Planting Missional Churches 7: Evangelism Process
I’m doing a few series kind of interacting with and starting discussions about themes in some books on church planting. This series comes out of “Planting Missional Churches” by Ed Stetzer.
Stetzer writes about the “evangelism process.” Basically, he suggests:
1. Understand the issues in the worldview.
2. Address those issues (misperceptions or rejections) with redemptive witnessing opportunities based on where the listener is.
3. Encourage the listener to consider the truth claims of Christ.
4. Invite the listener to journey with the faith community as they live out the truth claims (invite “conversion to community”)
5. Invite the listener to make a faith commitment (invite “conversion to Christ’)
This is good stuff, and it leads me to several questions…
Like, do we pastors really understand the issues in the worldview of the people we’re trying to reach? Or are we too trapped inside our bubble? We are Christians and we are Pastors and we have churches and our successes and our struggles are mostly wrapped up in all that. But the people we are trying to reach are not Christians and are not Pastors and don’t have churches and their successes and struggles have nothing to do with all that. The way we think is guided by the Bible; the people we are trying to reach can’t remember if they still own a Bible. — So, do we understand the issues in their worldview? And what are you doing to generate that understanding?
Also, are we addressing those issues? Are we just “preaching the Bible” and “proclaiming the gospel,” or are we dealing with the misperceptions and rejections of the people we want to reach? — The problem is that when we just preach the gospel and proclaim the gospel we attract people who want to hear the Bible preached and the gospel proclaimed. And those are not the people we want to reach. However, when we deal with misperceptions and rejections we tend to attract people with misperceptions and rejections. And those are the people we want to reach.
So … what do you think of all this? About understanding and addressing people’s worldview? And what about the idea of converting people to community before converting them to Christ?
– featured on newchurches.com