“We’re not used to chatting about the gospel,” she said to me. “Whether it’s inside or outside church. We want to, but we don’t know how.” Our church members had received faithful Bible teaching for years, believed the gospel and wanted their friends to come to Christ. But we felt fearful and inadequate when it came to evangelism. Where do you start, to be salt and light in the world? In this article I’d like to share what we did as a church to address this.
Get to Know the Church Culture
When I arrived at Ormond Anglican, I spent time observing, asking questions, listening to people’s stories and building trust. I tried to discern the unspoken assumptions, values and fears of the congregation members. We did a qualitative survey asking, “What is mission?” and “What obstacles do we face?” We learned that although many were faithful believers who agreed that Christians ought to share the gospel, there was a strong sense of inadequacy and fear. Some were even nervous about the word ‘evangelism’, while others recoiled at the idea of a one-size-fits-all evangelism course. Our in-house conversation culture was often fairly surface-level, with minimal engagement on spiritual matters. When it came to evangelism, Ormond church members thought in terms of systems, training programs, courses, where to stand at the door and what to hand out to people. They didn’t naturally think in terms of church culture, vibe, emotional connection, group dynamics. We were eager to change, but nervous. So we thought big picture.
Big Picture Plans
Our church had recently been through a review process. As a result, we had completely rebooted our three Sunday congregations to protect our overworked volunteers, keep kids ministry viable, increase belonging for our youth and young adults, and care for our older generation. In 2023 we wanted to focus on outreach. We sought to ground our culture change efforts in the great and enduring love of God, knowing that perfect love casts out fear. So we began the year with a nine-week series on Hosea. In that shocking book, we heard of the stunning beauty and passionate love of God for his wayward people.
From here, we took a three-pronged approach for growth in outreach. First, we undertook a nine-week thematic preaching series touching on major turning points in Scripture. Second, we concentrated our church camp on how our beliefs, loves and skills are used by God to share the gospel. Third, we organised a mid-week training course. To enable critical mass at the training we paused our ten home groups for those seven weeks.
“Words of Life” Training
From the start I made it clear that this wasn’t a cookie-cutter plan with guaranteed results. This was a culture change experience, inviting us to courageously look at ourselves and seek God’s help to grow.
I relied heavily on Mack Stiles’ Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus and ordered extra copies that church members could purchase. I’d used this book previously in a cross–cultural setting and it had been effective in addressing the deeper issues of gospel confusion, fear and inadequacy. Thankfully, a critical mass of church members participated in the course. A beautiful side-effect of being all together for this course was that members of different congregations got to know and learn from one another. We were able to establish a training culture of safety, vulnerability, honesty and encouragement.
Each week there was some up-front input based on the book, but most of the heavy lifting was done in the facilitated groups of up to six people. They were given big blocks of time to really get into things. The facilitators, drawn from our three congregations, had been trained on the aims of group time. A different home group provided supper each week, providing another context for natural on-topic conversations. Having recognised our fears and sense of inadequacy, we were sensitively and powerfully led in a prayer of corporate confession by one of our young adult women. We also did some practical training, including role playing, that some found uncomfortable but ultimately worthwhile.
The individual sharing moments were so significant that they have made their way into our corporate shared history. For example, one elderly gentleman lamented that although he’d been at church for forty years, he wasn’t sure if he was a Christian! If only his experience of post-church morning tea conversation had been more gospel-focussed and personal. Later that night a church member prayed with him to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Another person courageously shared how he’d thought he was good at conversations because there was a lot of talking, but he now realised it was him doing the talking. He wanted to learn how to listen better.
God helped us as a church to grow in gospel clarity and intentionality. It’s becoming normal to have spiritually meaningful conversations with one another at church and also with our friends and colleagues during the week. It’s not weird to hear each other’s stories of the opportunities God’s given us to share the good news. And we’re more ‘on game’ as a church seeking to welcome newcomers.
Whenever we seek to lead a church through a process of culture change, we need to pray and then trust God to work through us and in our people. Seeking to understand the often unspoken church culture, especially the fears, anxieties and hopes, will help a lot. It is important to be both gentle and courageous—people respond well to that combination. Collaborating with and empowering those people who are influencers in the church will amplify your culture change efforts. Be thoughtful about how you can involve as many people as possible in the process. Continually remind people of the glorious gospel; gently and lovingly name the unseen culture you’ve observed; encourage them to be honest with one another; courageously call them to refreshing intentionality and prayerfulness; and celebrate positive change.
