Your Journey Blog

Ten Reasons to Embrace Servant Evangelism

Steve Sjogren offers ten practical reasons for using Servant Evangelism in your church: 

1. It opens doors into the heart of your community.
2. It develops a doable ministry in your church.
3. It creates an opportunity for the church to "get involved."
4. It allows a few to touch many.
5. It gives practical tips for public considerations.
6. It is simple, non-aggressive and inexpensive.
7. It doesn't require extensive training.
8. It offers many evangelism and outreach strategies.
9. It nurtures team efforts and team-centeredness.
10. It is a lot of fun!  (HT)

I would add the following:

1. It promotes an incarnational spirit of evangelism. Getting people out of the building and onto the streets. John 20:21
2. It helps to identify the "men and women of peace" in our communities. Luke 10:5-6
3. It reinforces the gospel in the life of the participants.Philemon6
4. It shines a light in a dark world. Matthew 5:14-16
5. It is easily delegated to lay leadership. Professionals are not needed!
6. It promotes the values of kindness, generosity and servanthood.
7. It leverages permission based marketing.
8. It unleashes outreach creativity with the church.  Ideas are limitless.
9. It provide an avenue for "Research & Development" in the local church.
10. It fills peoples buckets through a positive emotional experience.

Sowings Seeds through Servant Evangelism

Small things done with great love will change the world!  This is the motto of Servant Evangelism developed and popularized by Steve Sjogren through his book Conspiracy of Kindness, his website and newsletters.

Steve Sjogren is a church planting leader who has planted churches in Europe and throughout the U.S. primarily through the use and development of Servant Evangelism.  He launched Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1985 with 37 people which grew to over 6000 in average attendance.

"What makes this story unusual is that this happened in Cincinnati, Ohio --- a city that has long been known for its in-your-face unfriendliness! Mark Twain spent a good deal of time in this city on the Ohio River and often commented about how rude people were. When this church was launched, Cincinnati was ranked as the third most unfriendly city in America. After serving about 12 million people over those fifteen years the tone of the city literally changed and that change had made a permanent impact on the city in innumerable ways. Servant Evangelism connects people to people in a natural, easy, low-risk, high grace way." (HT)

Steve is now in the process of launching their fifth church on the east side of Tampa called Coastlands Tampa

Here are five ways they I encourage church planters to use Servant Evangelism in their new churches:

1. Never do it alone.  Always have somebody with you as this is a great opportunity to virus someone with an evangelistic spirit and to develop a Servant Evangelism champion in your new church.  Never doing it alone will also help you set the evangelistic DNA in your church that will move beyond launch and be embodied in the life of your church.  New churches can get established really quickly and experience evangelistic entropy.
2. Choose high volume inexpensive activities.  Remember, you are sowing evangelistic seeds, the more seeds you sow the more opportunities you will have to find receptive hearts.   If you were to do a free car wash how many cars could you wash in 4 hours...maybe 35-50?  If you were to give people free coffee and hot chocolate how many cups could you give out in a couple of hours...50-100?  Here are some of the high volume SE projects that will enable you to touch 1000 people or more in 3-4 hours.   Lollipop/Blow Pops, Hand Cleaning Towelettes, Candy Give Away, Popsicles, Flower Seeds, etc. These project could be done for less than $200-300 and touch more than 1000 people!
3. Plan them before a Preview Service or Big Sunday.  Sow these evangelistic seeds the Saturday before a high impact outreach service.  This will create more buzz in your community for your new church.
4. Always use a Connection Card.  The connection card is the difference between Community Service and Servant Evangelism.  Community Service is simply loving your community in the name of Jesus.  Servant Evangelism is earning the right to extend an invitation through a connection card.  On one side you tell people they are loved and on the other side you tell them who you are by giving information on your church or an upcoming special worship service.
5. Have fun doing it!  Creating positive emotional experiences for your people is key for them to re-engage in this type of evangelistic activities.  It is also key to being effective in your connections with strangers.  There is nothing more attractive than a group of authentic, loving people who are having fun and serving with joy in their hearts.  Steve likes to say, "That where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is fun!"

Over 15 years Steve led his church to sow 12 million evangelistic touches into their community...no wonder it grew to over 6000 in attendance!  How many evangelistic touches are you sowing into your community each year?  If you are not reaping an evangelistic harvest you are probably not sowing enough evangelistic seeds or touches.

"Denatured Church" - Gilbert Bilezikian

Gilbert Bilezikian offers insights into why the church in America is moving so slowly and why mega churches are having little impact on our culture.  Here are a few of his thoughts:

The church is "denatured" through...individualism

“But the church in the West is being overtaken by individualism, which entails increased material pursuits, so you can afford to be self-sufficient. Strong anti-community forces are at work. Family life is practically non-existent as we are pulled away in different directions.”

The church is "denatured" through...embracing the values of culture 

“The bane of the church is that it becomes worldly. Instead of imparting the Word and becoming an agent of change, it adopts the values of the world and integrates them into its structures and life."

The church is "denatured" through...an over reliance on corporate tactics

“The biggest problem is the definition of its leadership structures. There are very clear directives in the New Testament for how the church is to be constituted, on the basis of community, which implies congregational participation, consensual decision-making, accountability of leaders to the congregation. Leadership should not be directive but developmental.”

However, Mr. Bilezikian says the church has discarded these directives and replaced them with worldly models of leadership, such as those found in corporate business. So we find the pastor as CEO. “We even adopt the language, for example, calling them senior pastors. Where does that come from?”

He says today’s highly hierarchical models of leadership smack of government, military or political administrations and they result in the Church becoming institutionalized.

“Instead of being a movement, it becomes an establishment. This is not new, of course - it started when the Roman Emperor Constantine established Christianity as the state religion.” 

Read the complete interview

How are you working to keep your church from being denatured?

Sowing Seeds of Love Into Your Community

Sowing seeds of Christ's incarnational love into your community is a key characteristic of a missional church.  NorthBridge Church in Antioch, IL, at their one year anniversary banquet, raised $17,000.00 to give into their community and cast the vision for three other churches to simply love a local struggling school district by turning a useless, old school building into a functional classroom.  Here is the newspaper article on the project: Download NorthBridge School Article.pdf

A few take aways:

1) There are hurting organizations in your community.  Open your eyes and ears to see and hear the hurting.

2) Ask people how you can help them.  Don't tell them what you want to do.

3) Don't do it alone.  Involve the larger body of Christ.

4) Love them unconditionally in the name of Jesus.

5) New churches can make a big difference!

Take a look at the Expansion of Christianity

I found this and thought it was interesting even though it doesn't show the expansion of Christianity in China and India. Here is the source: Maps of Wars

Learnings From the Pew Forum Research

George Bullard is offering weekly leadership insights from the new research on U.S. Religious Landscape Survey 2008 from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life at www.pewforum.org

Each learning is coupled with specific implications for leaders of churches and leaders of denominations.

Learning # 1 - "Despite predictions the United States would follow Europe's path towards widespread secularization, the U.S. population remains highly religious in its beliefs and practices, and religion continues to play a prominent role in American public life." HT:Bullard

Learning # 2 - "More that one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion--or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, roughly 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether."  HT: Bullard

Learning # 3 - "The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion." HT: Bullard

Learning # 4 - "The United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51%. Moreover, the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely groups around three fairly distinct religious traditions--evangelical Protestant churches (26.3% of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1%) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9%)."  HT: Bullard

Storyline Church Nashville

Jer Dunlap has a cool video idea for this Easter as he builds his launch team in Nashville.

The Principle of Sowing and Reaping

When we started this evangelistic journey back in May we took a close look at the Three Spheres of Outreach which included: 1) The leader and the people they connect with during the week, 2) The church and those within their sphere of influence, 3) The unconnected, those who know nothing about the church and are disconnected with your people.

In each of these spheres we developed Three Strategies of Outreach, 1) The leader sets the standard through modeling, 2) The leader equips the church to reach into their relational spheres, 3) The church learns how to sow evangelistic seeds into the masses of unconnected people in their community.

One of the foundational principles of scripture is the principle of sowing and reaping.  We see this first in the life of Isaac (Genesis 26:12). He sowed, planted and reaped a hundredfold of crop because of God's blessing.  Farmers understand this principle in a very practical way, the more seed you plant, the more you will reap at harvest time.  The Apostle Paul in addressing the need for generosity in the life of the Corinthian church wrote, "Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously." (II Corinthians 9:6) So my question to you, as it pertains to evangelism, is: How many evangelistic touches are you sowing into the masses of people who are unconnected with your church? The evangelistic fruitfulness of your church is directly related to the amount of evangelistic seeds you are sowing into your community.

Here are four ways to evangelisticly touch the unconnected in your community:

1. Community Service: Simply serving your community and displaying the love of Christ without overtly making an invitation to attend your church.
2. Servant Evangelism: Earning the right to make an invitation to your church through random acts of kindness.
3. Sharing Your Facilities With Your Community: How many people go in and out of your facility in a given week?  Treating your facility like a community center is one way to sow evangelistic seeds to the unconnected in your community.
4. Marketing Your Church's Message Through the Various Media Opportunities in Your Community: Every church has a marketing strategy, the only difference is that some are better than others.

Yet, the quantity of seed is only part of the equation, there also needs to be a concern about the quality of the seed. Read Hosea 10:12-13. If you sow righteousness you will reap love, if you sow wickedness you will reap evil.  With very stern words the Apostle Paul writes, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from the nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Galatians 6:7)  In relation to evangelism, here is the question to be answered: How would you rate the quality of the evangelistic seeds you are casting in your community? 

1. Community Service: Is the quality and consistency of your community service something that reflects the beauty of Christ?
2. Servant Evangelism: Is the quality of your random acts of kindness received as a nuisance or a pleasant surprise?
3. Sharing Your Facilities: Do your facilities reflect a sense of care or are they run down?
4. Marketing: What type of first impression does your signage, website and promotional materials evoke?

Over the next few months we will take a close at how to increase the quantity and quality of the evangelistic seeds you are sowing into your community.

Solomon wrote these words, "Sow your seed in the morning and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well." (Ecclesiastes 11:6)

Lessons From An Old Quarterback

My son Dan and I are still dealing with the reality the Old # 4 won't be dressing up in the Green and Gold next year.  Many a blogger has been posting all sorts of responses to the announcement of Favre's retirement.  Mark Wilson's post caught my eye.  Mark is a pastor in the northwoods of Wisconsin... where everyone wears the the Green and Gold and has a Packer Room in their basement.  He does an excellent job bringing into prespective some of the great leadership qualities Brett Favre displayed when he took the field.

Here are his sentimental observations:

1) He Showed up to Play Every Sunday. Regardless of what was happening in his life (i.e. his father's death and his wife's cancer), he still found a way to get to the game on time.

2) He Played Through the Hurts.  I've watched just about every Packer game since Favre's debut. I've seen him clobbered, hammered, hamstrung, smashed, and boggled. Yet, Brett kept getting back on his feet again. Remember the year when he played half a season with a broken thumb? Somehow, the desire for victory was far greater than the physical pain.

3) He Took Risks and Made Plenty of Mistakes.  Not only does he hold the career touchdown record, he holds the interception record as well. You can't win big by playing it safe. Consider the turtle, who makes no progress until he sticks his neck out. Brett stuck his neck out all the time. On countless occasions, I've seen him do something crazy, and yelled, "NO!! NO!! DON'T DO THAT!!" But then, it's the crazy passes, completed as touchdowns which will go down in history as the greatest and most memorable.

4) After He Blew It, He Shook it Off. Nothing could rattle his confidence. On the next set of downs after an interception, he'd throw deep (and crazy) again. Favre didn't allow failure to be final and always believed that setbacks are supposed to be followed by come-backs. He never blamed others for his mistakes, and always took responsibility for losses on the field.

5) He Inspired the Team.  Brett always had a good word of encouragement for the younger guys around him. I remember when Ryan Longwell, as a rookie kicker, muffed an easy field goal against the Eagles, and lost the game. The crowd booed. Favre went over to his dejected teammate and said, "Hey, don't worry about it. It's not your fault. We lost this thing together."

6) He Kept Smiling. The thing I appreciated most about Brett Favre was his enthusiasm and love for football. Most of the time, he really enjoyed himself and was glad to be there (There were a few exceptions, such as the ice bowl in Chicago, but normally, he'd grin for at least three quarters, anyhow!) Brett's lighthearted spirit was contagious. Win or lose, it was still a good game.

7) He Didn't Quit Until the Clock Ran Out.  Many players give up when the tide turns against them, but not Brett Favre! He played his heart out every second of every down in the game. Perhaps that's why he led his team to so many last second comeback victories.

These are great principles for every spiritual leader to embody as we enter into our field of play...God's harvest field.  Thanks Mark!  Your post made my day.

Brett Favre Retires!

It is a dark day at our household ... The only quarterback of the Green Bay Packers that my children have ever known ... retired yesterday!  It is the end of a great era. I still remember watching the last game the Bart Starr played as a kid.  I hope I don't have to wait 20 years to see the next great quarterback in Green Bay.

I found this tribute to Brett ... and thought I would share it with all you Packer fans out there!