Evangelism Coach

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Check out this article from the The Presbyterian Outlook entitled An evangelistic future?

Editor Jack Haberer writes:

After three days of making friends, comparing notes, hearing testimonies, and brainstorming their dreams, might 75 Presbyterians hope to create an evangelistic future for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)?  Most of those attending the Grow the Church Deep and Wide:  Evangelism Consultation at Stony Point Center on November 10-12 hoped for that very thing.

I was at the Consultation. 

I enjoyed most of the presentations the first day. 

While I do think the second day drifted into other topics, I think Stan Ott’s and Eric Hoey’s presentations were the best.

Nothing has changed in 12 years.

Eric Hoey mentioned findings from a 1996 Presbyterian Panel survey about evangelism and discovered that not much has changed.  In  Same old, old story, Haberer summarizes Eric’s findings.  For example:

            “Presbyterians are uncomfortable with street corner or stranger evangelism.” 

            He recounted to a laughing response, “I did a workshop in Chicago Presbytery. A woman told me, ‘I don’t even believe in evangelism.’ I asked her, ‘Then why are you at a conference on evangelism?’”  She responded, “‘Because we have to learn how to do it.’”

What didn’t get shared in the article is that Eric went on to say that after a little training, this lady was looking forward to talking about her faith.

The best point that Eric made is that Presbyterian pastors have to attend all sorts of conferences on Roberts Rules, Sexual conduct, ethics, diversity training etc, but nothing mandatory about evangelism!

Evangelism’s Four Movements

Earlier in the Day, Stan Ott,  director of the Vital Churches Institute, set the theological stage for the discussions.  Haberer reports in Deep and wide: Growing via evangelism?

“The church by nature has three priorities, doxological, communal, and missional,” he said. “Our missional calling and one of its primary dimensions, evangelism, is one of the dimensions of our missional calling among the six great ends of the church.”

Having been raised in an unchurched, secular family, he was introduced to church initially by participating in Boy Scouts at a local Presbyterian church.  Only in college did he actually encounter the gospel, “a call to faith and followership, and it burned like fire within me to respond to Jesus.”

Acknowledging the diversity of opinions among today’s Presbyterians as to what evangelism is and does, Ott outlined his perspective. “I understand evangelism to happen in four movements: sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in sensitive and effective ways, calling for faith in and followership of Jesus Christ and participation in the community of believers, relying on the power and the timing of the Holy Spirit, and leaving the results to God — because only God can soften the human heart.” . . . .

In the vast majority of cases, mainline Christians today do not speak about their faith in a personal, conversational way, even when given an obvious opportunity to do it.”     

The reasons for such silence, he recounted, are numerous. 

• General ignorance of the faith leaves many feeling unprepared to share.
• The culture at large does not share even a general familiarity with the language of faith.
• Many worry that faith-sharing will be perceived as intolerance of other viewpoints.
• Too much church life is set up as one-directional in communication.
• Some signals from the culture sound resistant to even allowing religious communications — and many Christians respond by acting “as though Jesus said, ‘Go into all the world and do not interfere!’”

I’ll have to see if I can get Stan’s complete talk and get it posted here.

  According to a Barna Research survey of people looking for a church, “Friendliness to Visitors” is

• Extremely important: 71%
• Somewhat important: 21%

Based on a national telephone survey of 1,015 people 18 or older; sampling error of plus/minus 3 percent. Citation: Moody (Jan/ Feb 2002);

Add that up and for 9 out of 10 visitors, the friendliness of your congregation is important.

What each church needs to do is develop a strategy to be friendly, but not overly friendly or smothering.

Ask yourself: How can I help my church welcome church visitors? What role can I play?

Here are 5 of 10 common practices to consider — (the next five come tomorrow).

1. Recruit a greeting ministry team

This team is would be responsible for recruiting greeters to serve regularly, and provide ongoing training to new greeters.

Some churches are large enough and have multiple points of entry into the building, and this requires a little more administrative planning to manage. For example: One Baptist Church has lots of different entry points.

One could make the point that all members are responsible for greeting, and while that is true, what often happens is that a greeting may never get done. It’s easy to slip into the mentality that we are a friendly church and therefore visitors will be welcomed. But there exist too many stories of “No One Said Hello”

See: Starting a Greeter Program for an example from the Assemblies of God.

2. Regularly Train New Greeters

Some churches provide regular training sessions for new greeters.

Extroverts may find this ministry easy to do, but introverts may need a little help or guidance in how to break the ice welcome visitors.

For example

• The Presbyterian Church in Canada gives guidelines to greeters/ushers.
• First Presbyterian Greenville created these guidelines for entrance greeters.

One could also read Serving as a Church Greeter, Leslie Parrott. (I’ve not read this book myself, but found it on Amazon).

3. Hospitality or Welcome Center

Some churches have a large enough lobby to have a table or booth that is staffed by greeters.

This is a central information area about the church and it’s ministries.

It can also be a place where visitors can leave their contact information for future conversations.

Many churches will give away a small gift for those who visit the table. Coffee mug, pens, free book, etc. Here is where one could place Church Welcome Folder.

One church, Glen Burnie Baptist features the church welcome center on a webpage for visitors, along with a map of the facility.

4. Church Welcome Folder or Packet

We have been in churches that distribute a church welcome folder or church visitor packet.  For more information see: Ideas for Church Visitor Welcome Packets

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 see we get one.
• Told to get one from the Welcome Center on the way out.
• Greeters that have recognized us as visitors give them to us.
• We have raised our hands when asked and ushers gave one to us.

Some churches will have a coupon to turn in at the welcome center for a free book or some such token of appreciation.

Usually inside the visitor packet, we will find

• a letter from the pastor,
• an audio recording of a pastor’s greeting or a recent popular sermon, and
• informational brochures on various ministries and programs of the church.

Note: We recently received a cassette tape and 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.

For more information see: Ideas for Church Visitor Welcome Packets

5. “Go and Greet someone” or “Pass the Peace”

When I am the leader of the service (emcee, moderator, director, liturgist, worship leader, pick the term for your tradition), here is what I do:

At an appropriate moment I say

Get up, turn and greet someone that you’ve not met yet. Shake their hand, introduce yourself, and take a few moments to welcome them to God’s house.

I don’t say the same thing every time, but they usually contain four commands.

1. Get Up.
2. Go Meet.
3. Give Your Name.
4. Greet.

I particularly mention “someone you have not met.”

I want to encourage people to make new connections that could lead to significant relationships, and I want the congregation to learn to look for people they don’t know.

Tomorrow, I’ll share part two of this list.

UPDATE:

This post has gathered a lot of traffic.  To those who have come for the first time to this website, I want to give you a personal welcome.  Here is part II. 

Free Download

Sign up for our monthly evangelism newsletter with exclusive personal evangelism and church hospitality tips and receive a free download PDF of “Avoiding First Time Visitor Nightmares.

If you’d like to have local Evangelism Training workshops on hospitality, see our various options at our Live Evangelism Training page.

Adrian Warnock asks: Should You be a Church Plant Leader?  In it he gives video and a list of 20 questions that every church planter should ask.  I was a church planter one, and I work with church planters now.  This is a great inventory to add to the list.

Joshua Cody at Church Marketing Sucks has two great articles that speak to marketing and church.

• Nitpicking our Marketing (Is the breakfast served out of love or a marketing strategy?)
• Semi Automatic Assault Rifle offered as an incentive to visit church (What was that guy thinking?)

Mark Driscoll has been writing about Charles Spurgeon:

Evangelism

The hyper-Calvinists in his day disdained Spurgeon for his passion for lost people to meet Jesus and his continual offering of the gospel of grace to the masses, which led to the baptism of 14,692 converts during his ministry. Despite much mean-spirited opposition, Spurgeon never shied away from calling all people to repentance and used unconventional means, such as meeting in a public theater (not a church) and preaching from a stage (not a raised pulpit), in an effort to be more culturally relevant with his ministry style. Curiously, however, he forbade the use of choirs, organs, and other musical instruments in his church services.

Spurgeon has deeply impressed upon me the importance of always inviting people to repent of sin and trust in Jesus. He rightly shared God’s heart for lost people and his example reveals that one can believe in both election and evangelism, as the Apostle Paul did also. Too often those of us who are theologically reformed spend more time criticizing evangelistic methods than doing evangelism ourselves. I too consider myself something of a reformed evangelist and appreciate that Spurgeon shared a deep love for lost people that God used to save many lives.

Source: Spurgeon Prayed, Laughed, Cared, and Evangelized - Part 3

David Fitch writes 10 Ways to Engage the Poor in the Suburbs.  He took the time to prayer-walk his neighborhood and it didn’t take him long to find ideas.  The poor are not just in the inner city slums, or the rural outskirts of the countryside.  They are indeed right around you. . . .

As we have been looking at houses, praying over the neighborhoods, seeking where we might buy a house, I have walked the neighborhoods trying to open my eyes to where mission could be engaged. I find the suburbs difficult for mission. The poor are so hard to find. Yet as I walked and prayed, I found my imagination stoked by the Spirit. Mission was all around the rhythms of this place. The poor could be found. Here are ten missional places I noticed . .. . . .

Gary Rohyrmayer finds Seven Surprising Facts of the American Church.  Here is one.

The increase in churches is only ¼ of what’s needed to keep up with population growth.

• 3,000 churches close every year
• 3,800 new church starts survived
• Net annual gain: 800 new churches
• Net annual gain needed to keep up with population growth:10,000 new churches

California church reached out via Garbage:

First Christian Reformed Church in Bellflower CA reached out to its community in an unusual way in July (2007), arranging for six huge dumpsters along the road beside its building.  Church members manned the dumpsters to help community members dispose of unwanted items.  They also handed out information about the church.  This marked the third time the church has partnered with the city to help clean up the community
Source: The Banner Magazine (www.thebanner.org), October 2007

On Friday’s, I usually share some of what I’ve been reading on other blogs that is of interest to me.  Some of the material is integrated into our workshops, or into my mind, as this collection is like a journal for Evangelismcoach.org 

There is no real theme other than evangelism, church growth, and things related to them.  You’ll not find links to Obama and McCain insights, or gossip about Paris Hilton, or even a summary of Twitter and Facebook and their value of wasting time or connecting.

Doesn’t happen every Friday, but as there is enough to share.

I finished reading

Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church.

This book is sure to be on the top of the list for Visitor Assimilation texts. 

Note: I read Beyond the First Visit: The Complete Guide to Connecting Guests to Your Church, Gary McIntosh (see my review at Assimilating Church Visitors- Beyond the First Visit). 

To make a comparison between the two books is like comparing a Ferrari to a Escort. 

There are several key elements to Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church that have made their visitor retention rate so astronomical. 

I write about one idea for Survey First Time Visitors.

The entire process is laid out simply in their book (along with lots of shameless plugs for Searcy’s other materials).  

Visitors are gifts from God

His beginning point is to recognize that in God’s sovereignty, every visitor is a Gift to your church.  They didn’t show up by chance.  But rather, as a gift, and “first time gifts full of unparalleled potential.” 

How can we turn them into developing members? 

“By sending that guest to you, God is giving you the privilege of cooperating with Him to move someone forward in their journey toward Jesus.”

What visitor retention rate do I need to reach?

Searcy leads us on a practical exercise.  If you are reading this, think about your church.  To help you bench mark, statistics suggest that each year a church needs to keep

• 3 guests /100 attenders to maintain itself
• 5 guests / 100 attenders to steadily grow
• 7 guests or more / 100 attenders to rapidly grow

Considering your church, how many guests do you need to keep each year?

How well do you retain church visitors now?

What is your retention ratio?  More specifically, here are 6 facts to dig up for your church

• Average attendance per month 2 years ago.
• Average attendance same month 1 year ago.
• What is your annual growth?  Hopefully, the second number is higher than the 1st.
• How many first time guests did you have during the past year?
• Divide your growth / the total number of first timers.

How many visitor you keep?

Assimilation Process

The basic assimilation system that is presented in Fusion is a simple (in overview anyway). 

1. Turn a first time guest into a second time guest.
2. Turn a second time guest into a regular attender.
3. Turn a regular attender into a fully developing member.

The entire rest of the book explores this process and system as it has developed at The Journey church.

The temptation will be to simply buy the book and implement the process as if the process is the key that will solve all your visitor retention problems.  That is systems thinking and treating this system as the next big thing.   Searcy concedes “the church is not a business,” yet in the same sentence adds “[but] we would be smart to take some cues from the consumer-conscious service world.”   This is a solid “nuts and bolts” resource for congregations and ministries alike.

You will need to tweak it for your local context.  For example, their process is very dependent upon email and it is of utmost priority to capture email addresses from their visitors.  Their system depends on it.  Yet some of you may have churches in areas and with people who still don’t use email.  How will you adjust the system to your context?

There are so many variables in visitor retention, including the system.  Others include the friendliness of the congregation, presentation of the facilities, and more.  This book is not the magic happy pill to solve your visitor retention problems, but rather provides a step by step system to at least help with the data gathering and processing to help you “process” visitors.  Of the books I have read on visitor retention, this one presents the best system I have seen.

Order your copy of Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church direct from Amazon.

If you would like live training or consulting about evaluating your hospitality, check out our articles on hospitality and feel free to give us a call at 804-335-1445.  Send an email to and I will send you a hospitality audit form.

Evangelism Training Podcast:

Overflow Podcast Show
A 5 minute podcast on how you can overflow into your non-Christian friends lives. Overflow is the best ideas from the best books on evangelism.  Subscribe through iTunes.  From  Godsquad.com

Improve Search Ranking for your Church’s Website

I was introduced to a company that helps churches optimize their website and helps them place higher in search engines.  As a result of better search rankings (and a newly redesigned website last fall) some churches report seeing more new visitors to our church than ever before.  See Optimize Your Church’s Search Rankings Case Study page at Church Marketing Online.

In American culture, many would look online for information before they’d pick up a phone book, before they’d drive to the church on the corner.  If somebody was looking for a Presbyterian Church in Richmond — would your church’s website appear in the search Engine?  What might a visitor think of your church’s website?

Ministry Marketing Coach series

Chris Forbes of MinistryMarketingCoach.com (who has contributed a guest article here on ministry followup) wrote a great post about the our cooperative role in Evangelism.  We participate in the work the God is doing. 

Some have made evangelism such a passive sport, thinking it will happen all its own.  Chris’ contention is that there is a role that the evangelist plays, like a farmer who has to nurture the soil, SO THAT the plant can grow.  Check out: We need people to witness

Baptists fret over Calvinism’s impact on missions and evangelism

Interesting Statistics about Reformed theology causing a problem in Baptist life.  Check out Tiptoe thru the TULIP. 

Can Calvinist and non-Calvinist Baptists work and worship together?

It depends, some advocates of Reformed theology say, on whether Christians on both sides are willing to tiptoe through the TULIP — the acronym for five doctrinal specifics that mark Calvinism — without stomping on anyone’s flower bed.

PC USA Poised to Grow World Missions

I’m glad to see this article about PC USA Missions.

A proposed 2009-2010 General Assembly Mission Budget – which would increase the number of full-time, financially supported mission workers from the current 196 to 215 in 2009 and 220 in 2010 – was recently approved by the General Assembly Council (GAC).

Stop Being a Friendly Church challenges the church with an interesting twist on hospitality (thanks to Tony Whitaker for highlighting this in the April  Web Evangelism Bulletin).  Essentialy, quit trying to be a “friendly church” and be a church “where you can make friends.”  There is a big difference and the article points out how.

Two items from the Web Evangelism Bulletin:

• Cynthia Ware (TheDigitalSanctuary.org) has written a 10-point guide to sharing your faith in Facebook, which she has generously allowed us to incorporate into our page on social networking:
  http://ied.gospelcom.net/social-networking.php
• Eric Robinson has written a ‘Facebook Application’ called ‘Life Questions’ which allows you to incorporate a block of evangelistic content within your Facebook profile. You can currently link to a range of pages within the EveryStudent.com site, according to your preference:
  http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6611135350

Southern Baptists statistics report a decline in the Number of Baptisms.  According to the Annual Church Profile (ACP) compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources, baptisms in 2007 for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) dropped nearly 5.5 percent to 345,941. That number compares to 364,826 the previous year.  According to the report’s author, many factors contribute to the decline.  But in response, he says local churches must make the Great Commission a priority.  Evangelism will be a key topic at the upcoming SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis in June. During the meeting, the SBC is expected to unveil a ten-year evangelism strategy. The report also showed that total mission expenditures topped $1.3 billion last year.

Have a great weekend.

PS: If you have not taken our reader survey, chime in and get a free download on evangelism definitions.

From Timmy Brister’s Blog: Evangelism, Calvinism, and the SBC « Provocations & Pantings 

According the 2006 Annual Church Profile (ACP), there are 44,223 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention.

10,449 churches baptized NO ONE
3,312 churches baptized ONE PERSON
13,760 churches baptized 1-5 PEOPLE

A total of 27,521 churches in the SBC baptized less than FIVE people for an entire year, which comes to 62% of all SBC churches.

Furthermore, at least three out of four churches are plateaued or declining.. . . . . .
Should we not be lamenting over the nearly 10,500 churches who are practically dead?
Should we not be lamenting over the fact that over 75% of our churches are experiencing no conversion growth?

As an outsider (meaning I’m not a Baptist), I lament with Brister about the evidence of evangelistic growth. 

The Presbyterian Church (USA) counts active membership by profession of faith as their evidence of growth.  The PCUSA Evangelism Statistics for 2006 paints a similar picture.

Let me ask you this?

Does your reaction to these statistics fuel you to prayer?  What impact does this have on your passion for evangelism?