Evangelism Strategy - Part 1

I've had several conversations over the past week or two about the subject of evangelism. As I said recently, evangelism seems to be the one subject Christ followers and people that claim no relationship with Christ both get up tight about. The area I have felt ClearView must strengthen more than any other is seeing more adults (and students) come to Christ. But how?

The typical and traditional response of many Pastors to a paragraph like the one above is seek out the newest "evangelism program" and "implement" it in their church. Been there. Done that. There are benefits to such programs such as: 1) Raised awareness in the church of the need to share our faith; 2) Higher accountability related to our individual responsibility to share our faith; 3) Some experience more of a comfort level as they have a formula to fall back on; 4) etc. Please don't read into this that I think these various programs are bad. Some churches do find these to be helpful. I join many who would say, "Any evangelism program is better than no evangelism strategy." Amen!

But the question I must answer is, "What is our evangelism strategy at ClearView?" Simple. If you are reading this and you are a member of ClearView, you are the key to the strategy. I would rather have hundreds (and soon thousands) of Christians living out their faith every day alert and willing to give a verbal witness in the midst of every day situations, than I would 50 or 100 showing up one night a week to go talk to people whom we have never met to use a method to artificially turn a conversation toward Christ.

So, how do we do it? Every adult (and older student) I have ever seen come to Christ has come the same way. God used a crisis of some kind to provide a wake-up call in their life. A marriage crisis. The death of a loved one. Moving to another state. Loss of a job. The birth of a baby (a postive crisis, but a crisis). A child breaking a heart. An alcoholic parent. A bad health report. Caught doing something illegal.

It is when people hit these crisis points, we must be there. Fact is, we cross the paths of people in crisis almost every day. Our next door neighbors, work associates, fellow students, ride share partners, PTO members, booster club members, etc. will walk through difficult times. We have the hope found only in Jesus Christ they seek and will seek during these times. When that mom begins to share with you how difficult things are in her marriage lately: Open Door! When your neighbor shares with you he just received a pink slip from a company he has been with for 20 years: Open Door! When the family down the street begins to share with you the difficulties they are having raising their 12 year old daughter: Open Door! God has their attention and He has you in their life for such a time as this!!

Rather than try to pick fruit before it is ripe (green apples) and thus bruise it, if we will simply pick the ripe fruit (red apples) right in front of us, we will see God bless with the fruit of more people coming to church. When it becomes second nature, we will see growth defined more by multiplication than by addition.