Pastors carry the torch of vision, and are usually the key public person of influence in a congregation.
It’s been observed that pastors are asked to cast vision for everything from
- Finding volunteers for work parties or service projects,
- Recruiting volunteers for Children’s Church,
- Encouraging small group participation
- Community initiatives or outreaches,
- Stewardship and fundraising,
- Building programs,
- And so on.
Pastors cast vision about the mission and vision of the church.
You have the sacred privilege to speak regularly in front of your church and the responsibility to define the congregation’s core values and restate the goals.
Pastors are also developer of leaders.
In part 3 of our series, 5 Ways a Pastor can raise the Evangelistic Temperature of the Congregation we’ll look at how pastors can cultivate an evangelism passion within the leadership of their church.
Develop your leaders through shaping their vision.
Key #3. Challenge your staff and/or leaders for their own personal evangelism.
Pastor, many of you have a church leadership board of some kind, and many of you may be in multiple staff situations.
Spread the evangelistic fire in your own heart by nurturing it in those who work most closely with you in the life of the church.
If you are the lead pastor, one way to increase a congregation’s passion for evangelism is to regularly challenge your staff and/or board in their own personal evangelism.
If you are not the lead pastor, but lead teams, committees, or small groups, challenge the leaders you lead for their own personal evangelism.
Faith Sharing in Church Staff Meetings
Do you make time in your church staff meetings to share stories of transformation? Do you mix stories of evangelism and staff meetings?
Leading Gospel-Centered Church Meetings is a post from Goodmanson about their monthly planning meetings at Kaleo Church in San Diego CA.
In their monthly planning meetings, they begin with stories of God’s current activity in their life by asking
Where is God at work?
I like to use this question and to solicit stories:
What is God doing in your today that makes the gospel good news?
1. Cultivate Personal Evangelism
For example, lead them in thinking through
- What can they do to grow their own evangelism skills?
- Can they make a list of 5 people that they are actively seeking to influence for Christ?
- Are they praying regularly for those 5 people?
- What are they doing to invest in those relationships?
- Are they regularly inviting and bringing people to church?
Hold them accountable through such means as your regular performance reviews or leadership development meetings.
Of course, lead by example.
2. Personal Development
If you encourage personal reading as part of a leader’s growth, suggest a few books on the theme of evangelism. (See my Recommended Books on Personal Evangelism, or Church Hospitality Books).
Discuss what is being read and what difference that will make in their ministry.
I make a habit of trying to read at least 2 books a month to grow myself. One is usually on leadership and life skills, the other is on something about evangelism, church growth, church planting, or theology.
Since this is my area of specialty, I read a lot of evangelism books.
You may want to have your staff read only one or two on evangelism.
Use study leave money or conference money to send your staff to an evangelism conference or organize one for your local area. Since you are likely trying to develop your staff in many different areas, you may only be able to do an evangelism conference every second or third year.
The idea is to be intentional in your choices of the multitude of conferences out there.
3. Cast vision in their areas of responsibility
Coach the evangelistic passion in their areas of ministry and leadership, like small groups, worship teams, Christian Education.
Lead them in thinking through:
- How their ministry activity be more welcoming to visitors.
- How their leadership spreads the evangelistic vision into their area of responsibility.
- Cultivating the evangelistic leadership development of the leaders they lead.
- How their small groups can be more invitational and welcoming.
Cultivate prayer
Effective church leadership teams pray together. I’ve grown convinced that more is accomplished in prayer rather than incessant conversations that never end.
Prayer is
- where passion for the lost can be expressed,
- longings for more salvations can be stated, and
- agreeing in prayer has a side benefit of mutually encouraging one another.
Take some of your prayer time in your staff meetings to have each one pray for those who don’t know Christ.
Spend prayer time as a team praying for your church’s evangelistic outreaches.
Spend prayer time as a team praying for the church’s new preaching series and the effectiveness of invitational-type activities.
Organize prayer walks in your community.
Action:
- Give space in the next leadership meeting for encouraging evangelism among your leadership or staff.
- Brainstorm ways you can help your leaders identify and grow in their personal relationships.
- Look at your calendar for the next 6 weeks.
- What are some events that you can be more intentional in incorporating faith sharing conversations.
- Read
Stay tuned for the next part in our series that will come out next week.
5 Ways a Pastor can raise the Evangelistic Temperature of the Congregation.
How Pastors Lead Congregational Evangelism #2
Leave a Reply