Podcast Episode #216
We lament the decline of evangelism in many local churches and discuss ways to assess whether or not your church is effective when it comes to evangelism. Also, I highlight a humiliating defeat in sports to my grandson.
Some highlights from today’s episode include:
- I would rather a church have a programmatic evangelism emphasis than none at all.
- Pastors, keep track of the annual number of faith conversions in your church.
- One of the great travesties in many churches today is a dichotomy between evangelism and discipleship.
- The number one correlation of evangelistic churches is evangelistic pastors.
- A church that has an evangelistic reputation is one that has a good reputation.
- Healthy, evangelistic churches are typically known in the community for caring for the community.
- 95% of the non-Christian, unchurched community are receptive to faith conversations.
- If your church is not seeing a lot of conversions from adults, it’s likely because your adults aren’t sharing their faith.
The six points we discuss about evangelistic effectiveness of churches are:
- Keep track of total annual conversions.
- Look at trends of those annual conversions.
- Calculate the church’s conversion ratio: Average attendance / total annual conversions (under 20:1 is good).
- Is the pastor personally evangelistic?
- Does the church have an evangelistic reputation in the community?
- Does incarnational ministry become transformational ministry?
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