Articles

During my evangelism phone calls with pastors this summer, many have asked me about a proposed "plan" to utilize "That's Good News."

Here you go:

1. Read a copy of the book asap to see if it is a good fit for your people in terms of style.

2. If the book connects, plan to do a book study/sermon series/evangelism initiative leading up to Easter 2024.

3. Order a Leader's Kit. It contains everything you will need. Use it as a starting place and adapt to your context and unique congregation.

4. Create an Evangelism Task Force and do your planning in October/November before the "Christmas run" begins. Develop a time-line like you would in a capital campaign. Then "run the offense."

5. Ask your existing classes and small groups (including youth) to all engage the book at the same time. Kick up a special session or two to catch others as well. This starts the evangelism conversation! Perhaps hold an additional session on Sunday afternoons and another on a week morning and another on a week night. Use the graphics package in the Leader's Kit to publicize.

6. Promote the book study beginning in mid-October. Formally sign people up from Thanksgiving through Christmas. I would be happy to send you a personalized promotional video.

7. Launch your all-church book study the first week in January. The Leader's Guide divides the book into a five week study. If you start the first week of January, you will finish the last week in January (January spans five weeks next year).

8. Preach a four week sermon series on evangelism during the four Sundays of February (a template for the four week series is in the Leader's Kit). Use February to on-load people for your upcoming Evangelism Initiative (a scalable campaign is in the Leader's Kit).

9. Set a goal for how many people you hope will sign up and a time frame for the initiative. We asked 500 people to invite one new person to church each week for sixty weeks (this gave us two runs at Easter). Scale to your size.

10. Use February to print up invitations to your Easter services and to your church in general. You can also empahasize any "splash" events leading up to Easter like Holy Week services, an Easter Egg Hunt, ect. You will have four full weeks before Easter to invite people!

11. Formally on-load people into your Evangelism Initiatve each week of the sermon series. Create energy! On the final Sunday of your February series, have a formal Concencration for the people who have signed up. Have them come forward at the end of a worship service, anoint them with oil, lay hand upon them and pray over them.

12. Have participants pick up a packet contianing invitation cards and ideas for inviting people to your Easter services. The more ideas the better! After Easter, shift to regular invitations to church and then focus on "back to school" and Christmas. Special Sundays, special services are also great. We utilize business sized cards and teach people to offer social media and personal text invitations as well. People love ideas!

13. Get your facility ready to receive guests and reexamine your processes for how you will follow up.

Remember that when it comes to evangelism, people will be intimidated. Fear is your enemy. The "win" is the invite, not the outcome! It is up to God what happens from the invitation onward. Celebrate your "wins" and trust God for an increase!

Questions? Call our office during business hours and set up a phone call. 618-277-4659. Don't hestitate to ask if you have any questions!