know Christ.  Spend time every day this week praying for them.

How can pastors find time to do evangelism? The simple answer — be intentional in doing personal evangelism

The New York Times reports of a multi-cultural church transformation in Georgia. This story is about a church that knew it had to change to meet the needs of the growing multi-national community around it. The church culture had to change, but the gospel didn’t.

Exposing five popular myths about evangelism. I like the last line: Evangelism methods never used never work. So go out and do something to let people know about Jesus

Do you ever wonder how you can pray for your friends who don’t know Christ? Here is a simple acronym to pray through: HEART.

Christianity today does an article on church planting and evangelism. “Church planting actually involves quite different strategies for evangelism: immigrant, missional, and attractional, for a start.”

Sally Morganthaler, author of Worship Evangelism, has changed her mind about the connection between worship and Evangelism.

This is a major shift in her thinking that has led her to a deep personal cost: dismantling her teaching ministry and website. I had high regards for her book, but also agree with her evaluation as to what has become of “worship driven” churches.

She writes: “For all the money, time, and effort we’ve spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all.”

Have a great weekend.