It started in the book of Acts, right on the heels of Jesus’ ascension—the most impactful and diverse movement in history. Today we can see the many-faceted, beautiful body of Christ, as expressed through countless churches and fellowships of believers around the globe. It’s easy to forget that we are here today, faithfully following and practicing the way of Jesus because others showed and shared the message of Christ in an unbroken chain from then until now.
My dad, evangelist Luis Palau, loved to tell people about Jesus. Whether one-on-one in his own neighborhood or to thousands all around the world, he believed this message was good news for everyone. And he believed that most people were far more open and willing to hear the message than we realize.
Dad chose to live most of his life in his adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon, which means this quirky, radically unchurched place has been my home too. It’s been here that many of the Luis Palau Association’s evangelism ideas and strategies have been challenged by the hard realities of the current culture. It’s been here that 18 years ago we moved away from a traditional crusade model for outreach to a more family-friendly festival approach, infusing “word and deed” to help mobilize tens of thousands of Jesus followers to serve our public schools, foster care systems and refugee community, while also sharing the gospel boldly.
I remember when then mayor-elect of Portland, Sam Adams, stood on the stage in front of thousands of attendees at that first festival, saying, “This was the most effective community service effort in the history of Oregon. Let’s keep working together to keep this going.”
This effort led to the formation of what we now call TogetherPDX, a unified movement of more than 250 local churches and nonprofits who pray together, serve our communities together, and seek to share the good news together. It’s been a wild ride, full of ups and downs. And I’ll be the first to say this work isn’t easy. Evangelism can be daunting. For many within the church, evangelism is a scary word. I get it. I felt that way for many years myself.
In the wake of that summer in 2008, when more than 25,000 Jesus followers served the community together and gathered to hear the gospel shared, we threw ourselves into demonstrating the love of Jesus to our friends and neighbors in Portland. Years later, however, we began to understand that our good works were not naturally leading to the kind of gospel conversations we hoped for.
About five years ago, some of us realized that we weren’t nearly as clear and unified in our goal of seeing people respond to the call of Jesus as we were in our community service work. We took the simple step of convening a small group of evangelistically passionate leaders, including a diverse group of outreach pastors and groups like Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Alpha USA. Our goal? To raise the temperature of evangelism in our city.
Our first step as a group was to interview 50 diverse churches from across the Portland area to learn what was working for them and where they were struggling. We came up with a number of key findings—lessons that we feel could help any church that’s working to become more faithful and effective in sharing the good news. Here are just a few I would like to offer.
1. Evangelism Culture Starts With the Leaders.
Behind every church that is passionate about evangelism is a lead pastor who prioritizes evangelism. To these pastors, evangelism is not merely a training program to be implemented, it is a culture. Evangelism is not solely for those gifted in evangelism. Instead, evangelism is a responsibility meant to be practiced by everyone in their church.
For evangelism to be sustainable, however, a lead pastor must instill it as a value for their entire leadership team, while also holding it as a personal priority. In some churches this looks like giving staff flexible work hours to ensure they are building relationships with nonbelievers in the community. Staff meetings become a place to share current testimonies and pray for open doors for gospel conversations. One lead pastor shared with us how he guides his staff through various evangelism training curricula throughout the year. He makes sure the methods and training styles vary to apply to the diversity of his staff.
Consider: Describe the culture of your church and the key factors that shaped the culture. Is evangelism something that comes to mind when you think about your church culture? How could you further instill evangelism into the DNA of your church?
2. Identify and Empower Evangelists Already Among You.
It is easier to identify a volunteer leader for the children’s ministry in your church than it is to identify an evangelist. Why? Because you are actively looking for volunteers who fit that role. Whether your church is large or small, you’re always on the lookout for volunteers. But what about evangelists? Is that even on your radar? I’m sad to say, in most churches it’s just not a priority.
Part of the challenge in identifying evangelists is that many evangelists don’t even know they are evangelists (yet), and few use the term to describe themselves. Strategies for identifying and empowering evangelists in churches were rare in the conversations we had. However, when they surfaced, many were surprisingly simple, easy for churches of any size to implement. Yet all required persistent intention.
Whether it is looking for those who are regularly inviting new people to church or those who always have a story about gospel conversations, just simply having eyes to see those with the evangelistic mindset can make all the difference. You can invite a local evangelist to speak at a Sunday gathering and see who from your congregation shows unusual interest. Or, quite simply, you can just start asking. You might be surprised who surfaces.
Once you’ve identified a few evangelists in your mix, find a way to mentor, train and encourage them.
Consider: What could it look like to create spaces for evangelistically minded people to connect with one another in your church? Better yet, could you partner with another church in this effort?
3. Community Service Increases Credibility, Not Gospel Conversations.
When meeting with Portland area churches, it was no surprise that many were committed to serving their neighborhoods. But we quickly found their belief of how community service is correlated to gospel conversations varied greatly. One pastor shared, “If we mobilize a bunch of people with the gift of service, why would we expect a bunch of people to be evangelized?”
Others viewed community service as the pathway to relationship: Raking leaves at a school gains trust to invite a school staff member to a picnic where a gospel conversation can take place. And still others said there was a direct correlation between community service and gospel proclamation.
Some pastors we spoke with were able to share how people were in church on Sundays because they served them during the week, but other pastors we spoke with were not able to share specific stories of gospel conversations. One pastor regrettably shared they had been serving in their neighborhood for 10 years but could not point to one person who committed their life to Christ through these interactions with the church.
You may think it goes without saying, but regardless of where a church is, for evangelism to be integrated into community service, it must be integrated purposefully. You can’t just assume it’s going to happen. People are afraid, nervous and often under-trained. They need to be encouraged and nurtured in what it looks like to reach out in Word and deed.
If your congregation is small or lacking in resources, this can feel overwhelming. Many churches struggle to know what it looks like to reach out in community service. The challenge for you is not what you’re doing, but how you are doing it—and how you can increase the integration between evangelism and service. (One great resource in this area is The Neighboring Church by Rick Rusaw and Brian Mavis.)
Consider: How is your church currently involved in serving your community? What could it look like to increase integration between evangelism and your community service efforts?
4. Most Churches Underestimate the Impact of Celebration.
Don’t get me wrong—baptism is wonderful, amazing, a true reason for celebrating. But during these interviews we often walked away wondering why celebrating evangelism was confined to rhythmic baptisms (ranging from annual to monthly cycles). If that’s the case, what are the conscious and unconscious messages about evangelism that church members receive?
Baptisms are a climactic moment, but few churches use baptisms to tell the stories of those life transformations, prayers and seeds planted along the way. If we do not celebrate—or at least publicly recognize—these steps along someone’s journey, do churchgoers have an unrealistic view about evangelism? Are they trained to see evangelism as more of a moment of conversion than a journey? Furthermore, baptisms highlight people coming to faith. What about celebrating people sharing their faith?
What could it look like to encourage sharing current evangelism stories in small groups or include a short testimony during weekly announcements? One idea several churches implement is to leverage their church social media accounts to share more testimonies than information about activities going on around their church.
Consider: Does your church encourage its people to share current testimonies and stories of personal gospel conversations? How could you encourage people to share testimonies more often?
5. Evangelism Equipping Without Experience Falls Flat.
I don’t have to tell you, just because someone is taught something doesn’t mean they’ll put it into action. And just because a church holds evangelism trainings does not mean more evangelism is taking place.
As you can imagine, many churches we spoke with talked about evangelism training in the context of a classroom. These trainings explain theology, coach people how to write their testimony, have two-way conversations, and guide people through a specific tract or gospel explanation. But there are also trainings that involve more interaction with people outside of a classroom setting. Churchgoers may walk the streets in pairs offering to pray for people.
Very few classroom-oriented evangelism trainings overcome the main evangelism hurdles that pastors described: fear, apathy and busyness. Knowledge is important, but without the experience of overcoming these hurdles, it is unlikely to see more evangelism take place. Furthermore, training that focuses heavily on teaching what to say and how to say it develops a person’s mind but does not address that believer’s core identity.
One church redefined equipping from strictly knowledge-based training to encouraging and strengthening the believer. Their evangelism training featured testimonies of people sharing their faith and reminders of the believer’s identity as a loved child of God, empowered witness and ambassador of reconciliation. Their goal was to reframe evangelism from duty to pleasure.
You don’t have to go out and recreate the wheel. There are a lot of great resources out there already. I think of Steiger’s new evangelism training intensive, Palau’s Masterclass in Evangelism or Alpha, which uniquely combines clear gospel communication with a relational, conversational setting.
Consider: How is your church equipping its people to overcome—not just talk about—common hurdles in evangelism like fear, apathy and busyness?
6. Prayer for the Lost Is Lacking.
Prayer has power. We all know that. But when speaking with pastors in Portland, prayer for the lost didn’t come up very often. When asked about equipping their people to have spiritual conversations, only a few pastors mentioned prayer.
One pastor mentioned a weekly revival prayer meeting they began in 2019. Another pastor from a primarily Hispanic congregation mentioned a quarterly prayer meeting and evangelism training that challenged the attendees to have gospel conversations. While these two pastors were anomalies, they also admitted they could do a much better job at equipping their people in evangelism and that their existing training lacked the follow-up with new believers who usually stopped going to church after a couple of years. A third pastor explained how their evangelism training involved power evangelism, words of knowledge, and prayer. And a fourth pastor described how their discipleship groups talk about who they are praying for and sharing the gospel with every week.
Prayer gatherings are happening in more churches than the four mentioned here, but these four pastors intentionally connected prayer with their evangelism. Interestingly, when asked what was working in evangelism, many more pastors mentioned their church members praying for spouses, relatives and neighbors—though prayer was not mentioned in the ways they are intentionally equipping their people in evangelism.
Consider: What could it look like for your church to develop a heart for the lost and motivate them to share their faith more regularly? How could prayers for non-Christians be included in this process?
7. You Are the Light of Your City.
You don’t have to look far to see the despair and struggle in our world. These past few years we have been reminded of this reality. So many people hurting and alone. There is no doubt about it—we live in a broken world. Yet there is hope. We can’t forget that the gospel of Jesus Christ truly is good news for all people. That is the joy we bring as believers. That is the message we share as a team. We stand for hope, peace, love, joy and forgiveness, all found in Jesus Christ.
Whether large or small, urban or rural, your church plays a vital role in sharing the light of Jesus in our dark world. I pray you know that, deep down. And I pray you know there are others out there, me included, who are cheering you on.
Would you like to hear more relevant, local insights on evangelism? Are you interested in doing a listening tour of your own, or implementing some of these findings in your church? Learn more: CityGospelMovements.org
Simple Strategies for Identifying Potential Evangelists
• Look for the people who are regularly inviting new people to church (“super inviters”) or who have led more than one person to Christ.
• Regularly ask, “Who are the up-and-coming leaders?” at elders’ meetings and staff meetings.
• Invite a local evangelist to speak at a Sunday gathering and see who from your congregation shows unusual interest.
• Affirm evangelistic gifting more quickly in new believers. Several pastors told us that new believers are their best evangelists. However, the more time new believers spend in church, the fewer non-Christian friends they often have.
• Connect newer evangelists to experienced evangelists for mentoring and encouragement. In a couple of churches, experienced evangelists are brought on paid staff teams. Trust and partnership between pastors and evangelists are highlighted when lead pastors seek feedback from evangelists on their sermons. One pastor invites the resident evangelist in his church to close his sermons by succinctly communicating the gospel and providing an opportunity for people to respond.