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How did God use a simple, practical approach to sharing the gospel to grow a church?
Here’s our story
Do you remember those old insurance commercials with the phrase, “So easy, a caveman could do it,” in the early 2000s? I do, though the grey hairs in my beard remind me that was nearly a quarter century ago. Around the same time, there were also the office supply store “Easy Button” commercials. Man has often looked for ways to do things easier, faster, cheaper, etc.
That also spills into the church world, often in church growth or revitalization. Churches in decline are usually desperate for ways to see numerical or financial growth that are easy, fast, cheap, and so forth. And for good reason. Maybe the church is a few bad weeks from closing its doors or letting someone go. Shortcuts to a turnaround would be a blessing, but we probably all know from experience how shortcuts fall short of lasting change.
But what if we got back to doing the main thing we’re left here on earth to do in a way anyone can, no matter what? What if it was so easy that even a caveman could do it? What if, in the doing, you see lasting, growing change among your people and perhaps an enduring turnaround after a season of decline? I’m talking about evangelism, but not as you’d expect.
Once a megachurch, Plymouth Park Baptist Church had been in a long season of decline and was in desperate need of revitalization. We had massive buildings in disrepair, an aging congregation, and a starkly different demographic than when the church started 70 years ago. Projections revealed we were only a few years from closing our doors unless we saw what many would call a miracle.
We could disband our congregation and dissolve our assets, merge with another church in town, or sell our buildings and relocate. Those were our options if you talked to most, but was God surprised by the changing demographic around us? Was He powerless or unwilling to breathe new life into us right where we were? Do we not serve a God who eats impossible for breakfast? That became my battle cry as my family got to work with our new church family.
“I began using some of my pulpit time to encourage them to find someone ... to ask them how they could pray for them. And they did.”
When it comes to church revitalization, I think one of your best bets is low-hanging fruit. Getting some small wins, like the debt-snowball strategy, builds momentum and helps gain bigger and bigger wins. The same is true with evangelism. Sure, you could launch a massive evangelism training and campaign on day one, but would you have the buy-in to pull it off? What if, instead, you look for ways to get smaller wins, build momentum, and allow that to lead the way to bigger wins and even church revitalization itself?
That’s what we did with the saints called Plymouth Park Baptist Church. With an aging congregation untrained for evangelism, I wasn’t sure selling them on making a major commitment to a massive evangelism training and campaign was the way to go. Instead, we started providing small handouts with some simple information about the church and I began using some of my pulpit time to encourage them to find someone, anyone—a family member, friend, neighbor, coworker, or the cashier at the local grocery store—to ask them how they could pray for them.
And they did. Reports started trickling in of opportunities members had to pray with a server at a restaurant, a coworker on a lunch break, a neighbor at the mailbox, and so forth. We would take the requests and pray for them during our weekly prayer meetings, and momentum began to build. Our members began conversing with people they may not usually mingle with—and lived to tell about it!
So, we took the next step. My mentor in the ministry, Matt Queen, has a simple evangelism strategy that anyone can do, which begins by asking, “Has anyone told you God loves you today?” Inevitably, the answer is no, at which point you can ask to be the first and say, “God loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to live a perfect life for you, die a sacrificial death for you, rise victoriously for you, and save you if you turn to Him in faith. Would you like to hear more about that today?” If they do, go for it. If not, you leave them with a gospel tract, information about your church, or even your contact information if they have questions later.
I began sharing that strategy from the pulpit and during other teaching opportunities, and our people got after it. In fact, during Easter, one of our members went to the grocery store next to the church and asked the cashier if anyone had told her God loves her, and the cashier said, “Actually, yes! Someone from that church (she pointed toward our building) was just here and told me, and I plan on coming this Sunday.” Story after story started coming in, and fast. I’d often share some of them from the pulpit with encouragement to keep up the good work.
Now, instead of starting with a handful of folks committing to a big training and weekly visitation, we have hundreds of folks taking the gospel with them as they go, wherever they go, and God is blessing their faithfulness abundantly. This year, we’ll harness this momentum and mobilize a more organized or trained group of evangelizers, and we may very well live to place those doomsday projections into the dumpster where they belong.
