“A recent Church Answers poll found that only 1% of churches have an ongoing evangelism effort.”

I titled my response as I did because that statistic shocked me. 82% of people are still willing, or are at least open to, attending church with a friend or someone that they know.

I guess that knocks the "victim of persecution" mentality that some Christians have right out of the water. If they would get out and start winning souls to Christ, they'd have a major impact in their communities.

We do not have an organized evangelistic program as such. Yet we are lately busting at the seams. How is it happening? People meet people, invite people, some come. Others find us on the web and show up. We just keep trying to build a body of believers and many of those visitors stay. Some are already Christians. Some come to Christ in our ministry. We’ve had several baptisms this year and at least one more coming up. How is it happening? I don’t know. It’s God’s work.

Thom Rainer, et al. at Church Answers are very organized and data driven. So “program” is a key concept. I know many believe “programs” crowd out the Holy Spirit. I can’t personally think of any biblical reason why the Spirit would be opposed to pursuing goals in an organize way. He did inspire “let all things be done decently and in order,” after all.

And He was active in creation, Genesis 1… a very programmatic sequence of events.

The kernel of truth in the ‘program vs. Spirit’ attitude, though, is the human tendency to always see ordinary cause and effect at work. The tendency is understandable: God gave us our senses and minds that can reason from cause to effect. But sometimes that tendency results in our getting mechanical about things, forgetting about the vital role of the supernatural in converting souls, etc. … forgetting to be humble and prayerful, etc.

So we start thinking if it worked, we ourselves did it. If it didn’t work, we ourselves failed.

And that isn’t really how it is, either.

I should probably clarify!

I am not against programs, having a specific soul-winning training and planned evangelistic efforts.

For us, though, I have found that as people draw closer to God (discipleship) they want to reach out to their friends, and they do.

And then there are the intangible ways people show up, seemingly unrelated to anything we have done other than have a website, a phone number, or a sign.

I'm not necessarily against programs unless the programs become an excuse to not evangelize one on one in a more personal way to people that might never come to church unless they first get saved.

Our church has maintained evangelism programs for the majority of our 50 years, but there have been some years when we had none. Currently, we have two adult men who are conducting systematic door-to-door visitation, starting close to our facility, and slowly circling out from there. We had two visiting families, each with several children this past week through this effort. However, I must acknowledge that even when we had no active programs, we never-the-less enjoyed a steady stream of visitors. Our people have faithfully engaged in personal evangelism in their own spheres of activity, and most years, we have baptized several adults, even when we were not actively involved in a program. I am convinced that the most effective evangelism is usually spontaneous, not programmed.

Both the churches that I have been a member of in my years as a believer have engaged in systematic evangelism during the years that I was/have been in them. My first pastor got me started going door-to-door three months after I was saved; I have been active in such outreach every year since.

My church has many different outreach programs; systematic door-to-door evangelism of all the neighborhoods around our church has allowed us to repeatedly evangelize nearly every home around our church for several decades.

Your church is vibrant with hundreds of committed Christian families with children. I love to worship with you whenever I am in Greenville, SC. I would love to see hundreds of churches like yours across America. Keep up the good work!

Your church is vibrant with hundreds of committed Christian families with children. I love to worship with you whenever I am in Greenville, SC. I would love to see hundreds of churches like yours across America. Keep up the good work!

Thanks, Mr. Barkman, for the encouraging words about my church that reflect God's graciously blessing us greatly in spite of our many shortcomings in our service to Him. We praise God for His great faithfulness and appreciate much how He has blessed us with many like you who come visit us and worship God heartily with us by His grace!