Under Orders from the King

We were buying a house—a brand new house. It was about to be built just up the hill from the model home. Tina’s (my wife) mom came to visit; of course, we took her to see the lot and the model home. We were young; in fact, I was young enough to think that we would do a quick walk through of the model and then go to lunch. Can you tell I had not been married very long? Somehow Tina produced a tape measurer and she and her mother began measuring all the windows and sliding glass doors so they could get started picking out, and/or making curtains, drapes, etc. They were talking about colors and accents, and all the stuff I didn’t care about. So I sat down on one of the couches in the living room and watched the other people who came in to look the model over.

As I sat there enjoying the couch and listening to my stomach begin to growl for lunch, a man, probably old enough to be my father, sat heavily in the easy chair next to me. He was a talkative guy. At times I have been accused of enjoying the sound of my voice too, so we got into a conversation. Apparently, his daughter was looking for a house. I excitedly told him we had already bought one and it would soon be under construction. When we exhausted that line of conversation and our women-folk hadn’t reappeared, he asked me what I did for a living. I was in my very first lead, actually solo, pastoral assignment, so I excitedly told him that I was the pastor of Church of the Foothills, gave him directions, and invited him to join us any Sunday morning for worship.

He asked me what kind of church it was. I told him what I always say when people ask me that:  “We are a non-denominational church affiliated with the Church of God of Anderson, Indiana. It’s sort of a non-denominational denomination.” He said, “Just so long as it’s not one of the those evangelical churches.” I asked him what church he belonged to. He said, “I’m Jewish.” So I asked him what was wrong with “evangelical” churches, and told him that our church could be considered evangelical. He went into a rant for several minutes about how his daughter had been going to an evangelical church and they wanted her to become a Christian, and why couldn’t we just let people be what they were born to be. At the end of his monologue, he was pretty red in the face and he asked me if I tried to get people to become Christians. I told him I did, and he asked why I thought I should try to get people to believe as I do. After a minute or two he again stopped talking and I told him that the last thing Jesus did on this earth was tell His followers to go into all the world and make disciples. I told the man, we have to try to persuade people to join us. We believe God’s Son ordered us to do so. He huffed a time or two and then got up to go find his family. Tina and her mom came back and said they were ready to go about then and we left. I never saw that man again, but that conversation has stayed with me.

We are under orders to bring the world to Jesus. Doing the Great Commission is not something we can do when we get around to it. It is what the Lord calls all of us to do. Some people will laugh at you. Some will get angry. Some will avoid you. But some will believe. Praise God, some will believe! The proper way to share the Good News about Jesus is by building relationships with people who don’t know Him and sharing our lives with them. It is more than can be done in a few minutes on a doorstep … or in a model home. It’s about loving folks who need the Good News and earning the right to be heard. I didn’t have the opportunity to do that with the man on the couch that day, but I think someone was building that kind of relationship with his daughter. I hope at some time someone came into that man’s life and got to share with him on a deeper level than I had the opportunity to do. He was very resistant to me and, I think, to anyone at that time, but maybe later someone got the opportunity to help him know our Savior.

It’s a big job that Jesus gave us. If we do it right it changes lives, cultures, and history. It has done so in the past, and it can again. In recent months several things have happened that demonstrate that the influence of Judeo-Christian values has lessened on our society. That needs to change, but it won’t be changed by winning elections and passing legislation. If the change comes, it will be because hearts have turned to God. That only happens as we build relationships with neighbors, colleagues, teammates, whoever we do life with who don’t know Christ. It only happens when we risk being ostracized and even hated. It will only happen when people see Christ’s love in us. Remember, we are under orders. Jesus did His part on the cross. The Holy Spirit will help us. We must do our assignment.

Grow the Church by Sharing Your Faith the Way the Disciples Did

We have an amazing example from the disciples when it comes to sharing our faith. Well at least from one of the disciples: Andrew. You see, I believe the best chance, perhaps the only chance, for the church to influence the world in the 21^st century is to imitate Andrew. If we do that, Joe and Jill Christ-follower will share their faith with Josh and Amy who live next door, or share a cubicle, or go to the same fitness center, or who are involved with the same children’s school, sports team, or dance class. Even in this time, when communication is everywhere and unbelievably fast, when we can see and hear great speakers on our TVs, our computers, and our phones, the human one-on-one touch of a Christ-follower with his friend remains the most effective way to communicate with people who need the Lord. At this time, at least in America, other means of communication saturate our ears. We have learned to be apathetic, and even skeptical of the things we hear and see on mass media. When a friend shares not only his faith, but also his life, with a friend he has a chance to introduce him/her to Jesus. We have a blazing example of how this works in the New Testament. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was not in the inner circle like Peter, James, and John, and we don’t see him preaching in Acts, but we do see him witnessing one-on-one 3 times.

First of all, he witnessed to Peter (John 1:40-42). After Andrew heard what John said about Jesus and decided to follow Him, the first thing he did was tell Peter all about Jesus and what he believed about Him. The next thing he did was to introduce Peter to Jesus. That is all Andrew did; Jesus took it from there. So Joe and Jill Christ-follower simply need to introduce their friends and relatives to Jesus like Andrew did. Then they need to do another thing that Andrew did:  trust Jesus to take it from there.

The next time we meet Andrew is when Jesus spoke all morning to a crowd and then challenged the disciples to feed lunch to everyone (John 6:1-13). They were dumbfounded. Finally, Andrew told Jesus about a little boy in the crowd whose mother had packed him a lunch—five barley loaves and two small fish. I don’t know how Andrew knew about the boy’s lunch. He must have made friends with the boy and perhaps the boy showed him the lunch he brought. The point is, Andrew introduced the little boy (and his lunch) to Jesus. Jesus did the rest. He took what the little boy brought and made an amazing miracle.

One more time we see Andrew witnessing in this way (John 12:20-26). It seems that Phillip didn’t know what to do with the Greeks who wanted to meet Jesus. They were different. They weren’t “their kind of people.” Andrew did what he had done with Peter and with the little boy. He simply introduced the Greeks to Jesus then stepped back and let Jesus do His thing. (He told the Greeks they would need to follow Him and serve.)

In each of these instances Andrew simply introduced Jesus. Today Joe and Jill Christ-follower need to step up and simply introduce their friends to Jesus. Andrew didn’t need to know all the answers. He didn’t know what Jesus would do with Peter, with the boy and his lunch, or with a group of Gentile Greeks. He didn’t have to know. All he had to do was introduce Jesus and believe that Jesus would do whatever else needed to be done. That’s exactly what we need to learn to do. Too often we make witnessing complicated; really it’s not. It’s simply telling what Jesus has done in your life and inviting your friends to believe in Him, too. Now, more than anytime since its founding, the United States is ignorant of the Bible, and of the Jesus who came to give them hope, love, and eternal life. The calling for all of us is to be Andrews and introduce our friends to Him.

Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust Evangelism

“Three yards and a cloud of dust” is an old way of describing a football team’s offense that concentrates on moving the ball down the field a few yards at a time. While it is considered a rather old-fashioned approach to football, I think it can describe the evangelism strategy churches can utilize today. The three yards and a cloud of dust offense desires to move the ball steadily down the field a little at a time until a touchdown is scored. The alternative is a passing game that relies on long range so-called “hail Mary” passes which attempt to score the touchdown by throwing a long pass. The “hail Mary” seldom works, but when it does, it’s spectacular.

In earlier times, the evangelism style of choice was similar to the “hail Mary” offense. Until about 1970, many evangelical churches relied on revivals, crusades, and other special worship services where a gifted speaker vigorously presented the Gospel. Many people made the decision to follow Christ that way. In the day before cable TV, the revival was the biggest show in town for the week and many non-Christians and nominal Christians attended, and some of them made major commitments. The Holy Spirit greatly used the revivals and crusades. However, as entertainment became more accessible, it became more difficult to get people who weren’t already Christians to attend revivals. Also, while revivals and crusades saw many people respond with a decision at the meeting, most of those who made decisions did not become disciples. The percentage of decisions that led to discipleship largely depended on the quality of follow-up by church members. This meant church members had to somehow make a connection with people they may not know that would allow them to help the new believers become fully devoted followers of Christ.

As revival evangelism faltered, a different kind of “hail Mary” became prevalent. New tools like “The Four Spiritual Laws”, “The Roman Road”, and “Evangelism Explosion” enabled individuals and small groups of Christians to share the Gospel and pray with folks to receive salvation. God used this approach for many years to bring people to follow Him. Often churches would train members in the use of these tools and provide opportunities for them to use them to reach their friends, neighbors and people who visited their church. Here too, follow-up was the key to turning decisions into disciples. Many times follow-up was difficult because the person who presented the Gospel and the decision-maker were strangers and may have had very little in common.

Both of these “hail Mary” methods were very effective at times. The problem was that, like the long pass in football, both these methods needed the situation to be just right. These methods were effective where the people the church hoped to reach held the Bible as sacred. It also helped if the prospect had respect for the Christian worldview.  

Most of the people the church today needs to reach are not familiar with the Bible and are ignorant, or perhaps even suspicious, of the Christian worldview. One night at a great worship service may cause them to start thinking (if you can get them to one), but getting a commitment is very difficult in that circumstance. It is the same with the old individual methods: one conversation, no matter how well thought out, guided, and backed up by scripture, seldom brings someone to Christ.

For these days we need to use a “three yards and a cloud of dust” evangelism approach. We attempt to move our friends and neighbors toward Christ with our conversations, the testimony of our lives, and lots and lots of prayer. We must work together and pray that the persons we hope to reach will meet other Christ-followers who will also move them toward Christ. Working together we can help people toward the goal, which is salvation. As we move down the field, there are opportunities for the prospect to see Christ working in our lives, to learn the Christian worldview, and the importance of the Bible. Sometimes, using the “three yards and a cloud of dust” approach, the team moves down the field toward to the goal line fairly quickly. (The goal in evangelism is our friend becoming a disciple.) And, sometimes it takes a lot of time.

Evangelism tracts and learned outlines will be handy tools along the way, so can evangelistic worship services. However, instead of either being the strategy for evangelizing our community; they are part of the strategy. The strategy is actually based on Joe and Mary Pewsitter becoming friends with people who don’t know Christ, loving them and sharing life with them. It is seldom fast, but it has a great chance of making new disciples rather than simply getting someone to make an empty decision. Follow-up is natural, because of the relationship that has been established. It is friend-helping-friend learn to follow the Lord. This strategy is not a program of the church; it is a way of life. I think it was the way of life for the New Testament Church. It doesn’t depend on a fiery evangelist or a perfected presentation. It is all about us loving them until they become part of us.

When Should Your Church Begin a Second Worship Service?

Many times it happens like this scenario:

The capacity of your church’s sanctuary (auditorium, worship room, multi-ministry room, whatever you call it in your congregation) is around 220 and your church attendance is picking up. Your average attendance passed 150 a month or so ago and you continue to see new faces. You look at the records for the last few decades and you find that three times the church has grown to between 170 and 180 and then retreated. The congregation went down to about 100 before it started this last resurgence under the new young pastor who is a very good speaker and has lots of new ideas. The changes he has proposed seem to be paying off and many Sundays the sanctuary feels full. Some of the folks are very excited about it, and most of the rest feel good about it. There are, however, some who are getting nervous that the church is not the same.

You’re thinking that it’s good that it’s not the same, because people are finding the Lord and want to join the congregation, but you also see a problem. Last week, when the children sang in worship, there weren’t enough seats, and the ushers had to scramble to add chairs down the center aisle and in the lobby. The pastor was almost ecstatic and you were just about as happy. On the other hand, Mr. and Mr. Brewster who have been in this church for over 50 years arrived a little late and a new family was seated in the Brewsters’ usual place. For years, you had heard how much the Brewsters love the congregation and how they want to see it be strong and growing, but they looked very unhappy when they had to sit in the lobby.

Since the new pastor has been at your church there has been talk about adding on. You talked to a friend of yours who owns a company that builds supermarkets and other large buildings. He gave you what he said was a very ballpark estimate of the costs to build a new room for worship and you know that those costs were well out of reach. You even discussed it with the pastor, and he estimated that the attendance would have to just about double before a major building project could be considered.

If the church continues to grow, the size of the sanctuary will very soon be a problem. The growth has not been meteoric—just 7 or 8 percent per year—a pace that you hope continues. If it does, the church will begin to feel crowded and there will be no room for continued growth. At board meeting the pastor passed out an article that said if a worship facility is more than 75-80% full, growth is severely retarded. Your church is getting close to that mark, and your research showed that, in the past, the congregation had stopped growing every time it reached that level.

A few times the pastor has mentioned starting a second service. Until now, you have not been excited about that. In fact, you are still not particularly excited about it, but you see it is probably the best solution to the problem that is looming just ahead for this church.

Now what? What’s the best way for a church to move to two worship services? How do you get the congregation to accept the idea?

1. Clearly make the case to the lay leaders using the statistics and vision.

2. Ask lay leaders who accept the idea to help get the rest of the church on board.

The major objections will likely be, “We have always been a family and we won’t know everybody any more.” The truth is that if the church is larger than 50, they don’t all know each other anyway. Having one service preserves the illusion that they do and changing to two services kills that illusion. Adding a service will not make them know less people, and it may broaden their friendship circle. The best way to counter this objection is for the members to be more uncomfortable that people the church could reach are being left out. Perhaps ask, “Who do we want to tell to stay away?” Also, it is important to give the members time to process the idea of two services.

3. Decide if you will have two duplicate services or if they will be different.

Some churches choose to have contemporary and traditional services. This can help alleviate the music style controversy many churches face, but it creates a lot more work for the music people, and may create two churches in one.

4. Get the worship team on board or recruit a second team for the new service.

It is crucial to have the cooperation of the worship team.

5. Decide the time for the new service.

Some churches decide to have the added service simultaneous with Sunday school. Others choose to have it the hour before Sunday school. Having two services and two simultaneous Sunday schools works for some churches, even though it takes a lot of volunteers. Other churches choose to discontinue Sunday school, encourage small groups during the week and provide children’s church for both services. One very important factor in this decision is the amount of parking. People can’t sit in the church if they can’t find a place to park. If the parking lot has to be emptied between services, that will be a major factor in determining the schedule.

6. Recruit ushers and greeters, and all the other volunteers you will need for Sunday school or children’s church.

The availability of volunteers may help determine the new service scenario the church chooses.

7. Ask a number of people to commit to the new service for a year or 18 months.

The number depends on the need at your church. In the story above, 50 or 75 might be sensible. You need enough people committed to the new service to effectively relieve the crowding at the existing service and to be enough that they don’t feel like they’re the only ones there.

Bathe the whole idea in prayer. This is a very major step for congregations, especially those long-established ones. If the church can take this step, it may well find itself on the road to new levels of growth, which means many people in their community will find the love, hope and salvation of Jesus.

Who are You Trying to Impress?

That was the question the conference leader asked a group of about 500 or so pastors and church leaders. “Who are you trying to impress?” I was a very young associate pastor and being a typical Baby Boomer know-it-all, I answered to myself, “I’m not trying to impress anyone. I just want to be me.” Then, the leader went further and said “Who would you most like to hear compliment your ministry? A friend? A parent? Another pastor? A seminary professor? Who would you most like to hear say good things about your preaching and your leadership?” Well that brought the question home to me. I thought I would love to have some of my old profs (I was about a year and a half out of seminary) tell me I was doing things the right way. This conference leader had started his church with nothing and led it to be, at that time, one of the fastest growing and most effective churches in America. He said, “I decided when I started that if I could get a compliment from anyone on my ministry, I wanted it to come from the unchurched in my town. That is who I decided to try to impress.”

To me, that was a brand new way of looking at ministry, and it has become the way I have tried to conduct myself as a pastor. Because Jesus’ command to us is to make disciples, I knew I needed to make an impression on those who don’t know Him. How else could I help influence them to join me in following Christ? This idea began to color the way I sought to preach, the programs and events I led my church to do, and even the kind of building we eventually built. Sometimes, it’s meant choosing to do things in a way that was not impressive to my profs or even the older leaders in my church. From time to time, those people made their disappointment with me very obvious. But the Lord did not assign me to impress them. Jesus had the same problem. Most of the religious people of His time were not impressed with Him at all, while the regular folks followed Him.

Impressing the unchurched does not mean becoming like the unchurched, but it does mean sharing the Gospel in ways that get their attention and speak to them. It means treating them with respect and loving them. It means doing your best to make them feel accepted, comfortable and loved in your presence. You won’t have to point out their sin (the Holy Spirit will take care of that), and it’s not your job to judge them (I believe that is reserved for Christ). Your job is to care about them and want them to join you on the journey to heaven.

Too often the practice of congregations does not match its rhetoric. They say they want to win people to Christ, but they leave the unchurched feeling like they are a bother. When people do decide to join the body, the congregation often keeps them on the fringe of the fellowship for a long time. (Right after becoming the pastor at a church, I heard some of the core people talking about the “new family.” Turned out the “new family” had been attending and giving to the church regularly for 5 years.)

Lesson for Pastor: It’s easy for your office to become an ivory tower. You can find yourself surrounded only by Christians and people who try to act like Christians when they are around you. Find ways to get to know unchurched people in your community and be Jesus to them. Join a service or hobby club, play on a ball team not sponsored by the church, volunteer as a police or fire chaplain, coach your kid’s sports team. Do anything that will put you in close contact with people you might be able to influence for Christ. Then, get to know them. Become friends. Share life with them and thereby earn the right to share Christ.

Lesson for Church Leaders: Help your pastor develop a culture in your church that expects and welcomes unchurched people. Realize that they will bring baggage with them from the world and be willing to help them deal with it when they’re ready. Don’t expect people who don’t know Christ to act like Him. Be real with them. You probably aren’t as Christ-like as you should be either. Share the road to Him with them.

My mentor, Dan Harman, used to say when I was his associate at First Church in Fresno, CA that he wanted there to be three kinds of people in Fresno: 1.) People who are members of First Church. 2.) People who are members of another church, but say, “If I didn’t have a church home I would go to First Church.” 3.) People who don’t go to church anywhere, but say, “If I decide to go to church, I think I’ll try First Church.” We didn’t get that far, but we worked at it. I challenge you to work at it too.

Think about it. From whom would you like to hear a compliment? Who are you trying to impress?