Podcast Episode #292
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In my trends for 2017, I mentioned an increased intentionality on evangelism in the church. Today, we look at five keys to evangelistic growth in your church.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- The top 6% of evangelistic churches reach one person each year for every 20 in attendance.
- The author of salvation is God—not an evangelistic methodology or a program.
- What a pastor leads and makes important is how the church will respond.
- I’ve yet to find an evangelistic church who is not led by an evangelistic pastor.
- Evangelistic growth, evangelistic atmosphere, and evangelistic environment are all tied together.
- Church leaders need to be in the habit of sharing their faith and inviting others to church.
- The more you celebrate evangelism in the church, the more it will happen in the church.
The five keys to renewed evangelistic growth which we discuss are:
- A small group of church members dedicated themselves to pray for an evangelistic harvest.
- Pastors make evangelism a personal priority.
- Leaders in the church teach church members to invite people to church.
- These churches love the communities in which they are located.
- These churches have consistent, usually weekly, efforts to connect with unchurched people in the community.
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Feedback
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The Great Commission commands us, as we are GOING, to make disciples. The church is never told to invite people to come.
That’s how you make disciples! By inviting people to be part of the body they become discipled by the message, the body, bible study. How will the unchurched ever know what a Chrisitian body looks like if they don’t do church together. Even the disciples did church together and their numbers grew because of their evangelism and discipleship.
The unchurched want to see Christianity in action before they commit to it. Invite them to a service project or to go with you to feed the hungry or check on the homeless.
Greer is right. An invitation to church was never commanded. The order is to win the lost, baptise the new believer and teach (disciple) him. It certainly doesn’t hurt to invite the lost. But Scripture is understood spitiually. First comes salvation, then teaching.
sara – that is what it has become and we see how badly that has worked out. The biblical model is to go out where they are at. Too many use invites because they don’t know how to witness, love the church more than God or see that it is somebody’s else ministry. Very poor training and would you really want someone to come to a church whose training have reduced them to the above.
Believers will function in keeping with their divine hard-wiring no matter what their pastors say; therefore, as pointed out by the authors of Becoming a Contagious Christian (available via LifeWay), aid Christians to learn and serve from their God-given evangelism styles (BCC says at least six styles). Bill Fay’s Share Jesus without Fear also is a good resources (get it at LifeWay)–train believers using its approach, too; then, just do it.
with that reply you need to stay in school. Seriously, the way to tell somebody about jesus is to simply tell them about Jesus. From the heart, if you have HIm there, so much more then some canned approach that makes $$$ for Lifeway.
I see no conflict between ‘going’ and ‘inviting.’ Jesus’ disciples did both. For example, Philip went and found Nathaniel and invited him to ‘come and see’ Jesus (John 1: 43-48). To invite people, one must first ‘go’ and find them. An unchurched person is more likely to accept an invitation to ‘church,’ whether a worship gathering, small group meeting, community service project, or the like if they know and trust the Christian who invites them. This means that the Christian inviting them must take time to form and maintain a relationship with them. Christians do not practice their faith in isolation from others but as part of a church. So at some point reaching out and engaging the unchurched will involve inviting them to where the church gathers whatever form that gathering may take.
You’re correct in that relationships matter far more than an invite to a worship service.
True…there is no conflict in a believer’s going and inviting. A Christian’s focus should always be on evangelism, discipleship, and edification.