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In this series of interviews with Christian leaders we try to find out what evangelism strategies are currently being blessed by God. Here we talk to Andrew Grills, church planter and Lead Pastor of City on a Hill, Geelong. 

TGCA: What are the special challenges of evangelism in the context of your ministry?

We are a church plant that has just celebrated its third birthday. Since that start we’ve had to deal with three big challenges.

First: In our initial years there was an existential need for evangelism (evangelise or perish!). This resulted in great enthusiasm for evangelism and for trialing new ways and methods. Now that we have grown to a community of several hundred people that existential need to evangelise has eased. New systems and procedures for the healthy functioning of the church need to be created and sustained, and that can make it easy to turn away from the fields that are white with harvest to concentrate on building more and bigger barns for the harvest we already have. This is a real challenge because it breeds complacency—the enemy of evangelism.

Wheat Field Church Unsplash

Second: Many of us had great expectations about the potential for our new church—we dreamed of quickly reaching hundreds of people. That hasn’t happened. We haven’t seen hundreds being converted, nor has there been a flood of new believers pouring into our church as we hoped and prayed. Most of our growth has been by transfer, and most of our new believers have been fruit that others have planted and watered. This has been especially so with our greatest success which has been amongst de-churched and nominal Christians.

All this has caused us to struggle with a loss of gospel confidence. Our disappointment has sometimes deadened our fervour and expectancy.

Third: Initially we believed that our growth would come via our small missional communities and not through Sunday services. This didn’t turn out the way we expected either. Our missional communities have not been much an open door for new Christians, but have fulfilled their traditional role of nurturing and disciplining the Christians who come into our community through the Sunday services. This has tempted us to give up on these communities as agents of evangelism and instead become introspective.

TGCA: What are some things that you’ve been trying to do with evangelism lately?

  • We’ve engaged more intentionally in mercy ministry in our community by launching a ministry to victims of domestic violence.  
  • We’ve just completed a tough questions series in our sunday services
  • We’re in the middle of trialing our first Alpha course. 
  • And we’re praying more often and more intentionally.

TGCA: What’s the philosophy behind it?

  • In regard to mercy we believe that we need to both proclaim and Iive out the message of Jesus.
  • The Tough Questions series was predicated on the fact that sometimes we scratch where our people are not itching (sometimes that is a very good gospel thing to do!), but it is also good to find out what the real questions are try to answer them as honestly, directly and compassionately as we can. We also had a Q and A session after each sermon.
  • In regard to the Alpha course, we had trialed a number of different evangelistic courses and written an excellent one of our own as a City on a Hill Movement (Introducing Jesus). However, we realised that Alpha continues to have high brand-recognition and were very impressed with the new content in the 2016 update. As a warm, engaging and high-quality introduction to the gospel, Alpha has no peer. The fact that we can tweak it in some areas also makes it appealing. We also like the concept of sharing a meal together each night of the course.

TGCA: How have these things been working?

The mercy ministry has been tough. Most of the families we have helped in our city were helped purely in financial terms. This is worthwhile by itself, and it’s been useful apologetically— ‘see we’re doing things to help others’—but it hasn’t yet led to many people coming to church or hearing the gospel.

The Tough Questions Series has been a wonderful success. Our attendance rose sharply over this series and we undoubtedly saw the largest number of non-Christians or very nominal Christians present with us in Sunday worship since we launched the church. Many of these were very engaged and a number of them have stuck around.

The Alpha course has also gone well—partly feeding-off the interest of the TQ series. We’ve had over 60 people coming to the course for the last 5 weeks. The majority of these have been Christians keen to check it out, but there have also been very good numbers of non-believers. I was personally surprised when two of my non-Christian friends agreed to come after refusing many other invitations. One of these has thoroughly enjoyed the course and is now reading his Bible.

Having a course that introduces gospel content in the context of a meal together has also provided many opportunities for building relationships. The effort to put it on has also given Christians many great opportunities to serve, which has been an immense encouragement to the church as a whole.

TGCA: Have these things provided insights into what we should or shouldn’t be doing to share the gospel?

We should just keep sharing the gospel in a many ways as we can. I don’t believe that there is only one method or only one course sanctioned by God. We should be flexible and innovative, using old and new methods, sowing gospel seeds liberally in all directions like a high-pressure ‘seed sprinkler!’ The Gospels show us various means and methods and we should be willing to be flexible too.

But above all we have to keep praying. God is the only one that can graciously grant the fruit of evangelism. He’s the Lord of the harvest.

I have no doubt whatsoever that our recent temperature-increase in evangelism is a direct result of our increased prayer.

TGCA: Is there any key bit of advice you would give to people who find evangelism difficult?

Just keep trying. Just keep sowing in your own way. Just keep praying for the people you know who don’t know Jesus. Even if you don’t seem to see any results at all, keep going. We have a God who really can do more than we can ask or expect, and I believe that he will.


Photos: pexels.com; unsplash (main body)

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