Church-Based Evangelism: The Charge

After reading the first two articles on church-based evangelism, I hope that I have convinced you that this approach to evangelism is biblical. I hope that you have seen the need for an approach to evangelism that requires and expects the entire church to take its Great Commission responsibility seriously. I also hope that, if you are a local church pastor, you have seen the necessity of taking the lead as the pastor-missionary. Yet, I fear that many stop here. In attempting to create a culture of evangelism, it is easier to avoid confrontation and not place the responsibility of evangelism on every single church member, young or aged. Churches will have evangelistic pastors, who, in turn, have an evangelistic staff or a few evangelistic members, and be content with this. But that is not who the Great Commission was given to. It was given to every church and every member of that church. That expectation has to be made known. And it must be made known often. Therefore, there are four specific charges that must be given to a congregation by their pastor, each with a different level of pastoral intensity and church action.

Charge One: Set the Standard

The first charge is setting the standard. This should be a one-time sermon where you make it clear that the church is going to be about evangelism. This may be the first sermon you preach as pastor, or can be a Sunday set aside for this specific purpose. You can choose to preach this at a different service than the Sunday morning service, but for the charge to be effective and given to the right people, it should be during a time when the majority of the church members are in attendance.

In this sermon, you must utilize a text on evangelism (i.e., Matthew 28:16-20) and draw a line in the sand. The church must know that Christ is about evangelism, so you are about evangelism. Therefore, you are going to lead the church membership to be about evangelism. This ought to be a touchpoint sermon that can be referenced back to in the history of a church and your pastorate.

Make it clear that top priority of the church will be evangelism— because Christ made it so.

Leadership requires those following to know where they are going. They do not need to know every detail of what that looks like, but if you desire to cultivate a culture of evangelism in your church, they must know that is what you are doing. Sheep can be fickle creatures and can be spooked easily. Church members are similar. Change can scare church members, and creating a culture of evangelism without their knowledge can seem like massive change is occurring. To them, it will not feel like acting like a New Testament church; it will feel like you want to replace them. Being at odds with the church because of a lack of communication is a pastoral blunder that is simply not worth it. Make it clear that the top priority of the church will be evangelism because Christ made it so. This requires great pastoral intensity and intentionality. Without a shadow of doubt, the church should leave that sermon believing they are going on an incredible journey of Great Commission responsibility. Further, anyone who desires to be derelict of his Great Commission responsibility should know he is at odds with church leadership and the mission and vision of the church, because he is already at odds with Christ. Fair warning, if you are not acting as the pastor-missionary, this will fall on deaf ears.

Charge Two: Schedule a Yearly Emphasis

The second charge is a yearly charge to engage in evangelism that year. There are many different ways to do this. Many churches in the 20^th century would have a focused, “evangelism conference.” You don’t necessarily need to do this, although you could. Range Hills Baptist Church, where I pastor, does a yearly event called “Evangelize or Fossilize.” You could use the International Day of Evangelism, March 16^th (3/16), to call the church to evangelize. This could also be a week you set aside for the church to pray daily for the church’s evangelism efforts and for opportunities to evangelize. The manner you do this does not matter as much as doing something that reminds the church of the absolute necessity of evangelism. It should be a purposeful time, and should have much emphasis placed upon it.

Something I’d also encourage is placing it at the beginning of your “evangelism outreach season.” You may live in Southwest Florida, where you can do evangelistic outreaches year-round. Or you may live in the frigid Northeast, where evangelistic outreaches are difficult to do during the winter. In January of the last two years, Memphis was shut down for two weeks due to snow and its inability to handle it. This has caused Range Hills to be unable to adequately plan evangelistic outreaches during January and February. This places our “evangelistic outreach season” from March to early December. The yearly charge for us is typically in March. This charge sets the tone for our year in evangelism. Your “evangelistic outreach season” may start later in the year or be more associated with the school year (i.e., starting in August). Place your yearly charge before the start of this season and remind your people that your purpose as a church is to evangelize the lost. Nevertheless, do not waste and sit idle on the off-season. Use this time for Scripture memorization, evangelism training, etc.

Since emphasis on this time as a yearly renewal and recommitment to evangelism is so important, pastoral intensity and intentionality are important, but do not have to be as potent as the initial setting of the standard.

Charge Three: Schedule a Weekly Reminder

The third charge is a weekly charge of encouragement and accountability. An old leadership adage is “what gets talked about, gets done.” Not only does there need to be a clear and defining moment when you charge the church to evangelize and a yearly rededication to this task, but a weekly time that brings evangelism at the forefront of the church’s conversation. This weekly charge and reminder should be interactive, not merely the pastor repeating it; rather, the church members should remind each other, encourage one another, and hold each other accountable to sharing the gospel. Your church could use your Sunday school/small group time for this, where the teacher of the group leads a discussion about how everyone is doing in their personal evangelism (report-style). Depending on your Sunday evening and Wednesday evening service setup, that may be a beneficial time to do this as well. Range Hills Baptist Church utilizes our Sunday evening service, where we share witnessing testimonies and ask each other how we’ve done in our personal evangelism over the past week. The pastoral intensity is less in this charge because the purpose is not to metaphorically get the fire blazing, but to keep the coals hot. Inversely, the church activity is much higher. The goal here is not about the pastor talking about evangelism as much as it is about the church members talking about evangelism.

Charge Four: Set a Church-Wide Goal

The fourth and final charge is a church decision about an evangelism goal. I’m a firm believer in a congregational form of church government. Congregationalism is not just about a democracy where every church member has an equal right to decide how a church spends money, who will be in its committees, and who will serve as its officers. Congregationalism is about shared responsibility, where every member bears the weight of ministry and of obeying all that Christ has commanded.

In addition to this, a church business meeting would be greatly helped by an evangelistic emphasis to season the conversation. So, a great thing to do during the first business meeting of the year is to have the church vote on specific and measurable evangelism goals. There are two types of evangelism goals the church should vote on. The first is the number of evangelistic conversations the church desires to have that year. You, as pastor, can suggest a number, or have your deacons or missions committee suggest a number, but the church should decide what that number is. A good starting point is to take the number of regularly attending church members and multiply by 6. For example, if a church is running 50 members, they can set a goal of 300 gospel conversations throughout the year. That is only 25 gospel conversations per month.

The second goal the church should vote on is, on average, how many evangelistic conversations each member will have monthly. The former goal is a church goal, where everyone is a part of achieving the goal. This goal speaks of a a personal goal, where each member is asking to be held accountable to achieve it. Some members may desire to have a higher monthly goal than others, but a good starting point is on average one evangelistic conversation per month. Make sure to define what counts toward these numbers as evangelistic conversations, not the number of people evangelized. You may also want to include invitations of lost people to church. As a side note, a good evangelism goal for the pastor is to make the monthly goal of each member your weekly evangelism goal. I would add a warning to this: a group of people in your church may exist that buck at the idea of “goals.” One of them may say, “We’re to constantly be evangelizing, so why set a lower number than that,” thinking they are being more spiritual. Handle this with tact and wisdom, but lead on to adopting these goals. The idea of church-based evangelism is the outcome that each church member evangelizes regularly. This last charge is the peak of church action. These goals should be recorded in your church minutes. The church is charging itself with evangelizing the lost.

Evangelistic programming without a clear charge that every member is responsible to evangelize will further lead to the locus of evangelism being outside the local church. If churches are going to accept their Great Commission responsibility, they need to be charged to take it. Church members need a clear understanding of what Christ expects of them evangelistically and need to be called to that standard. If done in love, wisdom, and courage, churches will rise to the occasion. But if church members don’t know what’s expected of them, they’ll never do it. Give the charge and see your church members evangelize!

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