Podcast Episode #358
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How much growth in growing churches is due to evangelism? Not as much as you would hope. We discuss effective evangelistic churches and more on this week’s episode.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- Most growth in churches is from transfers, not conversions.
- 93-94% of churches are not effectively evangelistic.
- Churches have lost their intentionality in evangelism.
- Evangelism is falling off the radar for many churches.
- A growing church is not necessarily an evangelistic church.
- Churches that are intentional about evangelism are evangelistic churches.
The five evangelism realities we discuss are:
- Growing churches are growing largely by transfer growth.
- The number of effective evangelistic churches (EEC) is surprisingly stable.
- Churches that are not in the EEC category are doing much worse evangelistically than in previous years.
- Evangelism in the EEC churches is a clear priority.
- There are clear and discernible patterns of action in EEC churches.
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Who Moved My Pulpit?
Thanks for your podcast. my question with regard to today’s podcast on evangelism is this: you use baptisms as your metric to gauge conversion growth. I am the pastor of a very small Lutheran Church. One of my members recently fell in love with and is going to marry a woman who goes to a large local Baptist Church. the man has been a follower of Christ all his life in varying degrees. He is 81 years old. he got baptized in order to join his fiance’s Church. theologically, I understand that Baptist might count that as a conversion because Baptist do not practice infant baptism. But it isn’t really a conversion because we are all following Christ. so I wonder if some of the conversion growth of the larger churches isn’t people from other denominations moving to a church with more high quality programming and having to get baptized because they come from a Mainline Protestant denomination that practices infant baptism. Okay, I guess I better come up with a question! Do you consider movement from an infant baptism Church to a Baptist Church that requires rebaptism to be a conversion? Or, if not, how does that figure into the conversion growth statistics that you were using during this podcast episode?
Thank you so much for your leadership Ministry and God bless! John
Baptism is not conversion.
Repenting of sins and believing in Christ’s death on a cross and His resurrection by God for the forgiveness of sins is conversion.
This is where doctrinal differences come in. Baptists hold on to their belief that only believers should be baptized and infants could NOT be believers at the time they were subjected to baptism.
John, Baptists definitely don’t believe baptism is conversion nor do they believe baptism is essential to conversion. However most, if not all, Baptist churches require baptism by immersion for church membership. In other words in the Baptist world , you can become a member of the Body of Christ without baptism by immersion, but you can’t become a member of a Baptist church without it.
Interesting I can be admitted into Christ’s body but not the local church unless I go through a ceremonial cleansing from the Old Testament.
Matthew 28:19
Baptist churches require baptism because Jesus commanded it! Or, to put it another way, if someone is not willing to obey Christ and follow Him in baptism then why should that person be granted a measure of authority in the church through membership?
I was interviewed for the Pulpit Minister position at a church that was above the norm in evangelistic outreach. In a two week campaign, they had canvased their town of 15,000 and had baptized 113 un-churched people. 3 years later, only two of those people that were converted were still in that church, and now they are gone as well. The church knew how to convert people and were committed to evangelism. But they did not know how to make disciples. Jesus didn’t call us to sell fire insurance, but to make lifelong disciples. I think that only doing half of the Great Commission is just as much a cause for concern as doing no evangelism at all.
BEST COMMENT I HAVE READ IN TWO YEARS. CALLED TO MAKE DISCIPLES NOT CONVERTS……..okay, i will calm down now- sorry for screaming that….well, not really.
Lonnie, your points are valid. However, in our town at least, most of the “evangelical” churches are that in name only. They are very big on discipleship BUT simply skip the part about having to get folks saved before they can be discipled. That discipleship offered runs the gamut from what you call fire insurance, taken seriously as free grace theology which is not at all just fire insurance, to several groups practicing “clothesline holiness” that see anyone not dressing their way as unsaved. There are the Lordship Salvation Calvinist folks also, who see anyone not adhering to their rule list, including “proper” theology as unsaved.
My guess is we are far too focused on getting folks to act like Christians and far too little focused on actually winning the lost for Christ.
But I would agree that much of what passes for evangelism today isn’t. Jesus did not die on the cross to provide you with a wonderful life. He died on the cross to save you from your sins. (You used generically and includes me.) That requires repentance from sin and faith in the Savior, but does not require sinless perfection.
Far too much of today’s evangelism is ego stroking of the person and conveniently skips sin, salvation, heaven, hell, and anything else that might hurt a fragile self image or be rejected by someone who wants to clutch their sins.
We have to get back to evangelism, not education in theology or zoned out “worship moments”, being the main point of the church service. Mix in a robust prayer life (worship) and strong Bible studies (yeah, a good Sunday School!) and we could turn this ship around.
I don’t want folks to come to my church. I want them to come to saving faith and a relationship with Jesus. If that happens, the resulting church growth will be healthy.
Thank you Dr. Rainer for pointing out the elephant in the room!
Linda, I agree with a great deal of what you have said. I just have one question regarding your remark about not needing an “education in theology” being the main point of the worship service. My question is: isn’t that exactly what the root of the problem here is? Poor theology? A poor understanding of God?
Most churches these days are completely devoid of God’s Word. Only topical sermons are preached and it appears we do all we can to avoid the difficult topics (repentance, heaven and hell, discipleship – what it truly is, saving faith – what it truly is, etc.). There is no longer any “programming” (God’s Word) and there are tons of “commercials” (marketing techniques, smoke, dim lights, etc.) to try to manipulate people into “making a decision” that turns out to have been nothing more than an emotionally induced response to the “commercial”. We do it because we’re looking for numbers to validate our ministry and they do it because they want the benefits of Christianity without obedience. It’s nothing more (or less) than idolatry!
(I hope you get what I mean by “programming”/substance and “commercial”/fluff)
We should all repent!
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God!” (Romans 10:17)
Amen!
“…We are far too focused on getting folks to act like Christians…”
Isn’t that the whole purpose of Paul’s letters, to get people to act more like Christians?
“The greatest cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle…that is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
I understand what you are saying, but the purpose of Paul’s letters are not to get us to act like Christians. He wants us to understand that we have been baptized into the body of Christ and that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. It’s Christ in us the hope of glory. There’s a difference between trying to act like a Christian and walking in the Spirit with Christ as the source of our new life.
When you are intentionally evangelistic, you wind up with lots of people in the church that you don’t know, who may have different ways of thinking than you, and who may not get along. This does not make for pretty, perfect churches, although the pretty, perfect church seems to be the desire today even though it seems to be killing churches. The idea of everyone having to agree on everything is leading to so many children of “good” Christians leaving churches and trying to be more like Jesus without the church holding them back. Some totally left the faith. Three of the gospels that made it into the canon were written to Jews, Romans, and Greeks, respectively. A lot of the NT is on how to get people to agree enough to form a bond and not act like pagans, take care of each other, and not force extra requirements on their fellow Christian. Summarizing Dr. Patrick Mead’s recent article over at wineskins.org, the Acts 15 “elders’ meeting” with some of the apostles present decided that “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and them not to make things harder than they had to be. They never addressed the quarrel brought to them in their letter. Instead, they told both groups to stay pure and not act like pagans.” There is a lot in the Bible if it isn’t taken out of context. There is room for everyone in Christianity too.
Dr. Rainer, in the Win School (Witness Involvement Now) schools in the nineties the Sunday School Board provided pamphlets to help witnesses disciple believers in the Christian faith. I used this material in this way. When I led a person to the Lord, I spent 6 weeks with that person (once a week) walking them through that material. This created a bond with that new believer, helped them become active within the church and brought unity to the body. If every leader would commit to leading 6 people to faith in Christ and disciple them for 6 weeks the church would see more conversion growth that sticks.
I had 10 leaders in the church I pastored and we saw an increase of 35 new disciples within one year. It will work.
When I accepted my current ministry position I challenged our Elders concerning evangelism. I shared with them my conviction that our focus should be to see that our growth came not from “membership transfer” but by way of either “new conversions” or a “re-engagement” of people who had, for whatever reason, walked away from the church. The goal was to both “engage” and “restore” the communities that our people call home. The Elders and subsequently our congregation wholeheartedly embraced this perspective of intentional evangelism and the results we’ve seen over the past four years have been nothing short of amazing.
Not all evangelism is truly evangelism.
We had an “evangelist” come to our church and teach a few lessons on witnessing. His whole approach was nothing but a five minute used car sales pitch designed to get people to say a contrived prayer. He would then write their name down in a little notebook and proclaim them saved. He bragged that he had once “saved” ten people on an airplane. I doubt any of those people really had any idea what the Gospel is all about.
Appreciate your work, Thom. Ok, so putting this together with episode #357 that states that one third of churches are growing – the one third churches that are growing are seeing transfer growth from the two thirds that are declining (my take & my experience). Had a conversation with a local pastor a couple of years ago who was bemoaning the fact that they used to be the “hot” (his words) church in town which grew out of expats from three other churches. They had the cutting edge music and all that went with it. Now there is a new “hot” church in town with younger preacher and more cutting edge experience and his attendance has shifted. Our church has experienced some of our folks making the transition as well as some who left because we didn’t do things their way. So in our local community, we haven’t really added very many people to the Kingdom, but we have changed the seating arrangement. I find it pretty discouraging when listening to blog posts and reading blogs that seem to indicate pastors are failing / failures (OK, maybe my read into it because of my own issues) if they have shrunk in size over the past X years. We don’t have the resources available to do the “cutting edge stuff” and frankly not sure that it is really producing disciples. We want to reach people for Christ (unsaved and/or unchurched) — not rearrange the chairs, and it is a slow process. It has been a difficult few years. Trying to be a faithful undershepherd (1 Peter 5). Just discouraged. Thanks for listening. I appreciate your heart for the Lord and for His church.
Don, I fully empathize. Today’s “challenges” are totally different than when I first entered ministry [1977]… It is very discouraging for those of us who do NOT cave in to pragmatism and contemporary gimmicks to attract people; Shallow ministry attracts shallow people. Churches are competing with each other for numbers… biblically illiterate “Christians” gravitate towards whoever has the “coolest” most “hip” music and organizational features. Generally, pure NT Christianity is dying in the USA.
More relational and rational apologetics is needed as well (1st Pet 3:15).
Chris–I absolutely agree with you part of the problem is poor theological education of the laity. I just don’t see that as the main part of the preaching service (notice I did not say worship service for a reason.) I see that strong teaching as what needs to be taking place in Sunday School and yeppers, even good old Training Union or Discipleship Training or whatever Baptists call it today. My church just calls it additional Bible Study, sometimes on Sunday night or midweek but we aren’t Baptist.
If we would return to Sunday A.M. and Sunday P.M. services we could also return to one being mainly evangelistic and one being mainly strong theological teaching.
Part of the problem is we are trying to cram those two services, plus Bible study plus prayer meeting into one slot on Sunday morning. It isn’t working at all. No pastor can successfully evangelize the lost, equip the laity, and provide goosebump God moments once a week in one service to everyone. So as whole it appears to me we ditched the evangelism and deep teaching and went for goosebumps. Or try for goosebumps and deep teaching and ditch evangelism. Me, I’d let God decide when and if to send the goosebumps, separate the evangelism and the deep teaching but have the preacher doing both during the separate services, and get some thoroughly well trained Biblically, even if not formally, folks in charge of further deep teaching.
We travel a great deal and visit other churches. The sad thing is that so often the preaching is not about Jesus: Who He was, what He did, why we need Him, what is sin, why do we need saved, etc. It will either be pablum aimed at “how to be happy” or it will be “if you jerks would just follow my leading this church would grow.”
Oh to hear Christ and Him crucified again!
Linda, I suggest you go to a liturgical church even during the week. (Yes, in big cities there will be at least one church that has the daily office every day.) You will get to hear the gospel read. Jesus will be preached at nearly all services that have a homily. I finally left the evangelical church because I never heard the gospel even on holidays. (I’m not talking about one verse recited but the meat of the gospels and teachings of Jesus himself.) The teachings of Jesus seem simple enough (evangelicals think they are too simple and only good for children) until you start trying to apply them to your own life or hear a one point homily directed to both the simple and the ultra-educated that focuses on what that teaching could/should mean to us today and just how radical those teachings and actions were. Some of the toughest sermons/homilies I ever heard were said quietly from hand-carved pulpits in beautiful churches. This does not need massive amounts of Bible study to understand. A few months of Sunday morning, 12-minute homilies will get you up to speed.
Mark–yes BTDT and loved it. But we live remote, the only liturgical nonRCC church here is ELCA. We left it because of two things: we disagreed with its more liberal beliefs embraced around 2009, and because our pastor was doing pick and choose from the new cranberry book. The gospel was expunged that way from the liturgy, even the readings were carefully edited. Never heard less gospel anywhere in my life.
We are back in an evangelical church again now, but our young pastor is slowly but surely bringing in more elements of the liturgy:) We have more frequent communion now, and that means more times the service is Christ centered. And we are growing as he is surely called to preach the gospel.
But when we travel, all I can say is I am so thankful for my home church.
Good. I am used to big cities where there may be 3-5 masses on Sunday in most churches and 1-3 services most other days of the week. I learned what was in the gospels in an Anglican chapel that used the 1662 BCP and later in Rite I episcopal churches.
If you want sound solid spiritual growth I suggest you steer clear of liturgy, and find a church that believes in the authority of scripture and emphasizes the church as a place where the body of Christ meets and is built up through the preaching and teaching of the Bible. As believers are built up and grow then true evangelism will take place. You may not see the big numbers, but the conversions will be real.
Craig – well said!
Interestingly, i attend a conservative episcopal church where the exact description occurs, and you get absolution.
Please forgive me if someone has already asked this question. My church was a very small church that has received new focus that has brought in many. While they may have been “members” of a church at some point in their lives they are finding a new sense of purpose and are coming not just on Sunday’s but also joining bible studies. Our baptism’s are not really a reflection of the changes in peoples hearts that are happening here.