Tuesday 16 July 2013

Growing a Church: Useful information on integrating new people

Evangelism is a journey.  It’s a journey of sowing and reaping. When it comes to outreach, John 4:36 and 37 records Jesus saying:

Thus the saying one sows and another reaps is true.  I sent you to reap for what you have not worked for.  Others have done the hard work and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.  

At King’s evangelism is a journey and at the same time we would be highly invitational. We encourage our people to invite friends, family and work colleagues along to church. We put on events and programmes to invite people to and would take an integrated approach.  You may be familiar with the Engel Scale which refers to the process of evangelism – it has four sections – Sowing 1, Sowing 2, Reaping and Keeping.

We are not only invitational, we are very intentional about evangelism - we don’t do anything just for the fun of it!  There’s always a purpose in what we’re trying to do.  So the first section (Sowing 1) on the Engel Scale can be summarised - Christians are OK and God is good. At the extreme point people have no awareness of God and they have a negative attitude towards the church.  It’s unlikely you’re going to get those people into your church building.

The way you reach those who view Christians and the church in this way is by equipping your church members to be personal witnesses because they will work alongside people with those views. Those who are negative towards the church - unless there is a sovereign move of God - will be moved on in their lives by witness that causes them to rethink what they believe about God and what they think about Christians.  So equipping your church, your people, to be able to interact with people at this point is important. The Carol Service won’t do that because they don’t come.  Into the Sowing 1 category we place personal witness and people inviting other people.