100% Enthusiastic, Effective, Participation in the Great Commission

As we were doing some intensive self-evaluation as a church a few years ago about our evangelistic effectiveness, we began wondering what our goal should be for the congregation regarding evangelistic activity. Would 50% of the congregation participating in soul-winning evangelism be sufficient? The problem with a goal like that is that while it is practical, it is not biblical. The responsibilities of the Great Commission belong to the entire church, both as a body and as individual members. No one is exempt.

Make everyone responsible.

So we came up with this lofty goal–100% of our membership involved in Great Commission ministry. There is more to it than that. We want those members to be not only involved but enthusiastically and effectively involved. It would be sad and counterproductive for our people to be doing Great Commission ministry only out of a sense of duty, or even worse—a sense of drudgery.

We want them to be effective. Far too often we have spent hours in fruitless evangelistic activity and have been content to say “we tried” never really expecting results. I cannot believe this is how the Apostle Paul approached reaching his world with the gospel.

Make the message simple, correct, and clear.

The very simple, non-negotiable aspects of personal evangelism are clear.  We must know clearly what the gospel is and how to share it, either in the form of a personal testimony or scriptural presentation.  There must be people willing to share that message and there must be people willing to hear that message.

Remember the supernatural.

All this must be superintended by the Holy Spirit and bathed in prayer.  We knew that. Prayer will raise our awareness of need and opportunity. God answers as we pray for guidance, power, and His work in the hearts of others. He is the one who guides us to those who need to hear. We find this throughout the New Testament with the woman at the well, the Ethiopian Eunuch, the Philippian jailer and more.  The providential hand of God is at work today as much as in that day.

Create many opportunities.

With these ideas in mind, or methods of outreach changed. I knew that there were some people that would never do evangelistic work door-to-door, even if I held them at gunpoint! Yet those same people felt perfectly at ease sharing Christ with an elderly person in a nursing home, or with a public school child in a Good News Club. We knew that if we wanted to everyone involved, we had to encourage lots of different types of evangelistic activities. In fact, we needed to create a culture where the church members themselves could be creative in finding new ways to share the gospel of Christ. Out of that vision, we now have people involved in nursing homes, Good News Clubs, addictions ministries, Bible distribution ministries and much more. We have a long way to go, but we also do have a lot going, and for that I am thankful.

Switch from “come” to “go.”

It is nearly impossible to get unchurched people to church today (at least in our location, that is the case). If we are going to reach our world today, we must go to them first. We must develop a culture in our church membership that purposefully seeks to establish redemptive relationships with people around us. We can do evangelistic Bible Studies in coffee shops, break rooms and living rooms. Those relationships have to be personal. We spend way too much time, money and effort trying to get them to come to us to meet us on our familiar turf when we should be enlisting the armies in our pews to go to them.

Lead by example.

We also have to be diligent. It is so easy to ease up. I find personally as a pastor that I can get so involved in counseling, educational and administrative duties, I get out of touch with reaching lost people. I am in one of those moments now, where I must renew my commitment to spend time with unsaved people. I am praying earnestly for another opportunity for an evangelistic Bible Study. It’s not only about personal obedience, it’s about my responsibilities as a leader.

One of our church members reminded me yesterday in a personal evangelism testimony that there are evangelistic opportunities all around us. May God grant us eyes to see the opportunities right in front of us. We still have so much work to do.

The harvest is still plenteous, the laborers are still few, and the command is still to go.