A SAMPLE OF ENDORESMENTS The following are some of the endorsements for Julian’s 900+ page book called Evangelism: Strategies from Heaven In the War for Souls. Some people are daunted by such a big book so Julian made a small book out of each chapter of the 900+ page book. What you are about to read is just one of the chapters of the larger work.
David Cole, YWAM Campaigns Asia/Pacific Board of Regents Chairman University of the Nations.
“This book is one of the most in depth looks at what Evangelism really is (and what it isn’t) that I believe has been written in the last century. I have been so inspired in my own calling through its content and often use it as a text book for teaching and imparting to young leaders in YWAM training courses as well as throughout other parts of the Body of Christ. Thank you Julian not only for such a valuable resource as well as for modeling the outworking of its content in your own life over the past few decades.”
Pastor Mike Smith, Melbourne, Australia
“An incredible book that all pastors should read. I have been a Christian for 28 years and a pastor for many years, and when I picked up this book, I thought, I doubt this will teach me anything new about evangelism. I was so wrong. It has revolutionised my thinking. This is an incredible book that all pastors should read.”
Grant Buchanan LLB, B.Com, Auckland
“The best book I have ever read. I am a solicitor (54) and a partner in a law practice. I unhesitatingly give my endorsement for Julian s book. Indeed, I would rate it as the best book that I have ever read!” Grant Buchanan LLB, B.Com, Auckland
Michael Angulo, Pastor and Church Leader
“Truly a work of Ministerial art. I really like this book and every true evangelist will love it also. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO PUT IT DOWN, BUT WILL BE THINKING WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO READ IT AGAIN! A truly very well written book with good retrospective learning ideas. No true evangelist should be without this book. It is worth what it is worth and it will catapult you into great, deliberate PROVEN, ministry approach. Great book and I highly recommend it. Get this one, you won’t be disappointed!”
Chapter Fourteen What Church Leaders Must Do To Cause A Resurgence In Evangelism
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What Church Leaders Must Do To Cause A Resurgence In Evangelism
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ow a leader can change everything...
Just after the First World War, an Anglican diocese was established in Lagos in Nigeria. Ninety-one years later, it has become the largest active Protestant church body in the world. Much of the growth of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, however, occurred during the last two decades. From 24 dioceses in 1988, the church has grown to 156 dioceses. Every Sunday, the Church of Nigeria gathers 20 million people in worship of Jesus Christ. The 22-year period of the dramatic growth of the Church of Nigeria coincides with the terms of the last two primates, or heads of the church. The “Christian Post” magazine spoke with the previous primate of the Church of Nigeria over the phone to find out what brought about the change. According to the Rt Rev Peter Jasper Akinola, it all started when bishops stopped thinking of themselves as bishops in the conventional sense. Previously, the bishop was addressed as “His Lordship”. He mainly occupied the position of the office, had everything done 2
for him, attended meetings, decided mission strategies, and graced ceremonies. “Today, every bishop (in the Church of Nigeria) is first and foremost an evangelist1,” said Akinola. “And from that, other things follow.” This is a crucially important point. What he is saying is that the primary function of the senior leader in a church is to lead by example in evangelism. Wow! If there is a truth in this entire book which comes directly from heaven, this is it! Friends in Christ, if there was one truth I wanted you to ‘get’ and take on board as a result of reading my entire book, this would have to be the one truth. I have found, after 30 years of experience mobilising churches, that unless the leader of the church leads by example in evangelism, and leads the charge, it will be impossible to mobilise the rest of the their church for evangelism. Period. Akinola acknowledged that growth has been due not just to good leadership of the church, but good leadership in evangelism. The truth is, one can’t be the former, without being the latter. Jesus, Paul, and all the disciples would applaud this point. “But it is one thing to lead, it is another thing for what you do to be led by God,” said the retired primate. “So for me again it is certainly God’s mighty blessings upon our leadership that is responsible for our achievements.” Explaining the missionary focus of the church, Akinola stated, “We believe very strongly that when a church ceases to evangelise it will not have the right to exist.” The leadership of the Church of Nigeria takes the Great Commandment and Great Commission seriously, the bishop noted. It is the mission to the lost that forms the “bedrock” of the activities and programmes of the church, he said. After He was resurrected, Jesus gave His disciples the Great 1 By this he does not means, necessarily, someone with ‘the gift’. He simply means someone who does evangelism, whether they have the gift or not
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Commission to dedicate their lives to it. Despite its largeness, Akinola sees the Church of Nigeria growing to half the population of the country. Nigeria has over 150 million people. “My successor is a firebrand in the area of evangelism and orthodoxy,” he said.2 Wow! That’s straight shooting. This account makes it clear : leaders leading by example in evangelism is everything. eople do what people see… Lee Iacocca, the famous Chairman and CEO of Chrysler Corporation, said, “When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move.”3 Don’t you both love and hate that kind of quote? We love it because we love to lead. We love to shepherd and guide and teach and exhort. Being a leader is what God designed us to do! But the weight every leader carries is the sheer responsibility. For pretty much everything about a church – or any organisation – comes down to its leaders. Where you go, your people will go. Being reminded of that fact can be scary. Many of you will have read the writings of John Maxwell, one of the world’s foremost teachers on leadership principles. He says the number one motivational principle is this: people do what people see. “The speed of the leader determines the speed of the followers. And followers will never go any further than their leader. The good things a leader does in excess, followers will emulate in moderation. But the bad things a leader does in moderation, followers will emulate in excess. It’s the price of leadership and there’s no sense whining about it.
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2 http://www.christiantoday.com/article/akinola.puts.phenomenal.growth.of.nigerian.church.down. to.evangelism/26099.htm 3
Cited in John Maxwell. The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership. Nelson Books, 2001, p.187
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It’s simply the price of your position.”4 Jesus knew this. He is our ultimate example, the ultimate leader. Throughout the accounts of His life on earth, we see that in order to prepare His disciples for the future, He taught by example as well as by what He spelled out in His sermons and parables. f you do it, they will. If you don’t, they won’t… And so it is with evangelism. As leaders, we have the potential to mobilise or immobilise everyone in our churches for regular personal evangelism. Make no mistake, our attitudes to evangelism and our participation or non-participation – what we teach about it and how we model / don’t model it in our lives – will directly affect the success or failure of evangelism in the church we lead. Check out this scripture: “When leaders lead in Israel, when the people willingly offer themselves, bless the Lord!” (Judges 5:2 NKJV). Leaders who activate for evangelism pour blessing on all those they lead by being a positive example. ost leaders have an academic passion for evangelism… Undoubtedly the vast majority of Christian leaders believe in evangelism theologically and know they should do it. Yet sadly, most fare little better than the general Christian population when it comes to actually doing it. What we do in evangelism carries infinitely more potential to motivate those we lead than what we preach and believe about evangelism. In fact, if we tell the people in our church that we are passionate about evangelism, and evangelising the world, and we write and preach about it, even have it in our mission statements, yet don’t do it ourselves, we only serve to inoculate them against it. Why? Because our people will pick up the idea that it’s quite okay to believe in something, and be passionate about it, and write about its importance, yet do nothing practically about it. Worse still, there is
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John Maxwell. Developing The Leader Within You. Word Books, 1993, pp.166-167
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every possibility we will be teaching them how to be hypocritical about evangelism – which ought to be any true leader’s worst nightmare. The people under us watching us and listening to us will reason “It must be ok to relegate evangelism into the realm of theory. This is what my pastor has done, so I’ll do it too.” For this reason pastors are the problem, and pastors are the solution. Missiologist Ron Blue thinks the leader provides the spark for everything that happens in any field of endeavour - and evangelism simply will not happen without encouragement, guidance, and modelling from the top. “Church leaders need to set the pace and point the way. The one who is called to feed and lead the flock is rightly named ‘senior pastor.’ But seniority does not focus on the age of the [leader]. Instead, seniority refers to his position. As the shepherd of his flock, he must lead the way in evangelism, [demonstrating] by personal example a lifestyle of evangelistic outreach.” Blue says congregations are hugely encouraged when pastors talk from the pulpit about their own experiences of evangelism – the good and the not so good – and that a leader’s teaching should be filled with fresh examples of evangelism experiences. “These illustrations, taken from his on-going experience, are some of the most effective means for motivating and training others for evangelism.”5 eading from the front… The Greeks used to tell how Xenophon first met Socrates in a narrow lane. Barring his path with a stick, Socrates asked the young man if he knew where he could buy this and that, and if he knew where these things were made. Xenophon gave the required information. “Do you know where men are made good and virtuous?”
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5 Ron Blue. Evangelism And Missions. Devices For Outreach In The 21st Century. Word Publishing, 2001, p.7
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Socrates then asked him. “No,” said Xenophon. “Then,” said Socrates, “follow me and learn!”6. Church leaders ought to be able to say to their people “Do you want to know how to reach strangers with the gospel in personal evangelism? Then come follow me!” hat does it take? In 2001, Thom S. Rainer and a team of associates interviewed more than 100 pastors of effective evangelistic churches as part of a large research project. They asked the pastors, “What factors create an effective evangelistic church?” Their responses revealed five key strategies to help us win the battle for souls: Theology They believed Jesus Christ was the only way of salvation and that anyone outside of Christ was eternally lost. Excellence Leaders of effective evangelistic churches engendered excellence in everything they did in church. This attitude created an atmosphere of excitement, which in turn encouraged church members to invite their friends. A passion for reaching the lost and seeing them saved They believed pastors must have a passion and enthusiasm for the unsaved, and that the senior pastor was the inspirer, exhorter and encourager of personal evangelism, leading the staff by example. Rainer said later, “In the churches that are reaching the un-churched, you will find a leader who has a passion for reaching the lost. You will find someone whose heart breaks at the thought of anyone going to hell.”7 odelling it is powerful… New Testament scholar T.B. Kilpatrick went so far as
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Cited by: Dr William Barclay. The Gospel Of Matthew. Edinburgh Press, 1965, p.72
7 Dr Thom S. Rainer, Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions. Evangelism And Church Growth. Zondervan, 2001, p.158
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to say the primary duty of ministers was evangelism “within the sphere in which they have been placed as ministers of the Word.” He said any ministers who genuinely sought the highest good of their congregations would themselves do the work of an evangelist “as faithfully and efficiently as though no other evangelism agency were ever to be employed.”8 Mark Conner is a modern-day, mega-church pastor who has grasped the importance of modelling personal evangelism before his flock. As senior pastor of the 5000-strong Waverley Christian Fellowship in Melbourne, Australia, he is passionate about urging other pastors to make a priority of modelling evangelism: “As a leader, I had to embrace heaven’s priority in my own life first. Only after modelling this personally could I then help our congregation change its values by becoming an evangelistic community…If I wanted our church to grow in our love for lost people then the growth needed to start with me.”9 Leaders being accountable in personal evangelism. “If there was a single characteristic that separated the pastors of effective churches from other pastors,” wrote Thom Rainer after concluding his research, “it was the issue of accountability in personal evangelism.”10 He went on to give the example of Leslie M, the pastor of a fast-growing, non-denominational church in Pennsylvania. Leslie emphasised how important it was to him to be accountable in evangelism: “We have staff meetings every Monday morning. Before we even have prayer, all ministers share about their witnessing the previous week. We do this before praying, because if
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T.B. Kilpatrick. New Testament Evangelism. Hodder and Stoughton, 1911, pp.161-162
9 Dr Bronwyn Hughes and Dr John Bellamy (Editors). A Passion For Evangelism. Turning Vision Into Action. Open Book Publishers, 2004, p.157 10 Dr Thom S. Rainer, Evangelism and Church Growth. Zondervan, 2001, p.162
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a minister has not shared his or her faith during the week, he or she has the opportunity to repent in prayer in front of the rest of us.”11 Wow! Some might cry ‘legalism!’ but I say no it’s not. It’s simply being serious and practical and accountable about the priority of Jesus and not playing games. It is imperative to attempt to mobilise everyone. Nearly 80 percent of the church leaders interviewed in the study said it was imperative congregation members be mobilised to share the gospel. This was because statistics showed that 75 percent of the formerly un-churched had someone share Christ with them prior to making a commitment. A non-denominational leader from Michigan commented to researchers, “I used to beat up the people pretty badly from the pulpit. Then God convicted me we would never reach the un-churched unless I myself was obedient to the Great Commission. It seems like we reach people for Christ when I’m obedient, and the church is dead when I’m disobedient.”12 Fellow leaders, did you get that? When the leader led by example in evangelism, all the people followed suit. When he/she didn’t, they didn’t. It’s so black and white and clear cut. The conclusion to Rainer’s research was a list of seven suggestions for pastors and leaders. Take special note – these too are some of the higher level battle strategies. Your success in the war for souls will be proportionate to the number of these strategies you implement in your situation. 1. Lead by example in personal evangelism. 2. Be clear in your theology of the lost: only Jesus can save, hell is a real place, and all those outside of Christ are eternally damned. 3. Be passionate and enthusiastic about evangelism. 4. Be accountable in personal evangelism. 5. Make your staff accountable in personal evangelism. 6. Arrange for the people in your church to be trained how to
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11 Ibid, p.163 12 Ibid, p.167
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proclaim and spread the gospel. 7. Arrange for the people in your church to be accountable in personal evangelism. e accountable or fail… Pastor Mark Conner writes on the power of combining accountability, leadership modelling, and ongoing training in evangelism: “Completing a training course doesn’t guarantee life change, as it is easy for people to absorb information without it affecting how they live. In a church context, however, where the principles of the training are being modelled and taught consistently and where there is accountability and follow up within a small group environment, the chances of training translating into behavioural change are enhanced considerably.”13 Accountability, leadership modelling, and on-going training are three strategies Mark Conner uses to create an evangelistic church. As a ministry we have developed a further 25 strategies in addition to these three detailed by Mark. If you connect with us, we’ll share those with you and help you implement them in your church.
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• If you are the leader of your church, and you want to mobilise 100% of the people in your church for evangelism, and maintain the momentum14, you have to lead by example. I am sorry, but there is no way around this. • Be clear in your theology of the lost: only Jesus can save, hell is
13 Dr Bronwyn Hughes and Dr John Bellamy (Editors), A Passion for Evangelism. Turning Vision into Action. Open Book Publishers, 2004, p.159 13 Before you venture further with this book, take a break from what I am saying, go to appendix three, and read a stunning commentary on leaders and the influence they have on evangelism by Dr Roger Greenway entitled “The Pastor Evangelist”. 14 It’s relatively easy to mobilise a whole church. The hard bit is keeping everyone going! By God’s grace, He has given us as a ministry 28 strategies which a church can employ / implement to help it maintain evangelism momentum..
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a real place of conscious torment, and all those outside of Christ are eternally damned. • Be passionate and enthusiastic about evangelism. • Be accountable in personal evangelism and make your staff accountable in personal evangelism. • Arrange for the people in your church to be accountable in personal evangelism. • Arrange for the people in your church to be trained how to proclaim and spread the gospel. • Find a reputable evangelist in your city/town. Ask them to personally coach you on a regular basis re: how to do evangelism until you start to feel like it has become part of the very fabric of your life as a pastor. Then start to coach other leaders. The best way to learn something is to teach it to others. They in turn can start coaching and teaching others how to evangelise, and so on. • Put in place in your church strategies and structures which will build, and then maintain, evangelism momentum. When you do this, it will be possible to mobilise your whole church and keep them mobilised. We can help you with this. Email julian@ esisite.com • It all starts - or stops - at the top. • CTION POINT: Help other Christians become aware of the issues raised in this Chapter, particularly leaders. Email everyone on your address book and encourage them to do the same. Send them a PDF file. You can obtain this by writing to julian@esisite.com. Only leaders can ensure the points listed in the summary above happen in a local church, which is why they are near the top of the enemy’s hit list. Satan knows their potential to cause a surge in the evangelisation of the world. If he can stop Christian leaders from engaging in personal evangelism, he will have torpedoed the possibility of the mobilisation of everyone in that leader’s church or institution.13 His top priority, as we will examine in the next Chapter, is to focus on “leaders of leaders” - the Board members and staff of theological
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training institutions and missionary organisations; well-known Christian writers and teachers; and church leaders, particularly those who head mega-churches. It’s all very well to detail the crisis in world evangelism. It’s quite another to come up with a plan to fix it. The next four Chapters outline a plan, the execution of which is
certain to cause a resurgence in world evangelism. Come with me and I will show you the plan
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Real Life Story I Just Wanted To Thank You And Hate You An email from an Australian pastor
This email was sent to me by someone in a leadership role in his church who shared honestly about his struggles with evangelism, his understanding of responsibility and his critical role of influence. Hi Julian, My name is Warren and I met you last year at a conference. I was originally very taken by what you presented. I went home with a huge gap in my Christian life being filled. However, when I told people in my home church, few people shared the same sentiment as me. Over the past year or so, I’ve had to work through the issues of evangelism and the gospel. God has also thrown a few curve balls my way in other spiritual departments. This leads me to the past few weeks. After I first heard you speak about evangelism, I was so keen that I splashed out and bought an iphone especially to share the gospel with. I used it a few times with the churched and a few other friends and it worked well. However, I shut down for two reasons. First, I had a tremendous fear of presenting to strangers. 13
Secondly, I had a lack of support from anyone else. Two weeks ago I thought I’d lost the iphone but have since found it again. On Tuesday I was working at church and stumbled across your DVD series on which was recorded some of your teaching on evangelism. I snapped up the pack, and took it home to watch them again. I was eager to see if I had responded to the material because it was the truth, or because you presented it so well, or even because I liked your strong charismatic personality. I found last night and today watching it that I responded to what you were saying a year ago because it was the hard truth. I was wondering if I could have a chat with you at some stage before you go back to New Zealand. I know you’re probably going to be hectic, but it’s always worth asking. Regardless of whether we chat, I have decided already that as a leader in my church, it is my responsibility to present what I know about evangelism and why it is failing in the Western world. As hard as it’s going to be, I am now convicted and will simply have to do it. So right now, I don’t like you. I read another book recently put out by a significant world leader on 14
personal evangelism. However, after seeing all your material I realised they were mistakenly not promoting evangelism at all. Even though the book is sound in a lot of ways, you & the Holy Spirit reminded me that his ideas were really about “watering” and “ploughing.” The author’s ideas also reminded me of the conversation we had about good works projects being great “watering” and “ploughing” activities, and excellent PR for the churches. But, these projects were inadvertently being labelled as evangelism, even though the gospel was not being preached. I just wanted to thank you & hate you at the same time. If I don’t get to speak to you, enjoy the rest of your time in our country. Blessings Warren.
Julian’s comments.
Warren is so honest. He expresses the heart cry of so many fine Christians, which is that they really want to reach the lost with the gospel but they fear talking to strangers, and they don’t want to be doing evangelism all by themselves. Fear is overcome by becoming more skilled. And to acquire skill requires training and practise. I was terrified when I first started learning how to evangelise. But as I said, confidence came with practise and training. The single greatest factor effecting non-participation in evangelism by non-leaders in churches is lack of leadership modelling. At the very beginning of learning how to evangelise, you’ll need character qualities like determination, long suffering, courage, and perseverance. If you persevere, realising that evangelism is a learnt skill, you will get your breakthrough. Nothing can be more sure. If Warren, as the 15
leader of his church had broken through, the people in his church would have eventually followed. When Jesus and Paul and any of the other Apostles stepped into the call of God on their lives, they would all have been on a learning curve. Sadly Warren also alludes to books and literature circulating in the Christian community which actually propagate all the devices I am writing about in this book. The authors of these books and articles don’t know what they don’t know so we have to help them to know what they don’t know! i.e. we have to get the revelations in this book to them so that they will become part of the solution, not the problem.
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