Thu, 6 July 2006 Hello. Welcome back to the church growth, mission, and evangelism blog sponsored by www.thegreatcommissionchurch.org. Please take time to visit their website. Today we continue talking about When God Builds A Church. I encourage you to pick up this great book by Bob Russell. Evangelism. It’s easy for any enterprise to get sidetracked from its main thrust. The church can easily get sidetracked and forget its primary mission. Our primary call is to preach the gospel and bring people to salvation in Jesus. The larger our church becomes, the more some people in our community want us to become politically active. The best thing that could happen in our community is for revival to break out in our churches.
Satan is more intimidated by a church faithfully preaching Christ crucified than by a thousand demonstrators protesting one facet of the devil’s program on the steps of the state capital. Better legislation can’t save anybody-only Jesus can. Not only should the church refrain from being a political action committee, we also are called to be more than just a social agency to care for welfare needs.
The main thing is evangelism. We are bringing them the hope for eternal life. One of the primary ways that a person can grow as a Christian is by sharing the gospel with other people. People ask why we keep trying to grow when we have so many members already. We don’t know how big God wants the church to be. We are still looking for that one lost sheep.
Evangelism should not take precedence over truth. The prerequisite for getting in the ark was you had to believe the message and repent of your sin. We can get so desperate for growth that we dilute the doctrine to make the message more palatable. The church exists to edify Christians and minister to people’s needs as well. You shouldn’t measure your church’s effectiveness totally by the number of new members.
Don’t just preach evangelistic messages. Some preachers mistakenly believe that if their church is to be evangelistic, that every service must be directed to the few in their congregation who don’t yet know Christ. The primary thrust of most sermons needs to be directed to those who are already Christians. Growing Christians are more evangelistic than evangelistic sermons.
Inspire the members of your congregation-get them on fire for Jesus Christ and excited about growing spiritually in your church-and then they can’t help but tell their friends about it. The best evangelism is that which comes as a natural outpouring of believers’ excitement about what they’ve discovered. If they’re inspired, you won’t be able to keep them quiet.
Adopt the come and see method of evangelism. Some of the greatest evangelists in the Bible were those who simply said come and see. When your church adopts the come and see method, suddenly every person who has a role in the church has a part in evangelism. The entire church is a body, attempting together to be a place of evangelism. An evangelist is not just a preacher, or even someone who brings his friend, but any person who has a part in making the church an inspiring place.
The evangelists who are most successful in using this method are the new Christians who are the most excited about what they’ve discovered. The point is to use already existing relationships as contacts for evangelism. The number of contacts outside the church is already large enough so that there is no need to establish new relationships with the unchurched. Your church members need to invite someone to come to church with them! Be sure to be back tomorrow for our blog and our podcast. Send your comments to bob@thegreatcommissionchurch.org. Thanks and God bless. Pastor Bob Emery Category: Religion -- posted at: 5:57 PM Comments[0] |
