In our current life situation, we are planting a church in the city in which we live.

We are currently a small church, made up primarily of immigrants from foreign countries.

Approximately

• 35 adults in attendance each week
• 20 children under age of 14

Here are 5 steps we are implementing to grow that total number to 70.

This list focuses on ways to increase numbers in the small church congregation.  As a church adds to its numbers, do not forget the actual work of evangelism: sharing the gospel message with those becoming part of your community of faith.

1.  Set a growth target for your small church

While we might agree that evangelism in the small church is not about numbers, you can’t reach a goal if you don’t set one.

We have set a goal to reach a consistent attendance of 70 people within the next few months.

From our current regular attendance of 55, we need to add 15 people, a realistic number.  We don’t expect to reach an currently unrealistic goal of 200.

A year ago, we were simply 4 adults and 4 children.

2.  Increase the number personal invitations

The invitation of a friend or family member is still the most effective form of adding people to your church.

Our leadership team regularly calls people into prayer about inviting people, including strangers that we meet who express a spiritual thirst.

We regularly launch new sermon series on a life theme to give a natural invitation point for friends to be invited.

We have small groups that are open to connecting people that want to take that step.

Inviting others is being built into our DNA.

Our members pray (see number 5) regularly and are sensitive to opportunities to invite people to church.

Even last week, a complete stranger showed up who had been invited the day before during a random encounter.  The stranger had been chatting with our church member about her search for happiness and our member gave her a church invitation.  She came.

3.   Serve your church visitors and guests with honor

Your hospitality system plays a role in shaping a visitors decision to return and get involved.

Greet visitors when they come, visit with them after the service, and most of all, remove the unnecessary barriers that keep visitors from making that second visit.

Just last week, we invited a family in our neighborhood to join us for church.   They came and had such a good experience they have promised to come again this week.

Hospitality and welcome plays a role in this.

We also look for opportunities to pray with our guests before they leave.  This often opens the door for God to work and for our guests to notice that God is concerned about them as well.

4.  Be on a Mission in the community

I’m not talking about mission statements and cliche verbage, but rather the hands on work of serving in the community – be that in the schools, in the parks, in the orphanges, etc.

What is your church doing to be an agent of transformation in the community?

Churches that spend themselves on behalf of those on the margins (and sharing their faith as well as serving) have an attractional element for people who want to do something with their lives, not just attend a monologue bracketed by a few songs.

I once asked a church, “What is your church known for in the community?”

The answer: “We have a great music program.”

If I don’t play an instrument, sing well, or enjoy their style of music, there is no place form me and I won’t return.

But if a church is tutoring kids, sharing food with the hungry, building affordable housing, cleaning up the streets, mentoring work-release people – I want to be involved.

We are still doing our community exegesis about the needs of our community.  We’ve visited with three high schools and talked with their leadership.

In the meantime, our small groups set aside a time every six weeks to do a community service project.

If you’ve got a great mission in the community, you’ve got a reason for people to come back and get involved.

5.  Prayer

I’ve found from John 15 there are two keys to effective prayer in general.

1. Abide – an intimate relationship with Christ.
2. Ask – Jesus invites us to ask.

This key theological point has rattled my soul.  What can I ask for that would advance God’s kingdom?

What is something measurable can you ask for?

• That your unchurched neighbor will accept your invitation and come to your church?
• That your church would add 15 new believers this year and celebrate their baptism?
• That 4 visitors would join the church over the course of the next 8 weeks?
• That you could invite 5 people in the next 10 weeks who express a need for church?

What is something specific that you can ask the Lord for with regards to your evangelism efforts?

Prayer is key to all church growth.

Lots more to say . . .

By no means is this list exhaustive.

But these are action steps we are applying in our local context to grow our small church.

Well meaning Christians threw out all sorts of cliches that lack substance, even if they are true:

• Pray
• Follow God
• Get back to the Bible
• Don’t follow man’s ways
• Just glorify Jesus and people will come
• Let your light shine so the whole world will want what you have.

Most of the answers centered on prayer for guidance and then obeying that guidance to grow the small church.

While these sayings are true, these answers to this small church pastor lack direction and clarity to help focus this pastor in the areas of evangelism to grow the small church.

Growing a church is prayer and work

I’m all for prayer. I teach how prayer

• gets us connected to the heart of God for the lost,
• helps us learn God’s voice, and
• sensitizes us to prompting of the Holy Spirit.
• positions us to listen to the direction of God into His plan.

I give space in my workshops for prayer.  We pray for God to give us

• a heart of the those who don’t know him.
• a passion to reach the community around the church
• a willingness to serve in the kingdom
• a confidence to share our faith while serving the community.

But growing the small church to make a difference is also work.

As Moses stood up on the mountain praying for the people of God, Joshua was on the ground doing the work.

We get to actively work in cooperation with God’s work of bringing people to faith.

3 areas of focus to grow the small church

Without denying or minimizing the value of prayer, let me share three directions for your small church to consider as you pray and plan.

1.  Equip your members in personal evangelism.  Evangelism training is more than just reading a book and doing nothing about it.  Start with a group of people in your small church and lead them into growth in their personal evangelism efforts.  This includes helping your members

• grow comfortable inviting friends to your small church,
• sharing their own testimony of coming to faith in Christ,
• sharing the gospel of Christ in clear and simple terms, and
• inviting people to surrender to the Lord.

2.  Improve your hospitality.  Since the small church is a partner in the work of evangelism, improve your hospitality system.  Help your members be proud to invite people to your small church and into your network of relationships and service, knowing that their guests will receive a good welcome and find a healthy place to grow spiritually.

3.  Engage your community.  Find out where your community hurts and lead your small church to something about it.  Get on a mission to be an agent of transformation in the community.  While serving, help your small church members to have those life changing conversations as the Lord opens those doors. Listen to this podcast episode here on how one small country church engages its community.

With God’s guidance in your focused prayer for these three areas, you can grow your small church by taking actions.  Use these areas to focus your prayers and your work.

Do you need advice to take your evangelism passion, hospitality, or  outreach strategy to the next level?

Leading your church or small group is challenging.  Brainstorming about evangelism ideas or strategies seems to have you stuck in a rut.  You need fresh answers and ideas, and you can’t wait for it.

Sometimes you just want to talk to somebody who knows.

Speak to Chris and get the answers you need right now.

One-hour coaching call – Direct, Friendly Advice

I provide your ministry with the advice and answers you need via telephone or Skype.

Examples of coaching calls you might need:

Potential Outreach Review — Consulting your outreach plans, ways to make it more effective and connect with the community.  Discussion of Follow-up plans.

Church Website Review – Consulting on your website’s impact and design and how it better serve your outreach plans.

Visitor Follow-up Review — Discuss your plans for first time visitor follow-up and suggest ways to improve your hospitality from where your church currently is.

Networking for evangelists and pastors — Discuss plans to help you maximize your time networking to launch a church.

Fruitless to Fruitful — breaking through frustrations in evangelism effectiveness.  Take one issue and coach through it.  Discover what is holding you back.  Drill down and break through it.

??? – Whatever you need, ask your burning questions in an informal, friendly chat – you are in the driving seat!

After the call you will know where you need to make improvements and will have the answers you need to increase your passion for evangelism and re-energize the outreach.

“Chris was great in helping me discover
I wasn’t focused on right thing.
He helped me refocus
and I found myself re-energized.”
— D. Watson, Church Planter.

“Chris knows this stuff inside out,
and yet is very personable.
He’s passionate about
helping you share your faith.  ”
— Joe Schlosser, Excellence Coaching Group

“You had excellent ideas
I’m really jazzed about what you shared.
I feel re-energized with new ideas”
T. Watson, Small Church Pastor

Don’t struggle on your own, talk it through with me and together we can get you making progress.

Calls are available from 10am to 8pm Eastern US time.

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Pay just $45 for the first call and supporting emails or PDF resources.   Following calls are charged at the reduced rate of $30 an hour. Longer term contracts are also available.

Next step? …

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Ron Crandall’s presentation on Church Transformation.

The audio didn’t record.

Upcoming webinars:

• HitchHiker’s Guide to Evangelism — March 19, 2009
• Evangelism Where you Live — March 26, 2009
• Community Based Evangelism — March 30, 2009

Signup for our Free Evangelism Tips Newsletter to get notice of future webinars.

Book resources:

• Turnaround and Beyond: A Hopeful Future for the Small Membership Church Ron Crandall
• Witness: Learning to Share Your Christian Faith, Ron Crandall
• The Contagious Witness, Ron Crandall
• How to Welcome Church Visitors, Chris Walker
• Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism (Real Life Evangelism Series) by Martha Reese

Smaller churches however, may not have the programmatic resources.  Their strength has to be relational.  In turnaround churches,

“new faces and families in church enable members to believe again in a brighter future and invest again in their buildings, their witness, and their efforts to please God.”

15 Efforts to Increase First Time Visitors in the small church

The pastors were surveyed as to their intentional efforts that seemed fruitful to reach new people and increase the retention of first time church visitors.

1. Emphasis on Invite a Friend
2. Utilize advertising — phone, letters, ads, signs
3. Start new programs
4. Welcome visitors better
5. Encourage lay visitation
6. Follow up with visitors
7. Conduct pastoral visitation
8. Focus on children’s ministries
9. Deliver visitor welcome packets and baked goods
10. Offer pastoral care to the community
11. Redirect existing programs outward
12. Clarify the meaning of being a Christian
13. Pray intentionally for unreached people.
14. Provide opportunities for new people to serve
15. Plan for special evangelistic events.

The key result here is that small churches must do well at making relational contact.

What surprised me is how high advertising ran on this list — which isn’t personal at all.

How new people come to church for the first time

Now Crandall’s original study was done in the 10 years ago, when church growth scholarship was really studying the impact of such advertising.  From research done some time ago and still in print from Amazon (Source:The Inviting Church, 1987 p. 44), here is what was found:

• 2% by Advertisement
• 6% by the Pastoral Invitation
• 6% by organized evangelism campaign
• 86% by friends or relatives

I don’t know if there has been any new research to show these numbers to have changed or remain the same.

At least the statistics show that for most growth to happen, personal invitation is still the best.  I was glad to see that be #1 on the list.

Invite a friend

There are some formal campaigns that you can create to run “Friendship Sundays” or “Friends and Family day” or something like that.  The idea is pick a Sunday and build momentum for invitation, programming and the like.  That’s one approach.

A Twitter friend bought a 10 week packaged campaigned off the Internet in 2009 and laughed at it’s 1980s content, down to the poster art and the plastic lapel pins.  At least the tapes were updated to CDs, though the manual still referred to tapes.

But it doesn’t take a lot of resources to run such a campaign.  A future post may focus on this issue.

Successful evangelism in small churches

But Crandall’s research revealed that

Successful results in outreach, evangelism, and church growth in smaller churches depends on

1. Having a pastor who leads in evangelism
2. Training, planning, and goal setting for growth
3. Inviting friends and family to church
4. Designing programs to reach new people
5. Visiting all prospects
6. Enhancing the church’s image through promotion and advertising
7. Holding special evangelistic events
8. Clarifying the meaning of being Christian
9. Praying for God to touch lives
10. Using the gifts of the body for the work of the kingdom.

This list highlights for me the role of a pastor in evangelism.  Yet the challenge that I keep encountering is that many pastors have no formal seminary training (confirmed by Martha Reece’s research and Ron’s Research), nor do many pastors (at least mainline anyway) have a lot of personal experience in evangelism.

They may be able to set the goals for growth and hope other people help make it, but pastors need to lead in evangelism.

1.  A concern for outsiders.

Small churches are a family.

I know of a small church that has been functioning with give or take 20 members, most of them related to the same family, and it has been that way for most of the church’s existence.

I’ve preached there on a few occasions when they needed an ordained pastor for communion (a requirement in my tribe).

The cemetery next door has graves for multiple generations of this family.

About 2 years ago, they called their first pastor.

I spoke with their new pastor this week and he mentioned to me that the family system is so tight, they take care of themselves.

He often learns about members in the hospital after they get out, or prayer needs from reading the bulletin that Sunday.

Even though he is their pastor, the members still haven’t let him in that system.  They have been so used to taking care of themselves, that even the pastor feels disconnected.

For a church like this to turn around and grow into a new phase of life, Crandall observes that a pastor can’t just proclaim the importance of outreach, but lead the way.

“The pastor needs to engage in personal outreach and evangelism, most naturally to those who constitute the ‘extended family’ of the members. . . . Pastors who visit, reach out, and invite open the door outward and lead the way for the congregation to follow” (69).

This might also take the form of good questions to stimulate the imagination:

• When was the last time you invited someone to church?
• Who are the people around us who are not involved in church?
• Why do you suppose they do not attend?
• What difference might it make in our community if this church was overflowing?
• What problems exist in our community that need to be addressed?  Can we do something about them?
• What do you think Jesus had in mind when he told us “you will be my witnesses?”

As part of that, Crandall’s study pointed out that “a little success in seeing new faces and the return of old familiar faces long absent goes a long way to change the attitude of evangelistic outreach” (p. 70)

For my pastor friend in the small country church, his challenge is helping that congregation think of other people besides themselves.

They have been self-maintaining for so long that they haven’t included their pastor, even after two years.  They may welcome a new visitor on a Sunday, but that family system remains so tight that adoption won’t happen.

This isn’t a problem with just small churches — we have attended a church of 3,000 members that doesn’t use small groups.  After 18 months, we still haven’t been adopted and still only know about 4-5 people by name.  Even my Sunday school teacher had to ask me last week what my wife’s name was.

To reach new people, there must be an expansion of the family — adoption.

2.  Reaching new people

Evangelism in a small church is people centered.  Larger churches have resources and programming that can attract and integrate people, but the small church attracts people through the personal contacts and relational warmth of its members.

Crandall’s study revealed a list of growth factors in smaller churches (p. 84).  There were 20 of them, but grouped into 3  themes.

• Inviting persons to attend warm and exciting experiences of worship
• Intentional outreach: ongoing effort to contact and invite people to join the pastor and members to seek God’s blessing, pay attention to God’s word, and love and serve one another.
• Giving new persons a place in the family. Laypersons are being trained and equipped to discover the joy of reaching out, and giving leadership to the congregation.

Behind all this suggests the role of hospitality and welcoming visitors to the church.

How to Welcome Church Visitors is a resource meant to help particularly smaller churches improve their hospitality ministries.

Crandall goes on to talk about hospitality, visitation, and attractional models of church growth, but also includes a section of ministries that engage the community.  There is both an attractional and missional component to effect people reaching, even for a small church.

He is also good at pointing out that laypersons and pastors need also to look for those moments when the gospel can be verbally explained.  “When these programs were also used as contact points to talk about personal faith and invite people to church, they became important points of entry for new people looking for a place in God’s family” (96).

Effective Christian witness involves many forms of mission and ministry, but the core of our witness is still that message of salvation and hope that no other organization can offer.  The heartbeat of every Christian congregation must be reflected int he words ‘offer them Christ’ if it can call itself alive and well.

1.  Personal renewal.

Renewal of a church begins with renewal of the individual.  Sometimes that might be a dramatic and decisive experience such as a conversion moment at a church service, or answering an altar call or responding to the invitation to receive Christ.  I had that moment of conversion myself when I was still in my teens.

For others, such as those who grew up in a church it might be a deepening of faith, where you know it’s yours and not that of your parents.

But all of us go through spiritual dry seasons, and there are those events that bring a fresh wave of personal renewal.  Some have found them at events like the PRMI Ignite weekend, Cursillo, Walk to Emmaus, Presbyterian Pilgrimage, ABIDE, Tres Dias, Lay Witness Mission and so on.

2.  Corporate Renewal.

A new awakening in the life of a church — there is a new cooperation among believers wanting to fulfill the vision of God for the local congregation, a new sense of praying into God’s vision.  Sometimes it might be a more dramatic revival.

3.  Conceptual Renewal.

This is a stage where the people of a congregation receive the fresh vision of what God wants to do with the congregation.  Old models are challenged, risk taking becomes more normal, and often churches will begin to rethink what they are about.

4.  Structural Renewal

With a fresh vision old programs fade.  Old structures are laid aside.  The church begins to reorganize itself to respond to the new direction that God is leading.  Any form that is helping the church to find its new life and be faithful to its history should be kept.  Any that deny the new fresh fire from the Spirit should be modified or retired.

5.  Missiological Renewal

A church needing renewal is overly inward focused.  As churches turnaround, experience renewal and revitalization, the church begins a new focus on mission and service to the world.  Sometimes renewal begins here. . ..

Church Transformation and Renewal

In Turnaround and Beyond: A Hopeful Future for the Small Membership Church, Ron Crandall takes a brief look at renewal in church history and also highlights some observations from current research on leadership. In broad strokes he offers the contributions of these disciplines to small church renewal and revitalization.

Church Transformation and Renewal from Business Leadership

Church transformation is more than merely renewing or producing a good organization through competent leadership.  Crandall puts forth a couple of lists that indicate the role of leadership in church renewal

• Bias for action
• Being close to the customer (genuine interest)
• Encouraging autonomy and entrepreneurship (delegating authority)
• Engaging productivity through people (treat people with high expectations and affirm excellence)
• Being hands on and value driven
• Stick to the main goal
• Simple and lean management structure
• Balancing the tension between creative chaos and disciplined adherence to values

Furthermore, Crandall lists some dynamics of renewal cleaned from business leadership studies.

• Flexible and intuitive planning
• Empowered leadership
• Friendly facts, congenial controls
• Listen to best ideas available
• Teamwork and trust
• Stability in motion (Confidence)
• Positive Attitudes and Attention
• Causes and Commitments (Vision)

Transformation and Renewal from Church History

Crandall’s observations are based in Howard Snyder’s Signs of the Spirit: How God Reshapes the Church. The key point he walks away with is

The first and perhaps most critical beginning point for renewal is to understand that the church has an inborn tendency to grow. Growth is in its genes.  Whatever its pathologies every church has a vital urge toward its own health and renewal.  The reason for this is simple and simply profound:  The church is the body of Christ.  The very Spirit of Jesus is at work in his church, always prodding and drawing it toward life and renewal.”

10 strategies for small church transformation

From Synder’s work, Crandall draws out

1. Begin with life.
2. Don’t attack entrenched institutional patterns.
3. Seek to pastor all the people.
4. Build a balance of worship, community and witness.
5. Provide small groups and home meetings.
6. Affirm the ministry of all believers.
7. Move toward the biblical model of leadership.
8. Help the congregation discovery its own identity.
9. Work to ensure that financial stewardship authentically reflects the church’s mission
10. Help the church catch a kingdom vision.

Crandall has studied others who have contributed to the field of small church renewal and has seen that

“the emphasis is on the importance of open and visionary leadership,
the creative use of all persons’ gifts and
the humble heart of a servant leader.”

What does the transformational study of turn around churches reveal?  That’ll be tomorrow’s post.  To get it automatically, sign up for the RSS feed.

Order your copy of Turnaround and Beyond: A Hopeful Future for the Small Membership Church Direct from Amazon.

Ron Crandall – Turnaround Churches and Beyond

Particularly, what role does evangelism play in turning around a small church?

In this free online webinar, we’ll look at

• How does personal evangelism work in a small church?
• How does evangelism help congregational transformation?
• What forms of small church evangelism were useful or not useful?
• How does the pastor’s evangelism contribute to a successful turnaround?
• What happens after the pastor leaves?
• What pitfalls can be avoided before a pastor’s transition to another church?
• What role does hospitality to visitors make in the successful turnaround of a small church?
• How can pastors improve their evangelism skills and provide ongoing training?

Dr. Ron Crandall, Dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary will join me, Chris Walker, of www.Evangelismcoach.org in discussing his study of successful turnarounds in small churches.

He surveyed 100 churches from 10 denominations and then 10 years later contacted them again to see which churches continued their growth cycle.

The full study can be read in his book: Turnaround and Beyond: A Hopeful Future for the Small Membership Church

Ron has written a guest article for Evangelismcoach.org about a renewal ministry for small churches in the United Methodist Church:

Guest Article: A Model for Renewing Small Congregations

*** No product pitches or sales (with exception of our book mentions), but donations to further our ministry can be made after the webinar. ****

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January saw us in 3 different countries for three different conferences (one of which was canceled after our arrival).

For the website, January 2009 had the most visitors and page views.

Most of you may not be interested in such things like stats and sales, but part of how Evangelism coach is supported is by traffic growth and affiliate book and Adsense.

It’s not quite a living wage, but it covers some of the cost of  writing and maintaining this resource for you.

Here are the top selling books off this website.  You might be interested in what other people are buying and reading from this site.

The top seller in terms of volume is my own ebook from this site: How to Welcome church Visitors.  It sold 6x more than the nearest seller in terms of quantity in January.  I really think people want the free coaching that comes with it.

	How to Welcome Church Visitors (Instant Download, No Shipping)
	Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups
	Beyond the First Visit: The Complete Guide to Connecting Guests to Your Church
	Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church (Assimilation)
	Greeting 101: Easy Steps to Greeting in the Local Church
	Just Walk Across the Room Video Curriculum for Churches
	Serving as a Church Greeter
	The Big Idea: Focus the Message, Multiply the Impact

There were other books and tapes sold while people were shopping, but not relevant to our readership.

These books indicate to me there is a desire for more training resources for greeters and ushers to help improve your first impressions ministry.  I have a chapter or two related to that in How To Welcome Church Visitors book that you can download instantly after purchase from the book’s website.