If you talk to a pastor in a church of 150 people and ask about their vibrant nursery care, meals ministry, small groups or children’s ministry, that pastor can give you the name of the person who leads the ministry. In larger churches they are paid staff, but in many smaller churches these leaders are volunteers. Either way, a direct relationship exists between leadership and fruitful ministry. Whether your church has 50 people or 5,000, every ministry that is thriving has a leader or team of leaders who serve faithfully and follow the mission of Jesus.
Here’s the problem: If you ask many pastors, “Who leads your outreach ministry?” they will say something like, “We don’t have a leader, and we don’t really have an outreach ministry right now.” Or they might say, “In our church, everyone is expected to do outreach and share their faith,” which usually means they have no leader and do very little outreach.
I was recently in a Zoom meeting with lead pastors from the Bay Area where I minister. Carey Nieuwhof, a well-known leader, writer and podcaster, was walking us through a discussion about the major challenges facing churches today. One of the sad but not surprising realities he addressed was that only about 1% of churches in the U.S. has a strong, effective and fruitful outreach ministry.
One key solution to this problem is for each church to prayerfully raise up an outreach leader. This person should be equipped to lead an intentional and biblically informed evangelism ministry that moves the whole congregation into the mission field. If your church is ready to take this step, here are the best first steps into this Jesus-honoring season of ministry:
1. Begin praying as leaders and as a congregation.
Gather your church leaders (board members, pastors, staff, key influencers) and seek the face of God. Let Matthew 9:38 guide you: “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Here are some prayer prompts:
• Read Matthew 9:35–38. Pray for God to move in the hearts of every leader and member of your church to love the lost like Jesus does.
• Read Acts 1:7–8. Pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to be released for revival in your church, your community and the world.
• Read Matthew 28:16–20. Pray for people to come to faith in Jesus and then to grow strong as disciples.
• Pray for fortitude. Ask God to give you the commitment to stay focused on outreach until Jesus comes again.
2. Start infusing outreach every 30 days.
For the last 30 years my wife Sherry and I have been working with churches around the U.S. and the world, and have learned that the best way to keep the evangelistic fires burning hot in a local church is to add fuel to the fire every 30 days until Jesus returns. This means that the church outreach leader needs to connect with the key ministry leaders from every part of your church and infuse four distinct things:
• Inspiration. Do something that engages hearts and excites people with a desire to reach the lost. This grows passion.
• Accountability. Help people think through who they are praying for, spending time with, or sharing their faith with in an effort to help people draw near the Savior. This moves people to action.
• Learning. Teach a simple truth about how to pray for the lost, share faith, have a spiritual conversation, make an invitation, or something else that fortifies believers with tools for sharing their faith. This builds confidence.
• Planning. Guide people through a process of setting intentional outreach goals for the next 30 days. This keeps people on track.
The next month, you do it again. Of course, there are creative ways to inspire, keep people accountable, teach new lessons, and set goals, but the process stays the same. This is so essential that the team I lead at Organic Outreach International (OOI) has created a five-year curriculum with Scripture reading, prayer direction, creative teaching and practical tools for an outreach leader to use. These are free, online, and set up where any leader can edit them and make them fit their church culture. You can find these at OrganicOutreach.org.
3. Invite every church member into the Great Commission call of Jesus.
Every follower of Jesus is called to the work of the Great Commission. We can all scatter the salt of the gospel and shine the light of Jesus. This is not a calling reserved for evangelists and extroverts. It is for every follower of the Savior.
I encourage pastors to preach on outreach and train their congregations in sharing their faith every year. If you want a two-week preaching series with creative ideas for equipping your congregation, this is also available on the Organic Outreach website.
4. Evaluate the outreach effectiveness of your church.
If a person feels sick for an extended time but refuses to go to a doctor, there is a good chance they will keep getting sicker. In the same way, if you are not seeing people come to faith in Jesus and then growing in their relationship with the Savior, it is time for a checkup. Ignoring the problem will rarely lead to it being overcome.
If you want to do an evaluation of your church health in the area of evangelism the team at OOI is ready to help you. We do this for free, and love to help pastors assess their church and make a plan to grow their evangelistic impact. Please feel free to reach out and learn how to walk down the road of doing a church outreach assessment.
If a church has no one leading the nursery ministry, there is a good chance they don’t have a nursery ministry. If you don’t have a leader for your children’s ministry, you have chaos. So, if you don’t have an outreach leader, there is little chance you have a thriving evangelism impact on your community. It’s time to find and equip a leader to lead outreach and equip your whole church to share their faith naturally.