Evangelism & Home Missions

Stan Holder

Evangelism Director

Email: sholder@alacoghq.org

Kathy Sheffield

Evangelism Secretary

Email: evangsec@alacoghq.org

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All of us need to be challenged, especially in today's competitive world of church work. A recent book laid a powerful challenge before me. This book, titled, Church Marketing 101, Preparing Your Church For Greater Growth, written by Richard L. Reising, presented a great tool for evaluating where you are and where you want to be when it comes to positioning your church for the modern harvest before us. I highly recommend it for your library.

There are six questions posed in chapter five which are worth the cost of the book. Reising puts before any of us who are willing to take the time to implement the information a pattern for a growing church. One needs to give an affirmative answer to these questions, posed from the position of a member bringing a friend to church for the first time, to see growth.

Will my friend feel welcomed? Is my church a place of hospitality or intimidation? Of course, this has to be answered from the standpoint of a newcomer, not those of us who have been around for years.
Will my friend fit it? Are there great cultural gaps? Like it or not, visitor comfort goes down when there are immense cultural rifts.
Can I feel comfortable that I know how the service will turn out? In other words, is there consistency? Are things done in a well ordered, professional manner?
Will my friend get something out of it? If what goes on, what is sung, what is taught, isn't relevant, they won't come back.
Will anything seem strange be explained through Scripture? As Pentecostals, we have things take place which we take for granted that seem terribly out of place to a culture which doesn't know much about Scripture. One thing I employed years ago was to, at the end of any prophetic utterance and interpretation, give a brief "in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 the Apostle Paul told us tongues and interpretation is prophecy in the church, the Holy Spirit is trying to speak prophetically to someone today" as a means of attempting to Scripturally define what had just happened. That small act bore great fruit of understanding over the years!

Here's the conclusion drawn by Reising. "If a churchgoer can answer these six questions positively, then inviting friends and family will not only be easy, it will become a lifestyle. The church will explode with growth!"