Tag «Outreach & Evangelism»

How to Evaluate Your Church’s Discipleship Program

*This article is an excerpt from Disciple: How to Create a Community That Develops Passionate and Healthy Followers of Jesus. Some months ago, I published the book Disciple: How to Create a Community that Develops Passionate and Healthy Followers of Jesus. In that book, I point out that many churches that think they’re disciplemaking churches…

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Seven Insights from Churches about the Recent Easter Weekend

We’ve done a lot of listening and learning the week after Easter. We at Church Answers are grateful for consulting and coaching clients and for the large community at Church Answers Central. Though our information is more anecdotal rather than data-based, it is nevertheless insightful. Here are seven key takeaways we gleaned from church leaders…

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Seven Things We Didn’t See Coming in Churches at This Point after the Pandemic

Admittedly, it’s a tricky thing to find a precise beginning and ending point to a pandemic. We could accept the declaration from the World Health Organization that COVID-19 began on March 11, 2020. But the virus was rapidly spreading around the world prior to that date. The ending date is even more of a challenge…

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Churches Are Getting Less of Total Charitable Giving—Here’s Why (And What You Can Do About It)

For decades, the church has lost ground with overall charitable giving. Charitable giving is up—a near record of $485 billion in 2021, despite surging inflation. Giving to churches has dropped even though giving to non-profits is up by 4%. In the early 1980s, churches received over half of all charitable giving. Today, churches receive less…

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My Greatest Surprise about Churches Seeking Consultations

I’ve done church consulting for decades now. Over the years, I’ve worked with churches of various sizes, multiple denominations, differing polities, and diverse locations. I’ve learned a lot over the years. Some patterns are generally the same among these churches, which doesn’t surprise me. Some examples are that most churches are not doing evangelism well,…

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7 Steps to Structure Your Guest Follow Up Process

In a recent post, I talked about the importance of following up with first-time guests (FTGs). On either side of that process, there are often assumptions: the assumption from the guest is that if they give a church their contact information, someone will actually follow up. The assumption from the church (or church staff member)…

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Five Reasons Why Decreasing the Number of Worship Services Might Be the Best Move

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that increasing the number of worship services is the best path to go. You rarely heard leaders advocating decreasing the number of services. The concern is that the reduction of choices results in lower overall attendance. So, don’t consider going from three Sunday morning services to two or…

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Three Leadership Practices Every Young Church Leader Should Do Right Now

“What can I do right now?” I had coffee with a young minister. He asked a great question. What can I do right now? The young minister (in his early 20s) wanted to know how he could lead better—starting today. He caught me a bit off guard. After all, leadership is learned and refined over…

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A Church without Evangelism

A church without evangelism becomes a church that does not make disciples, Because there are no new Christians to disciple. A church without evangelism becomes a church where members fight over their preferences, Because the members do not focus on reaching those who are not followers of Christ. A church without evangelism becomes…

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6 Times to Talk to Your Guests

Let’s start with the basics: we should aim to talk to our guests all the time. When they show up on the weekend, they are our honored guests (that’s why we call ’em guests, and not the V-word). But there are strategic times during the worship service when we should especially address our guests. When…

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