Church-Based Evangelism: Planning the Moment

Imagine: you’re sitting in your office. The previous night, your church just put on an incredible event. The church decided that every event it holds will be evangelistic, and it is excited about that. You’ve never had more church members volunteering for an event. You’ve put time, money, and manpower into pulling it off. The church intended to evangelize the lost. You did the training on how to evangelize using your church-wide evangelistic method, and the communication about why the event was happening is clear. You had a great turnout from your community, and you saw church members talking with others. You’re happy. Until you ask yourself the question that Church-Based evangelism forces you to ask: “Did we evangelize anyone?” You start to think about your conversations with people. You were polite, you were loving, but you did not share the gospel. You text a staff member, “Hey, were you able to have any evangelistic conversations last night?” He responds, “No. I talked to a lot of people, though!” You give a call to one of your top volunteers, “Hey man, thank you so much for serving last night. I’m trying to put together a recap of the event. Were you able to have any evangelistic conversations?” He responds, “No, I was working the grill. But it was a great event! There were so many people there. I’m sure someone evangelized.” You try to let those last words comfort you, and you say to yourself, “Someone had to evangelize,” but in the back of your brain, you have this itch wondering if anyone had heard the gospel. You start to get upset with yourself, then with your staff, and then with the church members because no one evangelized. You look at the calendar to schedule another evangelism training and drive home the importance of evangelism, and restart the whole cycle again, but this time with people more burnt out about evangelism than last time. There’s a better way: Plan the moment for evangelism at your events.

A major danger in ministry is assuming things will happen. When we assume evangelism will happen, we will find ourselves with good intentions but no evangelistic conversations. Stop assuming that evangelism will happen at evangelistic outreaches and events. As you plan everything else about an event, plan how evangelism will take place. What gets planned gets done. This is one of the most essential leadership lessons any pastor can learn. Influence, encouragement, exhortation, and inspiration can only do so much. Don’t cross your fingers and hope evangelism will happen. Plan it. Plan as many details about the evangelistic encounter as are within your control.

Start by planning the location for evangelism. If you’re doing a “hot” evangelism event — like a trunk-or-treat — decide on a specific location where evangelism will take place. When choosing this location, start with the end in mind. If the goal of an event is to evangelize, then all the other details of the event should funnel to this location. For example, at Range Hills Baptist Church, we have a trunk-or-treat in our church parking lot on Halloween night. We line up the cars so there is a natural path from one vehicle to the next to get candy, and the last station is where we’re evangelizing. The natural next step after the last vehicle is to come to the table, where a sign asks, “When Is Your Birthday?” that leads into the Birthday Verse Evangelism method. Planning the location is not about trying to trap people into hearing a gospel conversation, but rather about leveraging social norms and everyday human behavior to create a path.

Then consider all the things at an event that could prevent evangelistic conversations from happening, and eliminate as many as possible. One of the most obvious ones is not to let the volunteer conversation area be around the evangelism location. At almost every church event I’ve been part of, the volunteers tend to congregate somewhere to chat. That's not a problem per se; fellowship is good. But it shouldn’t be done during evangelism, as it distracts the people whose task is to evangelize. Similarly, avoid non-evangelistic conversations at the evangelism location. When someone comes to an event, whether a church member or a guest, it is natural and good for them to have conversations with the volunteers. That should be encouraged, as friendliness and hospitality are Christ-honoring. But those conversations should happen away from the evangelism location so that the guest would not miss the opportunity to be evangelized. Many other things can distract from evangelism, and each event has its own distractions. Some distractions can come from people, while others can come from unnecessary things happening at an event. Ask this question: “Does it help us evangelize more or does it distract from it?” If the latter, eliminate the problem.

Further, when planning the evangelism moment, consider the timing and progression of the event. People hate waiting, and the “roadblock” that causes waiting will often be disliked. Placing the evangelism location at the entrance of an event will create impatience, creating an unnecessary barrier to hearing the gospel. Similarly, you should plan the rest of the event so that the evangelism moment has as much time for discussion as possible without creating a wait. Disney World figured out that if you incorporate waiting in line into the ride, people are less impatient. If you think of everything as a part of a line to get to evangelism, you want that line to be short enough that people don’t skip the evangelism location, but long enough that people aren’t waiting for someone to evangelize them. I also believe that evangelism ordinarily ought to be a one-on-one discussion, so incorporating mass evangelism to address the problem of waiting is unwise. Planning the moment should keep those two things in tension: on the one hand, people don’t want to wait; on the other hand, each person needs a one-on-one evangelistic conversation, which requires time. Again, considering these things isn’t to trap people into evangelistic conversations; it’s just removing unnecessary barriers to the gospel.

In planning the moment, also plan the people. Having a location to evangelize without people to evangelize is pointless. First, you need enough people so that when someone comes to the evangelism location, someone is ready to begin an evangelistic conversation with them. Second, you should have two groups of people in mind to “staff” the evangelism area. First, people who are known soul-winners and are capable of engaging in evangelistic conversations with minimal help. Second, people who are being taught to evangelize. The first group, which ought to include the pastors and ministers of the church, but not only them, will take the lead in evangelistic conversations. They’ll be the ones to engage someone in a conversation and take the first steps. The second group will be brought along and given hands-on evangelism training. It’s important to have both groups because if you only have the first group, you’ll never enlarge the number of capable soul-winners, and if you only have the second group, you, as the pastor, will have to be involved in every evangelistic conversation. Something I would suggest is, when possible, have the first group stationed at the evangelism location the entire time, and then have the second group be people rotating from other volunteer locations throughout the event. For example, if you’re doing a trunk or treat, there ought to be set people at the evangelism station, but then have people rotate from manning trunks to being a part of evangelism. A note of warning: this may take away useful volunteers in other areas. If you’re doing a cookout, some of your most faithful soul-winners may also be your grill masters. This ought to lead back to considering possible distractions from evangelism, and a decision will have to be made about what helps you evangelize more.

Part of planning the moment is also planning the evangelism strategy. This first entails deciding on the methodology you will use. How to choose one was discussed in the article “Church-Based Evangelism: Keep Evangelism Simple.” Every person involved in the evangelistic moment ought to know the method they will typically use. In fast-paced evangelism, the first part of the method ought to be “Hi, my name is ___, what’s your name?” followed by the introduction into the evangelism method. Second, it is also wise to consider who will talk to which groups. At any event, you’ll have five age groups: adults, teenagers, older children/preteens, lower-elementary, and young children. Not everyone is good at conversing with every age group. I struggle greatly with having evangelistic conversations with anyone under the age of 7. At our church, my children’s minister excels at these conversations. During our events, we have a standard approach that if a family with a child under 7 comes up, he’ll talk with the child (and usually one of the parents), and I’ll talk to the other parent. When strategizing, know which age group each person’s strength is in, and plan for them to talk to that age group. Third, have a strategy for when someone needs help evangelizing. Some evangelistic conversations are very simple. Other evangelistic conversations are complex. Have a plan in place for what someone should do if they need help in the conversation. Fourth, have a strategy for what to do when someone wants to be saved. That’s a serious conversation, and you should have a process of questions that ought to be asked before leading someone in a sinner’s prayer. Generally, at Range Hills, if someone wants to be saved, the evangelist has me come and talk to them. Fifth, have a strategy for getting information from people, whether they’ve received Jesus as Savior and Lord or not. It is more important to evangelize than to get someone’s contact information, but getting it can help facilitate more evangelistic conversations and provide a new believer with information for the next steps of their Christian journey. Last, have a strategy for when people aggressively reject the gospel. Someone may try to derail all evangelistic conversations by insisting on debating and arguing over the gospel. You need a strategy in place to prevent that from happening and to keep the people evangelizing from engaging in a fight. A great strategy for this is to tell everyone evangelizing that if they encounter a person like this, to say, “Hey, let me pass you off to my pastor. He’ll be able to answer your questions.” You also need something in place to encourage the person evangelizing when that happens.

These aspects of planning the moment of evangelism are primarily for “hot” evangelism, but these principles of planning apply to “cold” evangelism as well. For example, if your church plans a door-to-door evangelism outreach, you still need to do all of these aspects of planning. You need to decide which neighborhood you’re going to do door-to-door evangelism in, and that should be done after researching different neighborhoods. You also need to mitigate distractions. People who want to come along for door-to-door evangelism but are not interested in evangelism ought to be reminded of the purpose of the outreach. You also need to plan who the people will be paired with. Lastly, you need to plan the strategy for how people will move through a neighborhood and how they’ll go about evangelizing. Whether your evangelistic outreach is “hot” or “cold,” plan the moment of evangelism.

Now, some may object to the concept of planning the moment of evangelism on the grounds of 1 Peter 3:15, which says, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” Many people approach evangelism believing that a Christian's responsibility is to show Christian love and action, and that this will lead someone to ask you to evangelize. In the context of a local church evangelizing, this would supposedly look like a church hosting an event that invites the community in and causes lost people to ask why you’re doing it. This is a very idealistic hope for an event, but certainly one that would be wonderful if it happened. Yet this is not promised to happen, nor does 1 Peter 3:15 say to expect it. 1 Peter 3:15 is not talking about people asking for a reason for the hope that is in you because you are doing kind, loving, and charitable actions. As verse 14 indicates, the reason why a Christian will be asked for a reason for their hope is that he willingly suffers persecution. Verse 16 then indicates that the person asking for the reason is also defaming the Christian. 1 Peter 3:15 is not a promise that lost people will be unable to help but be curious about the gospel if you’re just nice enough. Rather, it is an exhortation to plan to evangelize during what will feel like the worst moment of a Christian’s life. If we plan to evangelize in that situation, we ought to do so in controlled moments.

Church-based evangelism is about more than just emphasizing and talking about evangelism. It is about a local church actually evangelizing the lost. While exemplifying, challenging, training, and providing opportunities to evangelize create a culture that loves evangelism, planning the moment is the key component that puts all of those things into action. The example of planning the moment in church-wide evangelistic opportunities will also demonstrate to every church member that they also need to intentionally plan to evangelize the lost. No one should ever assume that evangelism will just happen. Evangelism happens when one intentionally decides to evangelize. So, plan the moment!

This article is written by Klayton Carson, pastor at Range Hills Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn.