8 Ways Your Church Can Ignite Outreach

(6) Relational Evangelism

Living your faith and building relationships through which spiritual conversations naturally occur

Making Friends in Austin, Texas

The single most effective evangelism tool Keith Tooley has seen is Christians building friendships with non-Christians—a method that doesn’t require much training, if any.

“Loving on them, meeting their needs, meeting them where they are without judging them, doing life with them” are the steps Tooley, the missions and evangelism pastor at Church at Canyon Creek in Austin, Texas, encourages believers to take with non-Christians.

“We have seen several people outside our church come to faith through individuals reaching out to [them] at work, their kids’ activities.”

To get church members specifically trained in evangelism, Tooley encourages churchwide evangelism campaigns “to help the entire congregation get involved and catch the vision to reach the community.” Developing a heart for the community and its needs, Tooley says, is a major step toward church members’ active engagement with their neighbors—and that can get ignited by something as simple as a “Friendship Sunday” in which church members commit to invite at least one non-Christian friend to the church service. (And of course, he says, “be known as a church that loves and serves people.”)

“We can’t determine the number of salvations—that is up to God,” he notes. “But we do want to know that our congregation is reaching out to unbelievers, engaging in spiritual conversations, and sharing the Gospel.”

Inviting Friends to Events in Louisville, Kentucky

“We continue to see that our most effective outreach efforts ultimately have a relational foundation,” says Kyle Idleman, teaching minister of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., which has about 20,000 attendees. “We may provide special events to make an invite easier, but when our members are reaching out to those in their circles of influence, it makes all the difference.” He adds that service projects are just as effective—if not more so—in terms of reaching others for Christ.

Another key is always looking to leverage what people naturally have on their minds (e.g., a special 9/11 memorial service for the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks).

How Southeast Christian Church measures success is determined by the purpose of the event, Idleman reveals. For example, if the church invites a special speaker not immediately known for faith (but is a committed Christian), the goal is to reach those who’re completely unconnected to church. “If we do a family event, we’re more likely to measure by finding out how many of our members brought another family member.”

Ultimately he says Southeast wants to be “a praying church, seeking and following the Spirit’s lead in reaching people for Christ.” Also he says the church is trying to be much more intentional at not just celebrating stories of people who come to Christ, but also the stories of people who were key in others coming to Christ.

Discerning Who Is Ready to Hear in Rolling Meadows, Illinois

Senior Pastor James MacDonald of 13,000-attendee Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, Ill., says the church doesn’t have evangelistic services, but attendees are encouraged to bring their nonbelieving friends.

“We believe, as 1 Corinthians 14 says, that there is evangelistic power in … a person ripe to the Gospel, who observes sincere, Spirit-filled, passionate worship,” MacDonald says. “That is a powerful evangelistic message. We see the proclamation portion of the service as part of the worship.”

MacDonald says he remembers hearing the old youth ministry adage, “If you want to win the high school to Christ, win a quarterback on the football team, win the head of the cheerleaders; when you’ve won them, you’ve won everybody.”

“Well, that’s sociology,” he says. “That’s not the kingdom of Christ. Jesus wouldn’t go into a high school and win the famous people. … Christ would go into a high school and look for the kid sitting in the corner of the cafeteria with the tape on his glasses and the pocket protector because he knows this kid’s ‘thing’ is not working.”

In addition, MacDonald says he believes a lot of modern evangelism’s emphasis is really making friends with people who aren’t ripe for hearing the Gospel and waiting for them to ripen.

“Meanwhile, living one more door past my evangelistic project is a person whose marriage is falling apart,” he says, “and he just went through a bankruptcy in his business. He’s ready to hear something. All around us are hurting people desperately looking for something else, people whom God has ripened to the Gospel.”

MacDonald says Harvest teaches its members to “go out into the world and look for the people God is ripening to the Gospel”—an overriding principle emphasized in ministries throughout the church. And evangelism technique isn’t the point—indeed, Harvest’s website states that the power of the Gospel isn’t in the “persuasion or the culturalization of the messenger,” but in the message itself. In the end, again, the key is who is being evangelized.

“So when you’re out for dinner with your green-apple project, and you break away from the table to go into the bathroom, and there’s a lady crumpled up in the corner crying, you immediately think, I’ve got my person,” he says. “We could be seeing far more conversions if we skipped the dog-and- pony show and just went straight to the heart of the matter, which is reaching people whom God’s trying to reach with a bold proclamation of truth.”

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