7 Findings About Leading Evangelistic Churches

Jonathan Hill, Resident Director of Evangelism Ministries

*Article by Chuck Lawless
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I’ve studied North American churches for years, and few churches do well at emphasizing evangelism. Here are some general conclusions I’ve reached about evangelistic churches:

1. The pastor must take the lead in evangelism. In close to thirty years of studies, I have never found a strongly evangelistic church led by a pastor who is unconcerned about evangelism. Rather, pastors whose hearts beat for evangelism produce congregations that share his passion.

2. Evangelism does not just happen. Evangelistic churches recognize that some believers lose that passion, and many get increasingly separated from non-believers the longer they are in church. They know that a church without a plan to evangelize will be a church that does not evangelize, and they plan not to be that kind of congregation.

3. Churches that evangelize offer evangelistic training—and work hard to recruit members to participate. I’ve known too many churches who called members to evangelize but offered no training. I’ve known others who offered training but assumed members would respond to only a bulletin or pulpit announcement. Neither results in strong evangelism.

4. Evangelistic strategies include both intentionality and accountability among leaders. Intentionality is not a surprise, as noted in #2 above. Accountability, though, is often a challenge for most pastors and leaders—especially if it means admitting a lack of evangelism. Church leaders who are most committed to evangelism are willing to take these risks.

5. Evangelism is dependent on a strong belief in the Word. There is no other way to state this finding: pastors and church leaders who question whether Jesus is the only way to God, or whether a personal relationship with Christ is necessary for salvation, do not focus on evangelism. They may do “outreach” to increase numbers, but it’s not usually gospel-centered evangelism.

6. Churches that evangelize are unafraid to count numbers. There is little question that churches can idolize numbers. On the other hand, churches that evangelize are willing to ask questions based on numbers. If the numbers show they are reaching few non-believers, they ask “why” without compromising the gospel message.

7. Evangelistic congregations live and serve among their community. Their church building is not a retreat from their world; it is a place where they are challenged to take the gospel to their world. They actually know lost people, minister to local needs, and make a difference in their community.

What other conclusions about evangelistic churches would you add?

Bishop Mike Ainsworth, Conference Superintendent

*Article by Dan Reiland
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Good character takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy.

The temptations we face, plus the pressures we experience, can lure us to deep regret without the discipline of strong character and trusting God to help us do what we cannot do on our own.

God helps us, but He expects us to do our part too.

Good character, often called integrity, is not literally destroyed in a moment. However, it’s in a moment that we realize the reality of what has happened and how it affects others.

The failure to develop integrity, or the breakdown of good character often takes place over a long slow road that is nearly imperceptible in the beginning.

Keep watch over your sustained stress, prolonged and elevated pressure, and personal and spiritual disappointments. They can trigger justification and rationalization that leads to regret.

What are your triggers, temptations, and most common situations that can contribute to the breakdown of your character?

The cost of bad character always exceeds the cost of good character.

Good character isn’t a mysterious or subjective idea, good character is easy to see in every-day circumstances, here are several examples.

You keep your promises.
You give more than take.
You don’t take advantage of others to advance yourself.
Your private life matches your public life.
You demonstrate integrity in the small things.
You treat others with dignity and respect.
Faithfulness to these practical examples helps you develop your character, and there are many more you could add this list.

There are, however, deeper level practices that will more firmly establish the “who you are” of character underneath those everyday examples.

1) Guard your heart.

The character that will sustain you for a lifetime of leadership starts with God. The world will pull you in one direction, God draws you back to Himself, and makes the path clear.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil. Proverbs 4:23-27

Godly character, patterned after Jesus example for us, does not hold perfection over our heads; instead, it places grace and ability in our hearts.

2) Establish a “top five traits” of character for yourself.

Traveling the long road of leadership is obviously a lifetime endeavor, but it starts fresh every day and you will do better if you have a vision of the person you want to be.

For example, you can list for yourself specific values that you want to guide your life.

In addition, you will likely find it very helpful to select about five character traits that are inspiring to you and seem a lot like the real you according to your values.

They might look something like this:

Humble
Grateful
Responsible
Generous
Courageous

You could list twenty-five or more, but that’s not practical.

What five character traits would those who follow you say you most exemplify? Would they match the ones you most hope is the real you?

3) Pre-make lifestyle decisions.

When you go to the grocery store you probably make a list so you don’t wander up and down the isles temped to pick up stuff you don’t need or want. That’s a simple example of pre-making decisions. In this case, of what you will or won’t buy.

The practice of pre-making important lifestyle decisions can radically alter the trajectory and outcomes of your life.

If you wait until you’re at the moment of decision, when the pressure is on and perhaps your discipline or willpower is low, it almost always results in a less than ideal outcome and regret kicks in.

You can pre-make decisions about:

Your budget
How you treat people
Your physical health and regular exercise
How you demonstrate generosity
Your prayer life
The point is not to make a long list.

What 3-5 lifestyle decisions can you pre-make so that when you come to them daily, weekly, or monthly, you waste no time deliberating toward success or failure, you just do the smart thing?

4) Practice delayed gratification

We live in an instant culture where if we wait more than five seconds for a website to load or an app to fully open, frustration kicks in.

If we text someone and they don’t respond in minutes we might be tempted to wonder why. Today business makes it possible to have nearly anything delivered to your doorstep in a day or two.

None of this helps us in our ability to wait for the things we want in life. That’s not an excuse, it’s just being honest about the world we live in.

Delayed gratification is the ability to resist the temptation for immediate enjoyment in hopes of gaining a more valuable and long-lasting reward.

My leadership mentor says it this way:

“Pay now, play later.” John Maxwell

The ultimate idea in a Christian worldview is that we exchange a lifestyle of personal agenda and life apart from Christ, for the eternal reward of heaven.

The same principle holds true for the daily life we live in the here and now.

Character is built by learning the ability to set aside the smaller and faster rewards for the deeper, more meaningful and lasting rewards.

5) Learn the balance of grace and growth.

The discipline of developing character is not meant to embrace a lifestyle of legalism, lack of joy or the absence of spontaneity. In fact, well developed character increases your options, lowers your pressure, and enhances your joy.

The best way to approach the development of your character is to embrace both grace and growth.

Make the growth of your character, based on Jesus’ example, your primary objective. But when you fall short, give yourself grace, learn from your short-comings and take another run at it tomorrow.

Again, this is not meant as a “lower the bar” kind of excuse, it simply recognizes that we are human, and we’ll not get it right every time.

Great character is made up of doing the small things in the right way every day, and over a lifetime, this leads you to the big things that really matter in a way that pleases God, and you are proud of.

3 High Quality Handheld Easter Welcome Signs!

Jonathan Hill, Resident Director of Evangelism Ministries

Take Your Welcome Experience From Awkward to Awesome This Easter! Get ready for Easter (or any other Sunday) by welcoming your guest with a handheld sign. Our first impressions are so important and going the extra mile to make a guest feel welcome is so important. It's also a great way to get people in your church involved in a guest services team. You can get a sign printed locally or take advantage of this offer through ministrydeal.com.

Retiro de Pastoras - Abril Sabado 2

Joel Pava, Resident Director of Hispanic Ministries

3 Starting Points to Grow Prayer in Your Church

Doug Beane-Hall, WIN Director

*Article by Jonathan Graf
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Recently I did a study of prayer mobilization in the Bible. I discovered something I thought was interesting: prayer was usually mobilized by a leader challenging the people.

In the Old Testament we see Nehemiah, Ezra, Jehoshaphat, to name some, who challenged people to seek God and provided a venue for them to do so.

Some of you would say, “that isn’t the case in the New Testament.” Perhaps for the first months and a few years in the life of the early church people prayed without a lot of encouragement from leaders. But by the time the epistles were written, we see Paul and James again challenging those under their care to pray. James’s passage in chapter 5 goes through a lengthy encouragement for people to pray more often. Paul asked people to join his missionary endeavors by praying (Romans and 2 Corinthians). He also challenged people to “pray without ceasing,” to pray when they had anxiety, to pray for those in authority. I suspect all these challenges were made because James and Paul saw the people slacking off where prayer was concerned.

How like our people is that?

What’s the answer? As leaders–pastors, elders, small group leaders, prayer leaders—we need to challenge people to pray. Your people will not likely pray a lot without encouragement and challenge from you. In light of that fact, I asked the question, “what prayer opportunities are the most effective in mobilizing a congregation to pray?” Here are what I consider to be the three best:

1. Engage Your Congregation with a Prayer Initiative.

A prayer initiative is where everyone prays on a given theme for a set period of time. 24 hours, a week, 2 weeks, a month, 40 days, are the most popular. If done well, a prayer initiative cannot be matched at pulling the most people into prayer. And a number will have such a good experience that they will catch the importance of prayer and will be better at it the rest of their lives.

Why is a prayer initiative so good? (A) Most use scripture-based prayer guides which both teach people to pray God’s Word, but also move people to pray a more kingdom agenda rather than their own. (B) Because the entire church is involved, people are reminded week after week to participate. There is also a built in accountability as people hear others talking about their experiences. That builds within each person a desire to participate more. (C) Prayer initiatives have a twofold manageable time commitment. First people are not making a commitment to pray every day for the rest of their lives (while that would be great, it is too scary a commitment for most). Instead they know they are committing to 30 days or two weeks. But secondly most prayer initiative guides ask for no more than a one to five minute commitment each day. That fact is not intimidating to people at all.

Remember, however, a prayer initiative will only work well if it is well planned, prepared for, and promoted. Just purchasing some prayer guides a week ahead of the Sunday where you announce this is starting today, will not work.

For more information prayerleader.com has some articles on the power of prayer initiatives. Some of the prayer initiatives we recommend are Seek God for the City, Asleep in the Land of Nod, Revolution on Our Knees and 40 Days of Prayer. While all are good, 40 Days of Prayer is by far the one we recommend the most. It has powerful content, but also the most developed materials for a church that wants to do a prayer initiative right.

2. Take Advantage of a “Passionate” Need.

By this I mean three things. First, pay attention when a congregation’s heart seems to be focused somewhere. Has something unusual and difficult happened in the life of your congregation–a natural disaster or catastrophe in your community or the world? Is there something going on that naturally moves people to cry out to God? Take advantage of that and work hard to rally meaningful prayer events, meetings, groups, times in the worship service, etc.

Second, pay attention if there is an area of unusual need in your congregation (a lot of people with cancer, a lot of people who lost their jobs due to a local plant’s closing, etc.) People’s hearts are tender to such things. They can be an opportunity to rally more than normal prayer.

Third, is there an area of significant ministry your church is experiencing? Maybe your youth group is growing all of a sudden, maybe your MOPS program has more women in it from the community than from your church. Look for those kinds of things and rally prayer around them. God is at work there, which means Satan will be on the attack. This may be an opportunity to get more people praying.

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Retiro de Caballeros - Abril Sabado 9

Joel Pava, Resident Director of Hispanic Ministries

Answer these questions:

Depending on your vision, you would then:

There are 4 possible scenarios in enlarging the Hispanic ministry at CCIPHC:

1.The mother church provides full financial support for the planting project. That also includes the use of the facilities. The new Hispanic church is accountable to the local church.
2.The local church provides partial financial support and the use of the facilities for the project. The new Hispanic church is accountable to the local church.
3.The church provides the use of the facilities without financial support.
Note: The use of facilities requires signing a contract. The new church is accountable to CCIPHC.
4.The church provides support, at their discretion, for an outside Hispanic ministry in the area. The new church is accountable to CCIPHC.

Important: It is recommended to decide on the best form of handling tithes and offerings collected by the planting church.

Cornerstone Conference has experienced God’s favor and faithfulness for more than 100 years. With a grateful heart for all the Lord has done, we look forward to all that God has planned for us as we commit to follow Christ with a fresh focus for 21st Century Spirit-filled ministry.

I invite you to join Cornerstone Conference in the joyful work of equipping ministers and churches to fulfill the Great Commission. We are committed to equip pastors to lead every congregation to be a healthy, growing and multiplying church and to raise up the next generation of leaders to plant vibrant new congregations in rural and urban areas across North Carolina, Virginia and beyond.

5 Ways You Can Help:

This monthly publication, will serve to highlight opportunities and identify specific ways you can participate in the Arise 2033 Vision and Goals of Cornerstone Conference! We will share stories of God's faithfulness to help us raise up Great Commission Leaders and Congregations to accomplish His purpose on earth.

I'm ready! Are you? It's time for Cornerstone to Arise!

Blessings,

Bishop Mike Ainsworth
mainsworth@ccrdc.org

Cornerstone Conference is a body of IPHC Churches existing to equip ministers and churches to fulfill the Great Commission!

Visit us today at www.cornerstonecmc.org