Stop Trying to Reach Most People

by: Will Mancini

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Tags: Duplicatable Process, Evangelism, Leadership Engine, Seth, Tribes, Will Mancini

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10 Questions to Diagnose the Evangelistic Health of Your Church

by: Thom Rainer

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Any good physician will make certain your physical exam includes at least three components. First, the doctor will want you to have thorough lab work. Second, all exams include a comprehensive look at your physical body. Third, the physician will ask you a series of questions that would lead him or her to know more about your overall physical and emotional health.

In my work with churches across America, I often ask a series of questions that help me assist the church to become more evangelistically focused. Recently, I took time to write down the questions I ask most often. Look at these ten questions to get at least some hints of the evangelistic health of your own church.

1. Are members more concerned about the lost than their own preferences and comfort? Listen to how church members talk to understand what their true priorities are.
2. Is the church led to pray for lost persons? Most churches are pretty good about praying for those who have physical needs. But do they pray for those who have the greatest spiritual need, a relationship with Jesus Christ?
3. Are the members of the church open to reaching people who don’t look or act like them? The gospel breaks all racial, ethnic, and language barriers. Do the members seek to reach others? Do they rejoice when these people become a part of the church?
4. Do conflicts and critics zap the evangelistic energy of the church? An evangelistic church is a united church. A divided church is rarely evangelistic.
5. Do small groups and Sunday school classes seek to reach lost persons within their groups? Sunday school was once one of the most effective evangelistic tools in the church. Are the groups in your church evangelistic?
6. Is the leadership of the church evangelistic? The congregation will follow and emulate the priorities of the church leadership.
7. Do the sermons regularly communicate the gospel? They may not be evangelistic sermons in the classic sense, but all sermons should point people to Jesus.
8. Are there ministries in the church that encourage members to be involved in evangelistic outreach and lifestyle? You may be surprised to find how many members become evangelistic with a modest amount of training and equipping.
9. Have programs become ends in themselves rather than means to reach people?Perhaps a total ministry and program audit is in order.
10. Is there any process of accountability for members to be more evangelistic? That which is rewarded and expected becomes the priority of the congregation.

After their imprisonment for sharing the gospel with others, Peter and John appeared before the Sanhedrin who demanded their silence. Listen to how the two Apostles, with their lives on the line, responded to their accusers: “But Peter and John answered them, ‘Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard’” (Acts 4:19-20, HCSB).

I pray that more and more of our church members have the heart and attitude exemplified by Peter and John. May we be so motivated to share the gospel that we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.

How would you assess the evangelistic health of your church? What questions would you ask for a good diagnosis?

Read more from Thom here.

Tags: Evangelism, Gospel, Thom Rainer

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Four Ways to Create an Evangelistic Culture in Your Church

by: Thom Rainer

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I recently wrote an article that offered ten questions to help you diagnose the evangelistic health of your church. A couple of the readers asked insightful questions related to the culture of a church. Specifically, they wanted to know how a church could create a culture to become more evangelistic.

While the creation of an evangelistic culture cannot be reduced to a simple formulaic approach, I can offer four suggestions of a more practical nature.

Church Culture Shift #1: Leadership Must Model a Passion for Evangelism. The first church I served as pastor had not seen one person become a Christian in 26 years. Rather than complain to the congregation about their evangelistic ineptness, I began praying for opportunities for me to be a gospel witness in the community. I was amazed how many doors God opened. I was amazed to see how many people responded positively to the gospel. And I was amazed to see how others began to follow my leadership example. Within one year the church that had seen no baptisms in 26 years had, ironically, 26 baptisms in one year.

Church Culture Shift #2: Ask one Sunday school class or small group to become an evangelistic group for one year. This approach creates a system of accountability on a small scale. That one small group understands that it has been selected to be an example for the rest of the church. Watch what will happen within that one group. Watch how the group members become more intentionally evangelistic. Watch how they will become more prayerfully creative and excited to reach people with the gospel.

Church Culture Shift #3: Begin a small-scale evangelistic mentoring approach. Again, asking a person to mentor another person engenders accountability. In my first church, I mentored a new Christian named Steve. I taught him how to begin a conversation about Jesus. We worked together on the essential elements of a gospel presentation. At first we went together to talk with those who weren’t Christians. Steve eventually became more comfortable sharing Christ on his own, and he soon began mentoring someone as I had mentored him.

Church Culture Shift #4: Make certain corporate prayers include praying for the lost.Most church members are not hesitant to pray for the physical needs of people. But rare is the church that prays together for those who are not Christians. A few churches, though, pray for lost people by name. Others are more comfortable praying in general for the non-Christians in the community. As the church begins to pray for the lostness of her community, God often begins to demonstrate clear answers to those prayers. And the culture of the church becomes decidedly more evangelistic in its culture as the prayers are infused with a burden for those who are not followers of Jesus Christ.

Of course, these four suggested church culture shifts are far from exhaustive. In many ways, they are but a starting point.

What would you add to this list? What is your church doing to create a more evangelistic culture?

Tags: Culture, Evangelism, Leadership Development, Thom Rainer

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Evangelistic Churches and the MPI

by: Thom Rainer

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What if you could look at the top five percent most evangelistic churches in America and find the common factors in their ministries? One of my twenty-year quests has been to take on that very challenge. My research, both anecdotal and scientific, has pointed me to several commonalities, but this latest discovery really excited me. Indeed I have found at least anecdotally one of those key factors that distinguishes the evangelistic churches from the others.

Defining the MPI

I call this differentiating factor the MPI: multiple points of intentionality. Here is the definition of MPI: The most evangelistic churches in America have three or more ongoing intentional evangelistic efforts. The key is that the local church does not depend on one, or even two, ongoing evangelistic efforts. Each of the churches I’ve studied has three or more.

Demonstrating the MPI

If my thesis is sound, churches should not depend on a one-and-done evangelistic approach; they should look to multiple points of evangelistic intentionality. Let me give you some examples of those points in the churches I’ve studied:

· Highly evangelistic small groups or Sunday school classes. Not just any small group or Sunday school class, but those that have a DNA to reach people with the gospel.

· Ongoing prayer ministries for the lost. Most of these prayer ministries pray for lost people by name. Most churches pray for physical needs of people, but not spiritual and eternal needs.

· Community ministries with evangelistic intentionality. Again, the key is that these ministries to the community are ongoing and intentionally evangelistic. An example would be the “adoption” of a local public school to meet the needs of the students, teachers, and administrators.

· A highly evangelistic pastor. The pastor is sharing the gospel with someone at least twice a week. The pastor also makes local evangelism a high priority in the church.

· An evangelistic Vacation Bible School. VBS is the single most evangelistic church program in America today. But merely having a VBS does not make it evangelistic. Again, intentionality is key.

· A memorized evangelistic training program. Such programs as Evangelism Explosion and FAITH have been key to moving churches toward a more evangelistic mindset. Those programs fail, however, when it is the sole or primary focus of evangelism in the church.

· Evangelistic service events for the community. Community ministries, noted above, or ongoing. Service events take place on a regular but less frequent basis, such as once a quarter. They do not include Christmas or Easter productions that tend to have minimal evangelistic fruit.

· Relational intentionality. Church members are trained and held accountable for developing relationships with those who are not Christians.

· Ministry evangelism. This category is broad. It includes pregnancy ministries, food and clothes ministries, counseling ministries, and others. With community ministries above, church members go into the community. With ministry evangelism, the community members come to the church to get needs met.

Doing the MPI

Pastors and other church leaders often ask me how their churches can reach more people with the gospel. It would seem from this research that multiple points of intentionality are key.

The MPI tells us at least two key truths. First, one evangelistic ministry does not make your church evangelistic. Sadly, over half the churches in America don’t even have one. Second, churches have different “personalities.” They don’t have to do evangelism like other churches. It’s more important to pick three or more evangelistic approaches that will work best in your congregation.

The list above is not exhaustive, but it does provide good examples. Is your church involved in at least three intentional evangelistic ministries? What are some examples not on the list? What is your church doing to reach more people for Christ?

Read more from Thom here.

Tags: Evangelism, Intentionality, Thom Rainer

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