If I was a Community Pastor I would… PUT FAITH ON THE AGENDA #10

Provide opportunities for people to investigate Christianity & for faith to be put on the agenda.Run Simply Christianity, Introducing God etc. Make sure there is one running often and advertise it. Don’t make people have to wait too long, you want to be able to say there is one starting on….

Two locals in off the street in the last week asking for courses about Christianity – when does that happen? Not that often, but God is gracious and imagine if you said well, the next one is in September!

If you don’t have the people power to run courses back to back, think creatively about how you do it…

• ask people to be ‘missionaries’ from their bible study groups for 5 weeks to run it.
• get the same people to run the course continually throughout the year.
• use DVD courses, that do much of the prep for you.
• find days of the week that enable people at church to serve in the course… most non-Christians have flexible evening commitments, it is usually only Christians who can’t do a Tuesday or Wednesday night ;

So it is easy to run a course for people who want to sign up, or for those you can coax along, but how do you put faith on the agenda for your community?

This is a hard question and one I haven’t been so great at answering practically. For me the way I get to put faith on the agenda for people, is by aswering the question that lots of people in the commuity ask me:  “what do you do at the church”…. this is a great springboard for conversation… but there should be more ways you can raise faith discussions for locals:

I’ve been thinking about the various was you can do walk up evangelism…

• “so ah… who do you think Jesus is?”
• “at church this week the sermon is on being satisfied… what do you reckon it would take to be satisfied?”
• “what do you expect from your local church?”
• “what do you expect from God?”
• “just wondering if there is anything we can pray for you?

Do it – give it a go this week…

The other thing I think would be great is using your marketing team. At Church we have A1 posters in frames (Officeworks are doing a great deal at the moment for $70 odd dollars.) Get some pithy quote or provocative saying that makes people think done up pretty and print it off and lean it against the fence of your church – we use them to advertise events, but I reckon we could use them also for putting faith on peoples agendas.