I've been studying a lot about evangelism. What's effective & not effective.
NOT EFFECTIVE: Build it and they will come. I am puzzled that we still think that if we build it nice enough and pretty enough, people will still come to our event. New church plants are often meeting in store fronts or shopping malls. Not trying to be churchy, but Christly.
EFFECTIVE: Friendship. Make friends with them and they will listen to you more quickly. Invite a stranger, they'll look at you like you're crazy.
NOT EFFECTIVE: Mass evangelism. Even Billy Graham was effective because people invited friends. THEN they heard and listened and believed.
EFFECTIVE: Event evangelism. "Hey, we're having a movie at our church and they're giving a prize to the person who brings the most. I need one more -- can you join me?"
NOT EFFECTIVE: Door to door evangelism. Face it, the cults have ruined this for us.
EFFECTIVE: Heart to heart evangelism. I read this week: Love them until they ask "why."
Just a few ideas. What do you think?
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3 comments:
Tim,
Your info is informative. And I agree with your findings.
Things in Christiandom get way too impersonal and people ignore it.
I would also add being genuine. I think so many times Christians "love" with an agenda. Their thought is that if they act kind enough, listen enough and act interested enough people will want to hear the gospel and they can complete their goal of winning them to Christ. Kind of like doing A, B and C in a sales pitch to get the outcome of D (the sale). Evangelism done that way becomes the most conniving form of sales techniques because we are doing all of this with an agenda they don't even know about. Instead we should just genuinely love people. Certainly we want them to experience life-change through Jesus but this should be secondary to simply loving them. Imagine it this way; if you knew for certain that, that person would never come to Christ would you still love them, reach out to them and invest time and energy in them? I think that gets to the heart of the issue. Are we loving people to get another "convert" notch on our belt or are we just simply loving them out of the overflow in our spirit. Our hearts should be overflowing with love that is real and genuine rather than acting out love because we have an evangelism agenda. Afterall that is the only way to truly, sincerely love others anyway.
Kevin, that's why it's "love them til they ask why" not love them til you can get your speech in. I totally agree with what you said. Love is the key. Read my blog tomorrow, I'm commenting more on that very subject.
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