EvangeCoach Ministries Ken Ramey – Coaching the Church in Evangelism – – – WA State Field Representative for "My Hope with Billy Graham"

Every church tends to have a group of people that seem to naturally be better prospects for sharing the Good News. They often are thought of as the extroverts, the outgoing, or the ones that have the “gift of evangelism”, which, by the way, does not appear anywhere in the Scriptures. It seems like we believe that Acts 1:8 or 2 Cor.5 was written for just a portion of the church. What about the introvert, the shy, the feeble, the fearful, the inadequate (in their minds) are they called to share their faith and reach others for Christ? If so are we equipping them as they are, or trying to change them into something they are not? This seminar is designed to equip and motivate the 90% of your congregation that have pretty much checked out of sharing their faith. If you could energize the 90% just think how the 10% would be fired up.

Most Pastors that I know would go through the roof with excitement if they could find a way to energize and motivate most if not all of their people to be active in some role of sharing their faith. The truth is that it is challenging. We live in a world that is often more anxious to hear about Jesus than we are to talk about him.

As I look back over many years of evangelistic training I have realized there is a particular area that I wish I had spent more time teaching. I wish I had spent more time changing the way the people think before I tried to change the way they act. This seminar has been recently re-vised with that task in mind.

However it is not just the people that need to adjust their thinking. As leaders we also get caught in certain patterns of thinking that are not helpful. We often look at “our” ministry as consisting of the people that God brings into the services and programs that we so faithfully oversee. And yet that is only a portion of the congregation that we need to be concerned about. Every Pastor or Church leadership team has two congregations that they are responsible for. The first one is easily identified as they show up in the roles or records of the active ministry of the church body. They are the ones that we presently have some level of contact with.

The second congregation is the people our people know, live among, work with, recreate with, and are insiders within any group. This is our secondary congregation. They are already involved with our primary congregation outside the church, and can easily become part of our primary congregation if we can reach them. There is a group of people “out there” that should even now be on the inside rather than watching us from the outside.

Both congregations are vital parts of the ministry that we are called to. If we miss the second congregation we are in danger of neglecting our biblical responsibility. Your first reaction to having more people to think about may not be a pleasant thought for some. However the Bible is very clear that we are not the ministers at this point. Our calling as a leader is to release and train the people of congregation #1 to function in their God given role as “ministers” to congregation #2.

If we neglect this essential role of training and releasing, or mistakenly think we have to do it all and be it all, we will end up short-changing the body of Christ of their glorious calling, and will become a bottleneck who feels worn out, guilty, and trapped in an impossible role. The ensuing result is that most of the ministry will be centered on our gifts, talents, and abilities as leaders. Congregation #2 will not reached with the exception of those we can somehow persuade to come to us to check out how great we really are. Training not only releases the people, it releases the pastors, elders, and leaders!

It is time that we engage the whole church in taking the whole gospel to the sphere of influence God has given us. This seminar is designed with that in mind. We know from past experience that, if you can get your people to this training they will be impacted and you will be overjoyed to release your people to reach their ‘worlds’ with the Gospel of Jesus Christ!