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Connecting Points: Evangelism Essentials
I am a Pastor. My church is…
(Click on the titles to jump to the responses.)
—Resistant to evangelism.
—Using an Invest and Invite strategy.
—Using a structured outreach and personal evangelism strategy.
—Is resistant to another evangelism approach or program.
—Opposed to a sales approach to evangelism.
—Already stretched to the max.
—Trying to help people live missionally in their everyday lives.
I would describe myself as…
(Click on the titles to jump to the responses.)
—Feeling pressured to produce high numbers of baptisms, but concerned about giving people space to make a decision.
—More concerned with growing Christians in their faith than in personal evangelism.
—Opposed to evangelism as a sales approach.
If your church is…—Resistant to evangelism.
• The evangelism strategy model begins with helping churches develop a climate for evangelism which will help prepare the people to receive the strategy the pastor and the church leadership develops.
• The pastor first models and communicates the value to the members.
• The church begins by praying for lost people by name. During this prayer time, both corporate and personal, God not only works in the life of the lost person, but also to soften the hearts of the church members. Any one can pray, not every will, but they can.
• Most church members can find ways to love the people they are praying for. This is a fairly easy step for Christians to take toward people they love and are praying for.
If your church is…—Using an Invest and Invite strategy.
• If your church is seeing fruit with this approach, then continue using it and then incorporate some other of the Expressions for this model. To do Invest and Invite well, your church is probably already connecting with lost people fairly well, but make sure that includes an intentional prayer component as you invest in the relationship and then as you invite them to a Bridging or Harvesting effort.
• If your church is doing this approach with effectiveness, then you are probably hosting guests well by making the preparations and settings and language fit them well. Make sure that your church as the norm has solid biblical relationships that are free from unresolved conflict which may hinder the work of the Holy Spirit and also be a turn off to lost people if they sense interpersonal conflicts.
• Two Expressions that might need your attention are Evangelism Training and Connecting & Deploying Disciples. As church members become armed with their testimony and the basics of the salvation message, they will be more effectively engaged with their lost friends. As they share the gospel story and their own salvation story, they will get the earthly and eternal rewards with the fruit of their lives and verbal sharing. Every single Christian has a salvation story that is powerful, equipping them to share it will only enhance their ministry as they both invest and invite others. There are people that will never hear the gospel unless the feet of a saint brings it to them.
• The call of the Great Commission is to make disciples, people who learn to follow and learn to obey regularly the commands of God. As a part of this, make a big deal of baptism and ask the new believer to invite their friends. Also help them get connected to a small group of people who are also learning to obey God and the church as a whole. And then, think about arming the new believers with their salvation story with their personal excitement about their new faith and assist them in telling their story to 4-6 lost friends in the first month or so. Help them get redeployed.
If your church is…—Using a structured outreach and personal evangelism strategy.
• If you are finding fruit in using structured approaches to evangelism, that is great and keep doing them. Often churches using this approach will find help in 2 or 3 specific expressions of evangelism in the model to support their heavy emphasis on personal evangelism training and possibly on Bridging and Harvesting efforts. As with all approaches to evangelism, Prayer is an essential expression.
• In considering the Enjoy and Serve, you may find that encouraging your church members to have an attitude of joy as they both go and as they receive them to be helpful to your overall fruit. While lost people are targeted in some respects, they need to be engaged with an attitude of love and service in the midst of their personal evangelism efforts.
• Evangelism is not just going, but being ready with God-honoring hospitality as the lost people engage your church as a whole. These people will want to know at least two things when they come from your outreach efforts: (1) Do I feel like this is a safe and warm place to consider the claims of Christ for my life? and, (2) Do the lives of these people support their message, especially in how they relate to one another? So, give attention to both internal relationships and how you both receive and then follow-up with guests.
• As in any approach to evangelism, you will want to celebrate baptism as a special event. Work with intentionality to connect the new believer to a small group of people learning to follow Jesus and then help them to share their salvation story with 4-6 lost friends in the first month or so.
If your church is…—Is resistant to another evangelism approach or program.
• This particular model is designed to help your church design your own contextual approach to evangelism. This is not another program to follow, but a guide to assist you in developing an evangelism strategy that fits your particular church as it seeks to be a church engaged in expanding God’s Kingdom.
• Do remember that evangelism is a spiritual battle and that individuals and possibly churches collectively can get caught in listening to the lies of Satan which would prevent them from being open and obedient to evangelism. It is Satan and demonic beings who do not want evangelism to take place.
• How a church engages in evangelistic Great Commission living can be on the table for various methods, but for a church to be engaged in evangelistic Great Commission living is not. In fact, it is for this purpose that Jesus came and died and it is for this purpose that He established the church.
If your church is…—Opposed to a sales approach to evangelism.
• The gospel is not something that churches or individuals sell, but something we freely give away. Evangelism is about expanding the glory of God on earth and in the lives of people just like someone did for us.
• You get to help your church members to participate in changing eternity. Think now about how you came to saving faith in Christ and the people and/or church that God used.
• Evangelism at the appropriate time, we do persuade people to give their lives to Christ. However, it is only after there is clarity in the gospel and understanding on the part of the lost person. To persuade prior could be characterized as sales, but to not persuade people you love after there is clarity, would not be love or in keeping with biblical command.
If your church is…—Already stretched to the max.
• Love Your Neighbor – Share Christ is not a program to be maintained. It is a call and resourcing of your church members to live out in word and deed the gospel which has been given and entrusted to them. The heart of why churches is exist is to make more and better disciples.
• A significant goal is to help individual Christians learn to live in such a way as to include praying for lost people by name, enjoying and serving them in their normal patterns of life and also in intentional ways, and then getting prepared to express love by preparing themselves to share the hope that lives within them. In doing these, they will want to live authentically with each other as a corporate testimony of the power of God and make preparations to host their neighbors and friends as their lost friends explore the claims of Christ.
If your church is…—Trying to help people live missionally in their everyday lives.
• The vast majority of the expressions in Love Your Neighbor – Share Christ assist individual church members in their missional lives. All Christians can pray, enjoy and serve lost people, and gain insights on how to share their faith through evangelism training of various forms such as tell their story and God’s story. They are great connections between missional living and the 6 Expressions.
• The model of expression also calls for a celebration of their new salvation, a connecting to the body of Christ because Christianity is not an individual sport, and then the goal of redeploying the new follower to live and share their faith as a missionary themselves.
• The Expression Friendly Up the Church is designed to provide the best possible environment to assist your people with confirming the gospel in their lives by both the lives of other Christians and by the way they are greeted and hosted. Lost people will come to Christ in many different ways, but it will typically involve that lost person being around other Christians and the church corporately. When they are there, we want them to see Christians engaging each other well and hosting them in culturally appropriate ways.
• The Expression Bridging and Harvest. Your missional Christians will have greater effectiveness as they build a bridge to the lost person through the gospel and as they encounter other Christians. Obviously harvesting can happen one-on-one, but it can also happen through attractive harvesting efforts.
If you would describe yourself as…—Feeling pressured to produce high numbers of baptisms, but concerned about giving people space to make a decision.
• God has called us to be faithful in the harvesting process and we want to be fruitful as well, but it is God who gives the increase. Guilt and pressure are not good motivations to share the gospel, but loving obedience and the eternal state of people should be enough to move us toward obedience.
• We do not know what God has done to prepare a particular person before we arrive on the scene, but giving one’s life to Christ is a simple decision on one hand and on the other it is absolutely the most important decision one will ever make in their life. So, this particular model to help you develop your strategy allows for some space for people to think about what it means to surrender one’s life to Christ.
• This particular model and approach builds into people in stages as quickly or slowly as necessary. People can move quickly into salvation as the Holy Spirit draws, but the engagement with them from Christians is often in a staged approach.
• Christians are commanded to be ready in season and out of season, but the model involves identifying people to pray for who salvation is not certain. The Christian should be gaining a greater compassion for others and at the same time developing a greater sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who can guide.
If you would describe yourself as…—More concerned with growing Christians in their faith than in personal evangelism.
• Certainly both sides of the conversion experience is important. The Biblical call is to make disciples who are baptized and learn to obey. Implied in the Great Commission is that the church would be seeking to make more disciples.
• The church and individuals are commanded to make disciples as they are going, which means we want to help fellow followers of Christ to obey and also be ready to share Christ personally.
• From a biblical perspective, Christians being involved in personal evangelism is a part of and contributes toward their growth as a disciple.
• A study of the church in Jerusalem and the church at Antioch demonstrates the importance of the church ministering outward, not just inward.
If you would describe yourself as…—Opposed to evangelism as a sales approach.
• Sharing Christ is not a sales event. We share Christ and to help people, not to have them buy a product or just become a good church member.
• Evangelism methodology has to be such that it reflects well on the honor of Jesus and pleases Him. This model stresses that evangelism is an act of love in keeping with the Great Commandment and Great Commission. At times love moves forward and calls people into a decision as the Holy Spirit leads and to do so would not be love. At other times loves is patient and prayerful as the lost person either seeks to understand the facets of the gospel and the implications for their lives as they consider committing themselves.
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