The best part of my (Scott Sanders) role at Reach Australia is working alongside church planters and church leaders to see them start new churches and see churches move towards health and growth.
I received this text message this morning from a church leader:
Dear brothers and sisters,
Last night was the final night of Alpha and I wanted to thank you all for your prayers and ministry since the opening night. Praise God, 5 people indicated that they had accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and invited Him into their lives, and are keen to come back next week to start reading John! We have 2 others who want to read John with us to work it out more.
There’s much follow-up work to be done and we pray that all will be the good soil where the seed grows deep, bears fruit, and multiplies. Please take a moment to join me in thanking God and praying for these people!
Praise God – this is great stuff
I want to reflect on the importance of us as leaders driving this. And how you don’t need to be the evangelist, but you need to have an urgency and desire to reach the lost.
God’s heart is for the lost—he wants all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:3–4)—and I reckon that those who lead his church must have this same heart, not as a side project but as a central theme in their lives and ministries.
In the church planting world, we look for someone being ‘evangelistically urgent’.
This is how we describe it in our Church Planting Questionnaire. They’re people who are particularly gifted “Evangelists,” constantly finding themselves in conversations about Jesus to the amazement of those around them.
While church planters may have this ability, it’s important to distinguish this from what someone needs to possess to plant or lead a church or ministry.
What church leaders need is a deep conviction that the lost need Jesus—a conviction that bleeds out into how they preach and how they speak to their people.
This is not the characteristic of being a capital “E” Evangelist. This is the characteristic of being deeply convicted of the gospel as the only hope of life for a lost world and allowing this conviction to shape their behaviour and priorities as a leader.
These gospel convictions aren’t just for church planters—they’re vital for leaders of established churches too. We need to keep reflecting on the reality of heaven and hell, whether we’re leading in a way that points people to Christ, and if our gospel convictions are driving a deep desire to see the lost saved. In our Leadership Development Program, we help leaders shape their preaching, leadership, and team culture around this mission focus.
How do we grow in evangelistic urgency as leaders – some ideas …
Paul urges Timothy (2 Timothy 4:5):
“But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”
1. Consistently model patterns of reaching the lost
Begin with small, consistent time to personal evangelism.
Pastors through the years have shared tools they’ve used to motivate their teams toward reaching the lost—praying at a regular time for key people weekly, intentionally scheduling time for evangelistic conversations (carving out time in the calendar).
Be open to trying different things – sometimes even just going to the same shops and trades each time can build a relationship that leads to gospel conversations.
Dave Jensen reminded me recently that God uses a variety of means to see people won to him. Try out new ways to create opportunities for personal evangelism.
2. Share your evangelistic experiences (especially failures)
I love hearing stories of transformed lives. Look for them in the lives of your church family and share them.
Share your own stories of success and failure. There are loads of contexts to be doing this.
3. Create accountability structures for yourself
I would encourage you to do this as an eldership/ministry team. At my home church, we’ve done this primarily through the phrase 3–1–1:
- 3 people you pray for
- Every week
- For one year
It’s hard to encourage others to do this and not do it yourself.
4. Churches should measure and celebrate evangelistic activity (not just conversions)
I’m not much a celebrator—cakes cost so much!—but we need to cultivate a culture in our ministries and teams and churches of celebration – for the big moments of conversion, and also the smaller inputs where we see our church members being bold in sharing the gospel.
When we celebrate both the big and small wins in evangelism, we build the culture over time that gives focus and weight to the evangelism that is taking place.
I love the big celebration moment of a baptism, but also just the regular question: “Who’s become a Christian this week?” Stop and give thanks to God that he’s moved someone from death to life in our church community.
A final word – come join us & wrestle together
This year’s conference is all about mission. My prayer is that church planters, church leaders, and their teams will be convicted of the urgent need to be reaching the lost and continuing to do the work of an evangelist.