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Evangelismcoach Podcast: Jeff Johnson Personality Based Evangelism

Video about best evangelism courseJeff Johnson is the author of Got Style?

In this Evangelismcoach podcast episode, I talk with Jeffrey Johnson about every evangelism style has a place in the ministry of evangelism.

The styles (with one of the characteristics of each style) are:

  • assertive (confident)
  • analytical(logical)
  • story-telling (engaging)
  • relational (conversational)
  • invitational (hospitable)
  • incarnational (compassionate)

In 6 chapters of Got Style? Personality Based Evangelism, Johnson maps out a biblical example of each style, and speaks of strengths and weaknesses of each.  This goes way beyond the “this is the best or only way of evangelism” most books focus on.

We’ll be talking about how personal evangelism fits into the local church.  The big problem that we see with most evangelism training is that it is divorced from connecting people to the local church.  How can we help the church support the work of evangelism?

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The Rabbit and the Elephant Review

rabbitandelephantcoverToday, I’m participating in a blog book tour for The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small Is the New Big for Today’s Church Tony and Felicity Dale.

Others have published their entry ahead of me (see below), and a few others will follow behind.

The Rabbit and the Elephant

A movement of house churches is reaching the tipping point in North America.  Some claim it’s a second Reformation.

How could we change the world if our Christian faith began multiplying at a rapid pace — through a way of life that is explosive and transformational?

We can grow, can we reproduce?

pic_lg_dale_tonyx100Fleicity Dale

As Christians, we are the church—whether we meet in office buildings, college dorm rooms, coffee shops, factories, or homes—and the Holy Spirit uses us to expand that church to the far reaches of the globe.

By practicing “simple church,” we’ll find that a small gathering of friends loving Jesus together and reaching out to the community around them can help us to be the church, the way God intended.

The Rabbit and the Elephant Synopsis:

If you put two elephants in a room together and close the door, in 22 months you may get one baby elephant. But two rabbits together for the same amount of time will result in thousands of baby rabbits!

In The Rabbit and the Elephant, “micro church” planters Tony and Felicity Dale use the “rabbit” illustration to show the pace at which the Christian faith can (and should) be growing—through evangelism that is explosive and transformational. The Rabbit and the Elephant contains the key to 21st century evangelism—taking the Gospel to where the pain and the people are.

My take on the Rabbit and the Elephant

If you are familiar with Neil Cole (Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens and Organic Leadership: Leading Naturally Right Where You Are) you are likely familiar with the simple church movement.

This book by Tony and Felicity Dale adds to the body of literature about the house church / simple church  movement.

The Rabbit and Elephant can serve as a great introductory book for Christians looking into this model of church planting.  The entire book is written so that one can grab a good introductory level concept of what a house church might look like, how it might multiply, and how a house church can rapidly do the work of personal evangelism.

Overall, I found it to be an easy read, easily digestible, and full of personal stories that model what a house church might do, including some of the messiness of spectacular failures.

Because every house church is unique, The Rabbit and Elephant can’t get into every single detail or challenge presented by one house church, so the authors have to stay at a generic overview level.

But they do provide enough information that one could follow a few practical steps and launch a house church in their own area.

Included are some sample meeting outlines, a FAQ appendix, and a good review of common pitfalls in a simple church.

Worldview

The writers are well seeped in a charismatic worldview, which believes in the ongoing operation of the spiritual gifts and the realty of spiritual warfare.  They firmly believe in God’s miraculous activity and the guidance of the Holy Spirit about how and where to share the gospel.

I share their worldview, so much of this text and examples were easily digestable.  For those that don’t share that worldview (such as dispensational cessationists, or people who aren’t even aware of their worldview), some of the stories and principles may be a stretch, a sticking point, or even heretical in your worldview.

Yet the Dales are clear to say that not all simple churches share their worldview with regards to the spiritual gifts and spiritual warfare.

As another part of their worldview, there is a nice mixing of relational evangelism, which means their church meetings might have more non-believers than believers in them.  If this makes one uncomfortable, then this model of doing church might not work for you.

The best chapter in the Rabbit and the Elephant

Chapter 13, called Luke 10 Principles, outlines their entire church planting methodology.  This chapter alone is worth the price of the book, whether you want to plant a church or simply learn about small group expansions through networks.  In my estimation this chapter is the crux of the entire book so let me give you the basic outline.

1.  Trust God to provide the strategy and workers (Luke 10:1-2)

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

The disciples were sent out as “church planting” teams and directed where to go.  The job of the disciples were to obey His instructions, and go to places where He was to visit.

The root of this is prayer.  They recommend prayer walking (webinar, resources) where you sense Jesus is sending you.

2.  Trust in God’s protection (Luke 10:3)

Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves

As you go places you may very well confront demonic powers (which exposes a worldview claim in the text).  We are to bind the strong man (Luke 11:21-22) and cooperate with God’s rescue.  Ed Silvoso writes much more about this in That None Should Perish.

3.  Trust God to provide Resources (Luke 10:4)

Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road

4.  Trust God to lead you to the Person of Peace (Luke 10:5)

When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you.

This is the most crucial insight into the methodology.  Look for the person of peace who will invite you into their home to start a house church within their social network.

This is a person who has some kind of reputation (good or bad) and has a wide circle of influence.  The church is usually started in that person’s home (p. 105).

New Testament examples would be Cornelius (Acts 10), or Lydia (Acts 16), or perhaps the woman at the well (John 4).

5.  Enjoy the Hospitality that God provides (Luke 10:7-8)

Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you.

Don’t move from home to home, but stay in the home of the person of peace.  House churches celebrate meals together as part of their practice.  Eating with people creates relationship.  At this point, you’ve only become a friend.  There has been no proclamation to this point.

6.  Trust God to Answer Your Prayers (Luke 10:9)

Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’

Look for opportunities to pray with and for people.  You’re looking for opportunity to bring people face to face with God’s activity.  Once you identify needs you can put your faith on the line and pray.

Then watch God respond.  In their experience, this often happens in connection with one of the spiritual gifts, such as prophecy or word of knowledge, as a demonstration of the kingdom of God.  When people experience the power of God in this way, word of mouth causes more people to gather to start studying and learning from God.

The Rabbit and the Elephant For Legacy Churches

They use the term Legacy churches to speak of what most of us think as church:  a gathering of believers in a building, led by one or more pastors, with a worship service that follows some kind of liturgy.  Mainline denominations, evangelical denominations, all of these have what we would consider traditional churches.

For legacy churches thinking about migrating to simple church, this book hints at such a transition, but doesn’t serve as a how to manual to make that transition.  It also doesn’t get into helping one re-frame their current way of doing church into this model.  It doesn’t get into issues like 501c3 status, record keeping, membership, articles of organization, paying a full time pastor, and stuff like that.

It doesn’t deal with some of the confessional theology of legacy churches (such as what are the marks of the church, Westminster confession of faith, ch 25.4).  I think this direction is outside the scope of the book.

However, legacy churches that want to expand their small group structure, this book can have a lot to say in terms of launching new small groups, and empowering people to launch small groups in their areas of influence.  The Luke 10 principles above are, I think, equally applicable there as well.

I also commend the Dales for not ripping the legacy churches as they present an alternative model.

Order your copy of The Rabbit and Elephant from Amazon. (affiliate link)

Related Resources

Other Reviews of The Rabbit and the Elephant

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Beating Dunbars Number

Several years ago, I was challenged as a youth pastor to give my leadership away  — delegate, delegate, and delegate.

The challenger warned me that I could only reach so many people, but if I delegated and empowered, I could lead larger ministries with longer reaches and greater sustainability.

The challenger mentioned that my personal limit of people I could effectively influence was likely around 120-150.

If I could influence leaders, the ministry could grow beyond my personal limits.

One blog I read (ChrisBrogan.com) shares the source behind the social limit of real relationships that a person can maintain.

There’s a theory called Dunbar’s Number that suggests there’s an upper limit to the amount of relationships we can maintain. If you’re interested in networking, this should be an issue. That number, for the record, is 150.

Source: Beating Dunbars Number | chrisbrogan.com.

Implications for pastors

I know of a church plant that started about nearly 10 years ago.  I checked in on it recently, and the pastor reports that it has plateaued about 125-135 people for the past five years and that the turnover rate is about 45% each year.

New people come in, other people leave after about a year or two.  The net effect is that the congregation has remained numerically stable.

This church is a single pastorate, and the pastor has a leadership style where his hand is in everything.

Pastor sets the direction (with a board of government), pastor runs the small groups, pastor runs the worship service and no ministry gets started without the pastor’s initiative.  Recently pastor split up the small groups into different areas, but he still maintains a pretty tight involvement with the leaders.

Pastor lovingly leads it all.  There is joy in the congregation, no complaints, and for this church this type of leadership functions.

It’s not a dictatorship and pastor is not a control freak.  He gets joy out of being involved.

Now, before you agree with me that this is

  • Not healthy, or
  • A recipe for burnout or
  • Effective in a small church, or
  • Leadership style that hinders further growth

let me connect it to the point.

1.  The church will not grow any larger.

If Dunbar’s number holds true, the limit of a single pastor who feels the need to be involved in everything will be about 150.

It seems to me that the congregation has reached the practical end of its growth unless the pastor gives and empowers leadership to raise up their own networks.

2.  Leaders leave because they can’t serve or lead.

This church leadership model does not delegate and empower leadership of other ministry.   It doesn’t effectively raise up others to lead their own network of 150.

Not having a place to serve or contribute their gifts after a while, solid believers leave for a place where they can serve.

This particular congregation is at a stage of church growth.  If it wants to continue its dream of fulfilling its particular calling, one thing that must change is the leadership style.

Implications for Church Planting

I know it’s not as simple as waving a wand to make a solution, but if you are wondering why your church isn’t growing — perhaps you’ve maxed out the social limit of your leaders?

How much leadership can you give away to trusted and respected leaders?

With regards to evangelism training in your church’s DNA, is the pastor in charge of it all, or is that delegated as well to empowered leaders?

One church planting coach that I have gotten to know uses Jethro’s advice to Moses — delegate and empower.  Put people in charges of 50s, 100s, and 1000s.

Implications for Church Visitor Retention Rates

There are practical implications here as well to keeping church visitors in your midst.

In the church I describe, the back door is as big as the front door.

People come and perhaps stay connected for a little while, but without the empowerment to lead and serve in ministries, they may likely take their gifting elsewhere where they are needed.

Your church is working hard at retaining visitors and building connections, but the leadership DNA won’t let it grow.

Coaching corner:

Could this issue — 150 people per pastor — be part of the reason?   Take a look and think about it for a while.  Add your comments below.

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Each week, I send out new articles that might help your evangelism committee grow your church through personal evangelism, church invitations, and leading your congregation in evangelistic outreach.  You’ll usually find a gem that you can use each week  in or at least every other week.  Join our community and share your thoughts.

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Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part III

evangelism where you liveI’ve been reading Evangelism Where You Live: Engaging Your Community and I think it is a must read book for pastors of churches seeking to engage its community.

See Part I of Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part I

See Part II of Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part II

This final section of Chapters 5 – 8 gets into the nuts and bolts of what this might look like in the local church.

CBSE involves a Christ follower who serves others out of his or her passion, using one’s spiritual gifts at connection points of need in the community to demonstrate the love of Jesus to others as a salt and light servant.  . . . .

Administratively, CBSE reduces the church’s events and ongoing programs to allow people to be deployed into their daily lives to exercise their passions and gifts. (73)

Chapter 5: Salt and Light Servants

The majority of current discipleship material seems to be focused on information, not so much on experiential transformation.  The idea was that better information and accumulated information would lead to spiritual transformation.

The authors have seen this descend into matters of personal preference, rallies around the latest Christian bestseller, and rabbit trails into the most effectively marketed latest trend .

However, they see a shift from information to experience.

A method that fosters experience to help shape a person’s spiritual formation.

Educational materials are connected with service in the community “as the context to live out the expression of a life in relationship to Christ.”

I have often noted and taught that I learn by doing.

In other businesses, I could study, study, study, but until I was actually doing, the study didn’t make sense.  Study lead to hypothesizing, thinking about 1000 what ifs.

But not until I got into people’s lives and talking with them 1-1 about their spiritual journey did any of the studies seems to start finding a purpose.

Perhaps a quote from Randy Pope captures this better in this illustration:

Much in the way that eating creates no appetite for exercise, so too, I have found that Bible study and prayer alone do not create mission oriented Christians.  But, just as exercise creates a desire for food and drink, mission related activities create an insatiable thirst and hunger to feed on God’s word (89).

The idea is deploy your church members to serve their community and that kind of relational context will spur personal growth.

Eating has never created in us a desire to exercise, but preparing to run 26.2 miles in about 4 hours definitely creates not only a desire, but a need to eat (89).

In the same way, service may very well be the missing factor in developing fully devoted followers of Christ.  Transformation happens in combination with information and experience.

Chapter 6: Connection Points

The subtitle focuses the chapter on Evangelism Training.  The authors have given lots of evangelism training over the years, from memorizing gospel scripts, to relational evangelism seminars, yet not seeing any statistical evidence of new believers.  The rare church had more than 5 new believers in a year after the seminar.

Church’s are beginning to ask “Why is training people on how to share their faith not resulting in new Christ followers?”

The authors claim that intentional community service is the missing ingredient.  The chief issue is that our church members have lost touch with genuine relationships with people far from God.

To fulfill the front half of the Great Commission the process will always begin with a Christ-follower connecting with someone far from God.  To lead someone into a personal relationship with Christ has little to do with whether someone has attended training and learned a model presentation to the Gospel (95).

Connecting Points

The chapter lays out how to find connection points with the local community, beginning with an inventory from Becoming a Contagious Christian, Hybels and Mittleberg:

  • People we know
  • People we used to know
  • People we would like to know.

I use a similar idea with Spheres of Influence.

The key for churches is to assist members in creating a context for connection, but it remains up to the individual member to connect.

The third group, people we would like to know, is where the role of community service comes into play.  Relationships develop best around a need the mutual relationship can meet.

Where is your church member passionate?  Where is their burden? Examples:

  • Single Moms?
  • Fatherless kids?
  • Teachers?
  • Firefighters?
  • Undercover FBI agents?
  • Little League?

Where are their gifts?  Administratively gifted folks can organize events or run leagues.  Mercy gifted folks can visit people.

We have come to realize that not assisting our church members to develop a connection point into an authentic relationship is simply not providing good leadership.

Chapter 7 and 8: Implementing CBSE

Chapter 7 and 8 map out how to make such philosophical changes in implementing Community Based servant evangelism.  The authors note that there are several books about systemically changing a congregation, and they note that their system works when followed.

The process is organic and leadership driven.

First four steps are for the pastor, the next two are are for the leadership, and the last 5 are how to make it public.

  • Pray and read the Bible
  • Church leadership must own the mission of “Love God and Love Others”
  • Must be totally supported by the Senior Pastor and or Lead Pastor
  • Enlist top / key church influencers
  • Enlist a CBSE champion
  • Enlist a CBSE leadership team
  • Design a plan
  • Provide training
  • Cast the vision to your church
  • Implement the plan
  • Evaluate all aspects and correct

This list may seem generic in terms of changing systems, but the chapters tease them out more fully.

A Pastor’s Personal Prayer life

It strikes me how a pastor’s personal relationship with God is the root of this change, not only the pastors, but so also the rest of the leadership.

In a 2007 review of surveys of pastors,

two hundred seventy (270 or 26%) of pastors said they regularly had personal devotions and felt they were adequately fed spirituality.

Seven hundred fifty-six (756 or 72%) of the pastors we surveyed stated that they only studied the Bible when they were preparing for sermons or lessons.

If the root of systemic change in a church is found in a pastor’s personal relationship with God, then how can churches give their pastors time to nurture that relationship?    From another study in the same report:

We found that 90% of pastors work more than 50 hours a week. One out of three pastors state that being in the ministry is clearly hazardous for their families. One out of three pastors felt totally burned out within the first five years of ministry.

Research from Crandall (see 5 phases of renewal from Turnaround and Beyond: A Hopeful Future for the Small Membership Church) indicates that personal renewal is the number one factor in successful turnaround in churches.

Research from Martha Gay Reese (Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism (Real Life Evangelism Series) elevates the importance of prayer for a congregation to pick up and maintain an evangelistic passion.

Order your copy

Evangelism Where You Live: Engaging Your Community from Amazon

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Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part II

evangelism where you liveI’ve been reading Evangelism Where You Live: Engaging Your Community and I think it is a must read book for pastors of churches seeking to engage its community.

See Part I of Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part I

The authors do make progress in developing their thesis in the remainder part of the book.

Chapter 3: Place

In my take, Chapter 3 serves as the crux of the entire book, even before the authors get to defining what they mean by community based servant evangelism.

They do an analysis of the idea of “the third place.” I think Starbucks is famous for that term.

I remember reading Pour Your Heart Into It, about the founding of Starbucks.  Founder Howard Schultz does not conceal his passion for good coffee or for his company. His initial goals were to introduce Americans to really fine coffee, provide people with a “third place” to gather and treat his employees well.

In an attempt to make Starbucks a “home away from home”, the café section of the store is often outfitted with comfortable chairs, as well as the usual tables and hard-backed chairs found in cafés. Free electricity outlets are provided for patrons, and many branches also have wireless Internet access.  Many larger retail stores also host “mini-concerts” for local musicians (Wikipedia)

Other stores have followed suite, such as bookstores.

Wikipedia describes the third place as: “Third places, then, are “anchors” of community life and facilitate and foster broader, more creative interaction.”

To Wilkes and Pate,

Place is a prioritized period of time which an individual is forced, feels obligated, or chooses to invest who they are. [Emphasis mine] (46).

Best use of Place?

The question they ask, and the brilliant one that struck me:

What place is the local church for most people?

What place should it be?  First, second, third, or farther down the list?  . . As the local church goes after first, second, or third place, with whom will they do battle?  . . .

Why do churches add places instead of leveraging the places that are already central to people’s lives?

As the foundational premise for their community based servant evangelism, Wilkes and Pate argue that church members should be out in the community as the “third place” serving the community in ways that utilize their passion and gifts.

To those far from God, the church is likely not even in the top 10.  To those who even are close to God, I would argue it’s not even 3rd for many of us.

Family, work, school activities, typically fulfill first, second, and third in a person’s life.  Followed in no particular order with personal or family interests, sports, music lessons, recreational activity, leisure activity, community activities and religion activities.

Where is the church to fit when it has to compete for all these “spaces” in the lives of those who haven’t made space for it yet?  People will make space for what they deem valuable.  Marketers know that.

If we think of all the person hours it takes to run the church, have we left our parishioners with enough space to build relationships with unchurched people?

Helping our members in the 3rd Place

The key question for Wilkes and Pate is this:

Why can’t the church support its members when they are involved in their third, forth, and fifth place activities?

Why can’t the local church encourage members to serve in secular and civic organizations instead of only serving church programs?

Our churches can re-engage it’s culture by actively serving in schools, community, and civic organizations at a higher place (51).

Serving in the community as the third place will provide for lots of natural opportunities for people to share their faith and meet the needs of the community.

They provide several examples about coaching volleyball, helping neighbors find jobs, counseling for teen pregnancies, homeless shelters.  These community service activities are more than just good works, but provide conversational connection points where church members can share their faith and influence the world.

This can help your church members get beyond the “I don’t know any non Christians” (See Do you have any non-Christian Friendships?).

By giving your church members

  • permission and encouragement to serve in the community
  • training on how to talk about their faith

you can help the people build relationships with those who are outside the church.   This sets up Chapter 4 and the rest of the book.

Chapter 4: Defining Community Based Servant Evangelism

Community based servant evangelism (which they dub CBSE) is more than doing random acts of kindness in Jesus name.  It’s intentional evangelism.

It’s a philosophy of ministry and strategy of organizing the church that will influence ministry, events, and programs of the local church and specifically, the community (55).

Pate and Wilkes spend the next several pages defining each word and how they are using it.

The end result is picture of empowering individuals and small groups to find a need in the community that fits their passion and gifts and then creatively find ways to meet that need.

The resultant relational connections built on the foundation of service and meeting mutual needs establish opportunities for spiritual growth and evangelism.  Instead of always recruiting church members for program needs of the church, this permission giving approach empowers your members to get out and serve.

As people serve, relationships naturally form.  The evangelism portion of this model is for your members to be intentional in looking for opportunities to talk about their own spiritual walk with Christ.

CBSE involves a Christ follower who serves others out of his or her passion, using one’s spiritual gifts at connection points of need in the community to demonstrate the love of Jesus to others as a salt and light servant.  . . . .

Administratively, CBSE reduces the church’s events and ongoing programs to allow people to be deployed into their daily lives to exercise their passions and gifts. (73)

This really is a philosophy of ministry.  In this chapter, the authors give lots of examples of how this has played out in their experience and what it means for this to become part of the DNA of a congregation.

Learn more

Part III (final Part) comes tomorrow — Grab my feed to have it delivered to you automatically.  See Part I of Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part I

Learn more about this philosophy of ministry direct from the author, Stephen Pate.

Register for the Community Based Servant Evangelism Webinar this coming Thursday.

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Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part 1

I’ve been reading Evangelism Where You Live: Engaging Your Community and I think it is a must read book for pastors of churches seeking to engage its community.

Over the next few days leading up to the Community Based Servant Evangelism Webinar, I’ll be pulling out a few themes. [Read more…] about Evangelism Where You Live – A Review Part 1

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