The New Church Family
Given the title of Linda Ranson Jacobs’s new book, Attract Families to Your Church and Keep Them Coming Back (Abingdon Press, 2014), one might assume…
Browsing: Evangelism
Articles
Learning from Growing Churches in England
The Church of England set out to learn from the 18 percent of their churches that grew in the decade up to 2010. A study…
Engaging your Mission Field
Perhaps there was a time when inspiring worship and great music brought people to church. Today, however, in an increasing number of places, the quality…
Overflow: Increase Worship Attendance & Bear More Fruit
Worship attendance matters. Learn how to improve it, so that your congregation bears more fruit. Our churches exist to glorify God and to share God…
Connect Community Events to Worship
For years, Harvest Church hosted a community-wide dodgeball event for teenagers. We advertised it well, and hundreds of kids participated. The winners got cool prizes…
Host Bridge Events to Reach New People
One of the disciplines of a disciple of Jesus Christ is to establish relationships with people we do not know — the unconnected — therefore…
The Go-To Church
The church can no longer fling open the doors and expect the crowds to rush in. We are no longer a “come here” organization as…
Worship as Mission
When congregations and their leaders think about worship or about mission, it often appears that they think of the two as compartmentalized and entirely separate…
Shifting Entry Points
Traditionally, worship has been regarded as the primary venue through which individuals enter the life of a congregation. In The Inviting Church (Alban, 1987, 74-75),…
Evangelism Today Requires New Wineskins
Churches are struggling with their evangelistic outreach. What worked in the past doesn’t seem to work today. In studying African American churches, I have come…
An Opportunity for an Invitation
While my husband and I were out recently, a young college student took our order at a fast food restaurant. Noticing her name tag, I…
Time to Invite
In the last year, several friends who live in different parts of the country have returned to church after a number of years of inactivity.…
Reaching More Disciples
The first decade of the 21st century was one of highs and lows for U.S. congregations. In the wake of the tragedy of 9/11, many…
Helping the World See the Church in a Different Way
The community where I live in South Korea is one of the five top places where Koreans want to live. So to reach new disciples…
Friendships and Reaching New People
Every church believes itself to be a welcoming and friendly fellowship, but this isn’t always true. If our churches are to become spiritual communities where…
Planning for Attendance Seasons in the Church Year
We are used to thinking of the seasons of the Christian year such as Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany, Lent. There are also attendance seasons that follow…
Moving Beyond Geographic Boundaries
Where is your church called to serve? Many churches think of their outreach area in limited geographical terms. By this measure, the growth potential in…
Moving Beyond Personal Preferences into Missional Thinking
Being missional does not mean doing things the way we like them. It means to take the gospel into the context where we have been…
Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church
The Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas gathers each week in 78,000 square feet of space that originally housed a Wal-Mart. The large glass front features…
Deliberate Outreach Strategy Leads to Growth
Worship attendance at Gardendale-Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church in Gardendale, Alabama, has increased more than 5 percent each year since 1999. One reason for the…
Megachurches as Resources for Learning
In their new book, Beyond Megachurch Myths (Jossey-Bass, 2007), Hartford Seminary Professor Scott Thumma and Leadership Network executive Dave Travis debunk many of the common…
Is Outreach to Young Families with Children Still Enough?
“What we really need is more young families with children.” How many times have we heard those familiar words spoken in churches? The image of…
Can White Mainline Churches Outside the South Reach New Christians?
This is the question raised by Martha Grace Reese and the Mainline Evangelism Project she directed. The results of her research, funded by the Lilly…
Transforming Evangelism: The Wesleyan Way of Sharing Faith
Traditional views of evangelism are often intimidating and push the limits of personal comfort, leaving the job of reaching out to new and searching Christians…
Becoming a Good Samaritan Church
Combining caring ministry with proclamation of the Gospel is the key to effective ministry says Robert Pierson, according to reviewer Ann Michel. In Needs-Based Evangelism,…
A Review of Leading Beyond the Walls
Lovett Weems reviews Adam Hamilton’s Leading Beyond the Walls in which the author presents ideas about the Church of the Resurrection, a United Methodist mega-church.…
