Don't let it fall off the table!

You know the scenario. You have a table. You have something on the table—perhaps a glass of water, perhaps a partially completed model aeroplane, perhaps a vase from the Ming Dynasty—it doesn’t matter. The point is that the thing is on the table and you want it to stay there. You definitely don’t want it knocked off. But you also have a child—high on energy, forgetful of warnings, and prone to run or tackle or launch projectiles at you or Darth Vader or some other imaginary foe for reasons best known to them. 

You know what you have to do, don’t you? You know what will happen if you don’t do it. You have to be perpetually diligent to ensure that the ‘thing’ you want on the table is not knocked off the table. And if you aren’t diligent, you can guarantee that it will all end in tears—for both you and the child.

If you have any form of leadership responsibility at your church or in your Christian group, the ‘you’ in this scenario is you. The table is your program. The child is a mysterious nexus of unseen forces. And the thing on that table is evangelism.

A couple of years ago, I attended some seminars run by an American church growth expert named Dr Paul Borden. From all the wisdom that he passed on, one thing I remember was that, unless we are very deliberate and diligent, evangelism will almost always ‘fall of the table’ when push comes to shove in church (or Christian group) practice. He is not an expert for no reason!

The fact is that—even if you attend a church where there is a lot of popular support for evangelism (as I do)—you really have to keep your eye on the table. There is so much going on at churches (or the like) that is rightly directed towards looking after people who already attend. And there are a lot of unseen forces that work to ensure that these responsibilities take up all of your time.

A while ago I was invited to speak to a group at a particular church on the topic of how they could evangelistically reach out. I arrived with a number of ideas to present and discuss, and found the group full of good people. However, as the meeting progressed, I quickly discovered that the topic that most engaged their minds, and to which they kept bringing the discussion back, was how they could promote cross-service and cross-generation fellowship. That certainly was a matter worth discussing, but I had been invited along to talk about evangelism.

One of the ways I believe we can keep evangelism on the table is by deliberately making it a regular part of your program… and keeping it there! Every term our church’s evangelistic plan includes a gospel service, a Christianity Explained course, and around one evangelistic event—plus periodic evangelistic training. No rocket science, just attention.

But what happens if you run an evangelistic course each term and after a couple of terms the numbers attending start to drop off? Do you cancel it and say that you “gave it a go”... or do you continue it? I’d argue for keeping it (or something like it) going. You can change the time, the day, the way you run it. You could change to a different evangelistic course. You could even put something else that fulfils the same function it its place. The trick it is to keep it on the table until it becomes part of the DNA of your church or group—until everyone realizes that “this is what we do”.

With whatever evangelistic initiatives you employ, be prayerful (something for a later article), be creative, be flexible... but keep them! If you don’t keep an eye on it, some sugar-fueled, projectile-bearing eight-year-old will came rampaging through the room and knock it off... and you probably won’t even notice.

Photo credit: Travis Swan