Excerpt
Over the past four decades, the church in American has neglected something very important to its health and well being. For many years, we have known that as many as 85 percent of churches in America were either plateaued or declining. After strong growth in the 1950s and 1960s, the church suffered a slow, steady decline. Today, we find many of our churches are closing their doors because of neglect. The church in America should not be here, but we are. We have neglected the reason for our existenceproclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. Now we are paying the painful price for that neglect.
The purpose of the church is not to have church, but to be the church. Jesus has called his church to be a witnessing community (Acts 1:8). Some may argue that the purpose of the church is to worship or do ministry. I believe the Scriptures teach that the church exists to continue the work of Jesus to bring reconciliation between the Creator and his wayward creation.
The church is primarily a community of witnesses. Yes, the church worships. Yes, the church prays. Yes, the church educates. Yes, the church ministers to the needs of others. However, all that the church does in its various functions serves its greater purpose of being a witness unto Jesus. We witness through worship. We witness through ministry. We witness through intercessory prayer. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian believers in his second letter that God had given the church the ministry and message of reconciliation. We have an ambassadorship from heaven whereby we implore all we find to be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:18-21).
Jesus told Simon Peter and his fishing buddies, Follow me and I will make you a fishers of men (Mt. 4:19). The catch of the day would no longer be fillet of sole, but eternal souls. When those early disciples left their boats to follow Jesus, they committed themselves to the Masters business. The Masters business is reconciling people to God. The Masters business must also be the churchs business.
Since the church is primarily a witnessing community, we must face that task with great diligence. If our purpose is to witness, we must have a plan to fulfill that purpose. If we have a plan, then we need to design a process to fulfill that plan. A process is simply a strategy for action. A church that does not have a comprehensive evangelism strategy is probably not fulfilling its evangelistic function, or at least not very well.
The FISHING Evangelism Growth Strategy uses the simple acrostic FISHING to help church leaders and members understand the process of evangelism. FISHING is not a program to implement, but a strategic process designed to strengthen the churchs evangelism ministry. Each letter in the FISHING acrostic represents a specific task within the churchs overall evangelism strategy. For each task, the church creates a comprehensive approach to win the lost to Jesus Christ. Here is what FISHING stands for:
FFind lost people
IInvite lost people
SShare the story
HHelp them believe
IInvolve them
NNurture them
GGo get others!
The following pages represent a fleshing out of the FISHING Evangelism Growth Strategy. The purpose of this book is different from many others on the subject of evangelism. Some books teach people how to share their faitha much needed task. Some books seek to raise the level of guilt within pastors and others church leaders because their church is not evangelistic enough. Other books tell how the world around us has changed and that we must change with it. Few books, though, give church leaders a systematized approach to organizing their evangelism ministry.
The FISHING Evangelism Growth Strategy provides a framework any church can use to construct their evangelism ministry. This is not a program, but a process. My hope and prayer is that as a church leader, you will take this outline into your church as a guide or model for revitalizing your evangelistic efforts.
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