April 9, 2010
- Based on people
Look out into your congregations… at the people God has generously blessed your church family with. Don’t look at the tasks that need doing, but look at the fruit of the Spirit in peoples lives. If there are godly people who love Jesus and love talking about him, why not chat to them about ideas they might have and ask them to think about ideas and encourage them to see ways they can do outreach at your church. Shape ideas around your people, not your people around ideas. - Based on Ideas
Look out into your congregation… to see if there is any correspondence with the things you have dreamed up and the people you find in your congregation. Find something that would be better delegated, either because you aren’t as skilled as others, don’t have adequate time to commit to it, or have lost interest. Again, shape or modify your ideas around your people, not your people around your ideas. Encourage them to develop the idea-seed and to take responsibility for it.
Really, both are about people, just different starting points. Once you have your teams, make sure you ‘let go’ and ‘support’ them.
Start looking today.
Are there some people in your church who are not actively serving but could be?
Are there some people in your church who are gifted in evangelism?
Are there some people in your church passionately convicted?
Hey Hayley,
Love your new blog layout. I think finding an evangelist is much more simple than that. Everyone is an Evangelist. If Christ asked the Disciples “To Go out and Make Disciples, Baptizing them in the name of the father, son and holy spirit”. Then I think that applies to everyone.
Flat out isn’t being an evangelist sharing the love of Jesus with people who are lost. That is something everyone should be doing. Otherwise you’d be hiding it under a bushel right?….no way!….I’m gonna let it shine!
People don’t share Jesus because, they are scared, unaware of opportunity, embarrassed by the church and don’t want to bring people, unaware of the urgency of the message or flat out lazy. Our job is to empower the ENTIRE congregation to get over that and start doing it.
Besides when i met you guys in December as you were setting up for New Years you were doing a good just with the water and chairs….you seem to have community outreach pretty well dialed in!
Yeah maybe I should have said how to look for leaders…wo can help empower others with them ‘to let it shine’
I totally agree that we need to empower people to get over the false perceptions of evangelism and for them to see it as a natural overflow of the heart.
Dude you blog rocks! I think Stanley and Driscoll both have some interesting thoughts on looking for “leaders” in your congregation.