10 Questions to Diagnose the Evangelistic Health of Your Church

By Thom Rainer 

Look at these ten questions to get some hints of the evangelistic health of your own church.

Any good physician will make certain your physical exam includes at least three components. First, the doctor will want you to have thorough lab work. Second, all exams include a comprehensive look at your physical body. Third, the physician will ask you a series of questions that would lead him or her to know more about your overall physical and emotional health.

In my work with churches across America, I often ask a series of questions that help me assist the church to become more evangelistically focused. Recently, I took time to write down the questions I ask most often. Look at these 10 questions to get at least some hints of the evangelistic health of your own church.

1. Are members more concerned about the lost than their own preferences and comfort? Listen to how church members talk to understand what their true priorities are.

2. Is the church led to pray for lost persons? Most churches are pretty good about praying for those who have physical needs. But do they pray for those who have the greatest spiritual need, a relationship with Jesus Christ?

3. Are the members of the church open to reaching people who don't look or act like them? The Gospel breaks all racial, ethnic and language barriers. Do the members seek to reach others? Do they rejoice when these people become a part of the church?

4. Do conflicts and critics zap the evangelistic energy of the church? An evangelistic church is a united church. A divided church is rarely evangelistic.

5. Do small groups and Sunday school classes seek to reach lost persons within their groups? Sunday school was once one of the most effective evangelistic tools in the church. Are the groups in your church evangelistic?

6. Is the leadership of the church evangelistic? The congregation will follow and emulate the priorities of the church leadership.

7. Do the sermons regularly communicate the Gospel? They may not be evangelistic sermons in the classic sense, but all sermons should point people to Jesus.

8. Are there ministries in the church that encourage members to be involved in evangelistic outreach and lifestyle? You may be surprised to find how many members become evangelistic with a modest amount of training and equipping.

9. Have programs become ends in themselves rather than means to reach people? Perhaps a total ministry and program audit is in order.

10. Is there any process of accountability for members to be more evangelistic? That which is rewarded and expected becomes the priority of the congregation.

After their imprisonment for sharing the Gospel with others, Peter and John appeared before the Sanhedrin who demanded their silence. Listen to how the two Apostles, with their lives on the line, responded to their accusers: “But Peter and John answered them, ‘Whether it's right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard’ ” (Acts 4:19-20, HCSB).

I pray more and more of our church members have the heart and attitude exemplified by Peter and John. May we be so motivated to share the Gospel that we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.

How would you assess the evangelistic health of your church? What questions would you ask for a good diagnosis?

4 Keys to Closing the Back Door

By Thom Rainer • 28/11/2012 ( OutrachMagazine.com)

Thom Rainer offers four solutions for connecting--and keeping--people engaged with the mission and vision of your church.

I had an extended conversation with a pastor of a church this past week. The topic was not that different from those I’ve had with church leaders for nearly twenty-five years. The pastor’s words were similar to those I’ve heard repeated hundreds of times: “We have a pretty good front door with a healthy number of guests. And we’ve had a steady increase in our number of new members. Our problem is really not the front door; it’s the back door. If we could just keep a fourth of all those who become involved in our church for a few months or more, we would be triple our size.”

He then asked the questions I was anticipating: “So how do we close the back door? What do we do to keep people from leaving our church or just becoming inactive?”

The Trend

I wish had sufficient historical data to know when the trend began. All I know is that every year for the past quarter century, assimilation rates in American congregations have been poor. For example, in the largest Protestant denomination in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, the reported membership is over 16 million. The realistic membership is around 12 million, and the average weekly attendance is 7 million. So the largest denomination cannot account for four million of its members. Less than half of the members attend on a given week. And millions more have been lost who are no longer on the membership rolls.

And that’s the report of just one denomination.

Of course, aggregate numbers of denominations are nothing more than the sum of the local congregations. The problem of the open back door is endemic to hundreds of thousands of churches.

The Solution

In our research of thousands of churches, we have found four common characteristics of congregations that have effective assimilation by almost any metric. But these churches that have effectively closed the back door are few in number, suggesting that the solution is easier said than done. Look at the four keys to effective assimilation. They are obviously not mutually exclusive.

Key #1: Membership high expectations. More is expected of members in high assimilation churches. Church discipline is more likely to be exercised in these churches as well. These churches typically have required entry point or membership classes. Becoming a part of these congregations is more than completing a card or walking an aisle. Members are expected to be involved and stay involved.

Key #2: Small group involvement. A concerted effort is made to get members and attendees involved in small groups. The form of the group may be a Sunday school class, a home group, or a small group meeting elsewhere. The key is to get people connected to others, typically in weekly groups. The majority of small groups study the Bible or biblically related material.

Key #3: Ministry/missons involvement. High assimilation churches encourage people to be involved in ministry. A few even require ministry involvement prior to accepting someone into membership. Members who are involved in missions and ministry feel connected to the church. The Millennial generation, those born between 1980 and 2000, will not likely stay with a church at all if they are not involved in the ministries and missions of the church.

Key #4: Relational connections. In any organization, people stay connected more to other people than the organization itself. We are relational creatures. Local congregations are no exceptions. People are more likely to stay connected to the church if they have developed meaningful friendships and relationships with others in the church.

The Practice

If these four keys are the solution to assimilation problems, why do relatively few churches practice them? Simply stated, the solutions require hard work. Often getting people in the front door is easier than keeping them from leaving through the back door.

Also, many churches have established traditions of low expectations. Changing almost anything, particularly expectations of members, can be a challenge. Members who came into the church with low expectations often resist the change. Their desired comfort is greater than their concern for the overall health of the congregation.

Our most recent research indicates that the American population as a whole is not resistant to visiting a church. The potential for an open front door is good. The greater challenge may be closing the backdoor.

And that challenge can only be met if congregations are fundamentally willing to change their attitude of “we’ve never done it that way before.”

4 Ways to Move Your Church From Consumers to Disciples

by Bill Couchenour

Too often, we have allowed people to settle for giving 2% of their income, or attending 4 out of 5 Sundays.

“If the Church is not (discipling), then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, even the Bible, are a waste of time.” – C.S. Lewis

Many argue the greatest threat facing Christianity in the U.S. is not atheism or liberalism or Islam or even complacency, but rather consumerism. Our bent toward self-service, self-interest and self-fulfillment seems to fly in the face of the Gospel principles of self-sacrifice, self-denial and selflessness.

Too often, we have allowed people to settle for giving 2 percent of their income, attending four out of five Sundays and participating in one or two mission projects a year to be the standard for a disciple. In fact, in many places that makes you “Elder” material. The gap between the biblical expectation and cultural experience of the life of a Christ-follower is due to lack of discipleship. Here are four steps you can take to move from Consumers to Disciples:

1. Remove the Barriers:

a. Clergy/Laity Divide – Fully embracing the priesthood of believers would create a seismic shift in the church. Huge potential has been rendered impotent through the idea of “professional clergy.” Please hear me: I believe in professional clergy, seminaries, etc. However, we do a great disservice when we allow people to believe that’s the only way to serve God full-time. The truth is, as Christ-followers, we are all full-time pastors—we just all don’t draw a paycheck from the church.

b. Sunday-focused Christianity – If your church is focused primarily on weekend services (check where the majority of your resources go), it’s a little like telling people you can be healthy by visiting the gym and having a really good meal once a week. That one day is really good, but we need to help people see a robust relationship with Jesus flows in and through every area of their lives—seven days a week.

c. Sacred/Secular Divide – It’s good to have places committed solely for the use of the Gospel. Allow people to see their homes, their schools, their places of work, their coffee shops and the arenas of life as sacred. Jesus is there.

2. Change the Scorecard – What gets spontaneous applause in your church? What you celebrate, you perpetuate. Celebrate what you want to see happen in your church, even if that means celebrating things outside your church until you begin to see it happen in your church.

3. Support it with Community – We were not meant to journey alone. The challenge is we’ve learned to journey in parallel tracks, but we’ve not learned to actually journey together. Design community environments where the applications of the Gospel can be applied to the big questions in life as they occur.

4. Model it with Leadership Followership – As the leader, you must become the first follower. Follow hard after Jesus! “You must surrender all. Everything.”

The paradigms that have shaped the way we do church are so pervasive we tend to reach to ecclesiology without understanding our unique mission. Know Jesus. Know what He’s called you to. Then shape your ecclesiology to accomplish that mission, and bring facilities, systems and staff in line with that vision.

I heard a surfing analogy recently. We don’t cause the wind and the waves—we can only learn to ride the surfboard. Let’s …

“Learn to ride the board well because the winds are starting to blow.”

Bill Couchenour has a fervent desire to help ministries improve their effectiveness at connecting their communities with Christ. He has served as President of Cogun, a company committed exclusively to helping churches develop the right ministry space, since 1994. From 1982 to 1994 he launched the Florida District of Cogun and served as District Manager. Bill has a business degree from Youngstown State University, an MBA from The University of Tampa.

More from Bill Couchenour or visit Bill at www.cogun.com

Nota do Editor: O autor do artigo em questão tem o domingo como o dia de culto principal. A idéia principal é o culto principal e não o dia semanal do culto.