Coaching Congregational Evangelism

February 16, 2010 by EvangelismCoach 3 Comments

How Pastors Lead Congregational Evangelism #1

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Coaching Congregational Evangelism

Pastor, you have a remarkable privilege to address a group of people each and every week and influence their life for growth in Jesus.

Every time I step into a pulpit, I recognize that responsibility and realize that my words will be empowered by the Spirit of God to change people.

From the front platform, pulpit, or stage, you can coach a passion for evangelism in the congregation, or even call people to respond to what God is doing in their life.

Over the next few days, I want to share with you a new series:

5 Ways a Pastor can raise the Evangelistic Temperature of the Congregation.

Key #1 Share Personal Evangelism Experience

In 3 Keys to Ignite the Evangelism Passion of a Congregation, I encourage pastors to tell their own stories of personal evangelism.

Raw stories about conversations, successes, failure.

Tell them regularly.

Hmmm, I don’t have any stories.

If you are like many pastors, you may have very few stories to tell.

Reese’s research in Unbinding the Gospel found that many pastors have no personal experience with evangelism (Reese, 9).

The footnote explains that 10 out of 60 denominational seminaries in mainline denominations require even half a course in evangelism for graduation. The other half of the course is often paired with stewardship (p. 22).

Hmmm, I don’t have time. . . .

I know it’s not easy.

In this video (Can Pastors find time for Evangelism?) Pastor Richard White talks about his own struggles to find time as an evangelist.

Pastors have so many responsibilities that evangelism often gets overlooked for easier responsibilities. Particularly solo pastors that are doing everything from the weekly bulletin, visitation, weddings, funerals, and fixing the leaking toilets.

How do I grow in this area?

Let me suggest some action steps for you:

Make a list of 5 people that you are actively seeking to influence for Christ.
- If you can’t fill the list, what can you do this month to change that?
- If you can fill the list, pray for each one and ask God to give you a chance to talk with them more this week.
Make a list of the conversations you had in the last 10 days with non-Christians about their journey towards Christ.
Read

If you would like a 30 day personal coaching plan in personal evangelism during the next month, contact me via email our contact page. Consider using some of your study leave money for this.

Stay tuned for the next part in our series, 5 Ways a Pastor can raise the Evangelistic Temperature of the Congregation.

February 19, 2010 by EvangelismCoach Leave a Comment

How Pastors Lead Congregational Evangelism #3

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Coaching Congregational Evangelism

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.

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.

February 17, 2010 by EvangelismCoach 1 Comment

How Pastors Lead Congregational Evangelism #2

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Coaching Congregational Evangelism

I’ve been listening to some podcasts from various different churches in the United States as I exercise. (Read: 6 Steps to Get your sermons recorded again to see a cheap and easy way to make them available on line.)

One key feature that I’ve observed in the podcast of these growing churches is the regular appearance of some kind of life-changing testimony.

Why someone started to follow Christ.
Journey to baptism
Celebration of baptism.
Celebration of new members.
Stories of how program / preaching series made a difference.

With each one of these testimonies, the pastor affirmed the congregation and reinforced the values of personal and corporate evangelism.

This brings me to Key #2 in our series: 5 Ways a Pastor can raise the Evangelistic Temperature of the Congregation.

Key #2: Testimonies of Life Change

In these podcasts, the pastor gave some of sermon time to let people tell their own story.

I listened to them and made the following observations.

1. Testimonies were brief.

Some were given by video, some were given live.

It is clear that the videos were edited to tell the story in a compact form, and likely the individuals were coached in how to tell their story in a few minutes. Many people are nervous giving any kind of talk, so some intentional preparation of live speakers likely was made.

2. Testimonies were on topic.

If the sermon series was on acts of grace, the story was about an act of grace that transformed a life.

If the sermon was on prayer, the story was how someone experienced an answer to prayer, often through the anonymous involvement of a church member.

3. The pastor congratulated the congregation.

For our purposes, this is the most crucial point.

These stories are the fruit of the congregations evangelism efforts.

When the testimony was over, the pastor would say something like: “Isn’t that awesome to see how God . . . . ” Often there was some spontaneous applause of thanksgiving.

Then the pastor helped the congregation see it’s role in that person’s story and then praised them for cooperating with God, praised them for their invitations, praised them for serving and answering prayer.

Those words of affirmation continue to reinforce the role of all aspects of evangelism – the fruit of the labor.

Key times:

Two particular celebration events come to mind.

1. Baptism.

As individuals come to faith in your church, let them tell their stories.

Baptisms are a memorable time to tell stories.

People can see and celebrate life change. People can partly identify with stories of others walking through the same circumstance.

Celebrating Baptisms can be a great time to remind your church of the role they played in God’s work.

2. New Member ceremonies.

If your church does those publicly, these can be another time of highlighting the transforming grace of Jesus Christ.

Since I do a lot of thinking about hospitality and welcome issues, I often learned before hand why did these new members choose to stay. Invariably, one key factor was how they were welcomed as a church visitor.

This would be a time to congratulate the congregation on doing a good job on welcoming the visitor.

Action:

Look out over the next 6-10 weeks of your preaching schedule.
- Are there baptisms / new member events scheduled?
- Do you need to organize such a celebration?
Look out over your next preaching series or two.
- Are there people in your congregation that are growing in an area of your preaching topic whose story would make for a good testimony?
- Schedule a testimony that is related to your topic.
- Work with your video team to get a story, or work with the person to tell their story.

Personal note:

March 6, 2010 we’ll be celebrating 4 adult baptisms!

We’re turning it into a big celebration of God’s work of redemption.

Stay tuned for the next part in our series,

5 Ways a Pastor can raise the Evangelistic Temperature of the Congregation.

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February 23, 2010 by EvangelismCoach 6 Comments

How Pastors Lead Congregational Evangelism #4

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Coaching Congregational Evangelism

Sometimes I wonder if in the big rush to be “missional” that some churches forget the attractional side of their main event – the worship service on Sunday.

But, for many churches, that Sunday event is not something that will be going away or be done away with. It’s not an either or proposition.

Rather, the question for this series is how to utilize the Sunday morning worship service to lead congregational evangelism? [Read more…] about How Pastors Lead Congregational Evangelism #4

February 24, 2010 by EvangelismCoach Leave a Comment