Evangelism Training in the Local Church

Many churches (particularly in mainline traditions) ask me about evangelism training.

• Are there good programs available?
• What program do you recommend?
• How do I as a pastor train my church to do evangelism?
• What resources are good for us?

The best form of personal evangelism training is simply to do it and have debriefing sessions after the event to help one reflect on the spiritual conversations that have occurred.

It might feel clumsy at the beginning, and a little awkward, but with the progress of the training, conversations will get easier to have and become more comfortable.

One Example of Evangelism Training

One idea is to consider a small group that focuses on accountability to have a spiritual conversation each week.

The conversation can be between friends, or with a stranger that God underlines for you.

The group could meet weekly with the sole purpose of

1. Praying for each other to have the eyes to see whom God is underlining.
2. Discuss your evangelistic conversations since the prior meeting.
3. Debrief the conversations to discern what worked and what didn’t.
4. Dismiss again till next time.

The group doesn’t study an evangelism book, think about welcoming visitors, or read academic treaties between incarnational evangelism vs. proclamational evangelism, missional vs. attractional church growth, or emergent postmodernism.

The group simply focuses on the spiritual practice of evangelism — having evangelistic conversations and holding each other accountable to it.

Debriefing the conversations

Some questions I like to ask are:

1. “How did God point out that person to you?”
2. “Where did you notice God was already at work?”
3. “What was their spiritual thirst?”
4. “What would you do differently?”
5. “What did you share about Christ?”

Let me ask you this?

• Do you have a similar evangelism group?
• What does your church do for personal evangelism training?

Let me suggest:

Send me via email what your church does for evangelism training and I will send you a list of 99 questions to launch an evangelistic conversation.

See also: Effective Evangelism Training Lab Time, Evangelism Training.

Evangelism Training Study Course

For a home study course on personal evangelism, consider my course: