Evangelism

I had a lengthy and productive conversation with a church member yesterday on the topic of evangelism. Our church constitution states that we are supposed to have a commission that oversees the evangelistic work of the church. So we are working to get the commission up and going. As part of that, we had to work through what we actually expected the commission to do, what the responsibilities and goals would be.  Here’s what I took away from our meeting – as we are working out how to do and be church in our setting, I emphasize that this is where I understand myself to be now. Further conversations and/or personal reflection may nuance or utterly change these ideas. And, as in the disclaimer, these are my own ideas, not the church’s.

Evangelism is:

• Internal and external.
  Evangelism is the telling of the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world. It is not just the unsaved that need to hear it, rather all of us do – including current active members and attenders as well as those who have attached themselves to the church in some way but, for whatever reason, have become disconnected. So the work of evangelism is not just reaching the lost, but restoring the wayward and encouraging the faithful.
• Words and Actions
  In our tradition, evangelism is often equated with the actual presentation of the Gospel message using a tract such as the Roman Road or The Four Spiritual Laws or one of the other myriad options. However, I think missional-minded churches have a great corrective with their focus on living out Christian life in the community – and not just the community of church members. Evangelism certainly is walking someone through the Roman Road. But it is also mowing a elderly couple’s lawn or getting together a pick-up game of basketball with people from inside and outside the church. It is sending cards and building houses. It is worship on Sunday mornings and chit-chat at the water cooler on Mondays. I think we need to expand our view and understanding of what evangelism is – and of what counts as evangelism. There is a place for weekly door-to-door visitation programs. But there is a place – and a great need – for much more than that.
• Intentional
  Evangelism does not happen accidentally. We don’t fall into it. We don’t achieve or accomplish the Great Commission by stumbling into it. We aim for it. We strive for it. We put our effort behind it. Then, by the grace of God and with His Spirit working with us, in us, and through us, evangelism happens.
• Personal
  Like words and actions, evangelism is supporting those who do active evangelism, such as the missionaries the church supports, but it is more than that. We the Bible speaks of some having the gift of being evangelists in Ephesians 4, Jesus gave the call to “Go and tell” to every one of us who seeks to follow him, be called by his name, and stand before our righteous and holy God with the veil of his redemption around us. We must each of us do evangelism in the specific ways that God has gifted us. Romans 12 is appropriate – however we are gifted, fulfill the Great Commission that way. Carpenter? Work with Habitat for Humanity or find out about some needs in the community to do repairs for those who cannot do it themselves. Storyteller? Share your faith verbally. Financial whiz? Fund others and show them how to manage their talents and gifts to the glory of God. But whatever you do and whatever you enjoy doing, do it in such a way as to intentionally, personally work for evangelism.

Dreams

Here are some things I’d love to see our church incorporate into their worship, or at least try. This list will expand, I’m sure – probably in separate posts:

• Better use of technology. Not to say that technology is an answer to anything, but there is much out there that can be used to enhance our services. Some of it we are using (we have a screen with Powerpoint announcements before the service), much of it we are not. I recognize that there is a lot out in the world that is just gimmicks and seduction of the moment, and we need much wisdom and discernment if/when/as we embark this trail.
• Better understanding of marketing. Our culture is so marketing savvy – I, at least, can recognize pretty quickly a poorly designed marketing blitz. I do not mean to say that we need to be pouring money into marketing – lots of companies poor millions of dollars (or euros or yen) into campaigns that accomplish nothing. But as we reach out to our community, I want us to have a good grasp on the best way to get our intent and purposes across. I don’t want to be using cheap for the sake of cheap or expensive for the sake of expensive. I want to represent my God and Savior well as I go about his business.
• Deeper spiritual growth. Who doesn’t want this? I think we are good at a lot of surface things – church dinners and such – but we lack in the area of real deep study and growth. I think it shows in the way we (don’t) reach out to our community as broadly as I think we could or should. Of course, there are exceptions – there are people in the church who do more than I would ever expect anyone to do on their own. But broadly speaking, I think our church could involve itself in the community more. I think it is telling that so many in our small community know little or nothing about our church.
• I want to see us do more of being Christ in the world. Service is a characteristic of Christ. See more on the above item.
• Broader understanding and use of worship in the service. More than music. More than style. More than drama. I want the congregation to see worship as more than any one thing or element. And I want the congregation to understand that worship doesn’t just happen while sitting in a pew or inside the walls of a building where the church meets regularly. I want our people to worship throughout the week. And when we worship together, I want us to do it with songs from every age and every style, with Scripture reading and reflection, with sounds and silence, with reflection, humility, and honesty.

I think I shall stop there for now.

Worship

Someone recently asked me to spend some time pondering what I want to see accomplished in the church: practical or not, whether or not the church is ready for it. It was a good challenge for me to set specific goals for my ministry here in NJ, based on what I understand worship to be, and based on how I think the church is supposed to set out to worship God as a congregation.

Someone once described worship to me in terms of the Old Testament tabernacle/temple structure and worship. While not stringent (Jesus accomplished the tearing of the veil to the Holy of Holies on the cross),  I think reflecting on congregational worship in those terms is helpful. I understand four movements (understand that I remember this as coming from somewhere, but I do not remember where – it may have been a class, a discussion with a friend, or a book I read, but it does not originate with me):

• Gathering
• Fellowship
• Encountering God
• Sending

All four of these steps serve vital functions in the role of the church. The church gathers together prior to the service. At our church, we worship first and have Sunday School after the service. Our gathering time begins around 9:00 when the first church member shows up and unlocks the doors and continues until around 10:05, about the time that we have our meet and greet where we shake hands and greet one another formally during the worship service. Gathering is the transitioning from the non-sacred to the sacred, from outside the temple walls to inside them, from all the hubbub of life to focus on God and his work. It happens as people get out of their cars, go through the doors, and enter into the sanctuary.

Following the gathering is fellowship. This continues concurrently with the gathering time. This is a time to recognize who all is in the service with you, to catch up and see what has been going on in the Kingdom of God through individuals throughout the week. It allows us all to gather on the same page and worship God as a unified body. This is not to say that everyone greets and converses with everyone else in the congregation. Even though ours is a relatively small, rural church, we still are not afforded that opportunity. Larger congregations than ours would have no means of accomplishing that. The first church I served had 20 people in attendance on an average Sunday, and it was difficult to really know what was going on with everyone. What Fellowshipping allows is for the body of Christ to reconnect together and know what is going on throughout the rest of the body.

The bulk of the actual worship service, of course, is focused on encountering God, being challenged and changed by Him. It is the songs, the drama, the sermon, the prayers, and all that goes on. The intent is to bring the people who have gathered together to a face-to-face spiritual encounter with their Creator and Savior.

Finally, there is the sending back out into the world. After the fellowshipping, reconnecting,  and training that have gone on, the church disperses to accomplish its purpose and task in the world: sharing God and his love with everyone we meet. This cannot happen within the walls of a church, at least not on a large scale. We have to go out and seek it and make it happen, rather than just expecting it to come to us.

I would hope that our worship activities – formal Sunday morning services and all of the other times that we gather to worship God – will accomplish these four things.

The Believer Cycle

 As many people have recognized in many different studies of how a church (should) works, people who attach themselves to a church move through various stages of connection, involvement, and commitment to the church. For our own understanding at Quinton Baptist, I would suggest the following movements, which I will further explain below:

• Connect
• Evangelize
• Involve
• Train
• Send

These five movements represent steps in a cycle with people first connecting with the help of those who have been sent.

1. Connect – This is a when a church first makes contact with an individual. The individual may or may not have understood Christ’s saving work for them, and they may or may not have accepted it and been involved in other churches. When someone attends for the first time, the church reaches out to people who have moved into the community, or a new comer fills out an information card at a community event, they have made a connection. This is the widest and fullest pool of people, for it can include anyone.
2. Evangelize – Not everyone who goes through the connection step has to be evangelized. This is where those who have connected to the church hear the gospel. They move out of the step when they have accepted the gospel.
3. Involve -In this step, the work of the church is to connect people with one another. Fellowship events, worship gatherings, small groups, day trips, and movie nights are just a small sampling of how the church involves people together.  Involving includes a mixture of believers and non-believers.
4. Train – Training is something that happens particularly for believers, though non-believers may certainly be present during a time of training. Worship services, sermons, discipleship classes, Sunday School classes, small groups, and any place where the Bible is opened and discussed is an opportunity for training. The goal of training is to develop fully devoted followers of Christ who display the fruits of the Spirit and actively seek to obey the word. Training is any place where spiritual growth takes place through the efforts of the church.
5. Send – The ultimate goal of any church should be to send out believers for the purpose of fulfilling the Great Commission of going into all the world, making disciples. Mission trips, missionary commissioning, service projects, food pantries, and any ministry or function that reaches out to the community (whether next door or across the oceans) is a ministry of sending. Those who are sent make it their purpose to connect to people and start the cycle again.

As you may have noted in the explanation of the different stages, these are not necessarily sequential, and people may find themselves in two or three of the stages at the same time. But the goal of the church should be to reach out and connect to people and then work with those people to move them to the point where the church sends them out to connect to other people.