5 Habits of Personal Evangelism for Church Planters

The church planter must spend a majority of their time in efforts of personal evangelism.

I found from my own church planting experiences that other things will often force their way in to distracting you from this work:

Fundraising
Leadership Development
Administrative Details
Counseling people
Life and family

All of those other things are important.

After prioritizing the family, the church planter should dedicate time to the priority of personal evangelism.

It is a constant battle of preventing these many good things to block out the priority of personal evangelism.

Here then are 5 habits of personal evangelism for the church planter to nurture.

1. Build relationships with people who are far from God.

A church planter needs to spend most of their time building intentional relationships with people who do not know Christ.

I regularly provide evangelism training for an organization that seeks to reach teenagers for Christ.

I took a peek at some of their daily schedules. They have blocked out 3 out of every 4 Saturdays to spend time at the public soccer fields, enabling them to know kids from their community.

Group of people in a park setting, spending time with people. — Build relationships with people who do not know the Lord

There are other events along the way in their schedule where they will serve the community, but the bulk of their time is networking.

If you are planting a church, how much time are you spending with people who don’t know Jesus?

If you are church planting and raising up a new work, what can you do this week to further build new relationships?

2. Pray for open doors to spiritual conversations.

A church planter’s personal evangelism work is prayer and conversations. I’ve made a prayer list of people.

As I pray for each person my list, I ask God to show me their spiritual thirst.

Sometimes, it seems that God tells me ahead of time what thirst I’m to look for. Other times, I notice spiritual thirst when they bring it up in conversation.

Prayer makes me sensitive to seeing spiritual thirst in conversations.

Cracked clay river bed - thirsty for water — Pray for spiritually thirsty people.

Church planting pastors need to listen for spiritual thirst and learn to ask effective spiritual questions to help people become aware of their spiritual thirst.

Prayer will also make the church planter sensitive to those “random conversations” with total strangers who are asking spiritual questions, sometimes known as divine appointments.

In my experience teaching personal evangelism seminars, those who spend the next 30 days in prayer find they have more opportunities to have natural conversations.

3. Maximize Your Networking Time.

Following the process mapped out in Luke 10, look for the person of peace.

The person of peace can often put the church planter in direct contact with 15-20 more people in short order.

A person of peace that I’m working with put me in touch with 10 other people.

You might also be able to network in established groups, such as community associations, parent-teacher organizations, sports leagues, or business networking group.

Read: Person of peace

4. Grow your evangelism conversation skills.

A church planter must learn to discern how the current conversation fits in the spiritual journey a person is making.

Are there more spiritual questions that need answers?
Is more information needed about who was Jesus?
Is there a need to build further trust and credibility as a Christian witness?
Is there a need for healing and forgiveness from Christians who hurt them?
Are they at the point of conversion?

Grow your evangelism skills, become comfortable sharing your faith.

The skill for the church planter is to discern

the spiritual thirst and
the place in the journey the person is making.

The conversation skill involves asking good questions, listening skills, and seeing the connections to gospel stories and yours.

Read: The stages of the spiritual journey to Christ

5. Know your own stories.

There are four types of evangelistic story:

A church planter must be very familiar with their own spiritual journey (often known as a testimony), as well as the current work of God in life.

If you haven’t yet explored your own journey to faith and the significant steps along the way, spend time getting familiar with your story.

Think back to when your spiritual restlessness started and map out the key events and steps along the way.

Tell more than the moment of your conversion. Tell the backstory that led to that point.

Person journaling at table - know your faith stories — Spend time to journal and reflect on your faith stories

Along with the church planter’s personal story, the church planter needs to be able to present the gospel clearly and simply.

In my experience giving personal evangelism seminars around the US, many of the attendees think they can share the gospel. They’ve heard it for years.

But when they are put on the spot and have to give an explanation without preparation, they stumble around and discover that they really can’t.

The final story skill a church planter must have is being able to see the current activity of God in life right now.

What is God teaching you through His word?
How is God leading you?
How is God providing for you?
How is God healing you?
In what ways do you see the activity of God in your life right now?

Action steps for the church planter

Review the list of skills above.
Pick one to focus on this week.
What is the next step you need to take to improve in this area?

EvangelismCoach Resources for the church planter:

If you want 1-1 personal evangelism coaching, I’ve got space available to start a 90 day coaching program where we meet by phone twice a month for 1 hour each. Contact me for details via the contact us page.