Posts Tagged: Church Growth

The Four Most Important Evangelists in The Adventist Church

On May 21, 2013 by Chad Stuart

If you follow the world of Adventist Evangelism you are familiar with ministries such as It Is Written, Amazing Facts, Breath of Life, & Voice of Prophecy. You’re also familiar with the great evangelists of Adventism, some of y’all have seen them so many times on 3ABN or The Hope Channel that you almost feel like they are your own personal friends, Doug Batchelor, Shawn Boonstra, Mark Finley, Alejandro Bullon, John Bradshaw, Carlton Byrd, and more. But of all the evangelists in our denomination, The Seventh-day Adventist Church, which ones are the most important, the most vital to the growth of our church?

I’m going to give you my top four. They are…

  1. Parking Lot
  2. Groundskeeper
  3. Janitor
  4. Greeter

These three individuals & one inanimate object are far more important to the growth of your church and thus the growth of Adventism at least here in North America than any of the names I mentioned above. Why do I say that? Because these three evangelists have a weekly impact on the growth of your church that the other three do not have (unless of course one of them is your Pastor:)).

Pastor Nelson Searcy and other church growth surveyors report that churches have roughly 7 minutes from the time a guest pulls into your church parking lot to make them feel welcome and give them a compelling reason to come back. Now a lot of folk may be skeptical about that statement, but if you’re a church goer then that disqualifies you from being able to speculate on the mind of the un-churched. The un-churched don’t think like church folk or act like church folk or talk like church folk, but they are the folk we need to reach, which is why these four evangelists, parking lot, groundskeeper, janitor, and greeter are so important to the life and growth of a local church!

Let me tell you about the value of each one:

Parking Lot

Church growth studies state that if a parking lot that is more than 80% it is a deterrent to guests. When I first read this in a book by Russell Burrill I was skeptical, but I’m a pastor which makes me even less qualified than the average member in the pew to analyze the thoughts of an individual searching for a church, so I took the study to the church Elders and there in our meeting one of our Elders raised his hand. He said, “Pastor 8 years ago when my wife and I first move to the area we came to this church; we pulled into the parking lot and didn’t see many openings. The place seemed too crowded so we drove to another church in town.” They weren’t even here 7 minutes and they left. Praise the Lord they gave us another chance, they have been a great asset to our church! But we could have lost them because the evangelism of our parking lot dropped the ball! How can we help with the evangelism of the parking lot? Well first off pastors we can actually pay attention to it. One thing we did prior to moving to two services in Visalia, as our church grew, we not only paid attention to how many people were sitting in the seats but we also sent a Deacon to count the empty spots in the parking lot. When we were getting to full we began to ask our members to park elsewhere. There was a parking lot next door and we got permission to use it, we also had members park out on the street at the curb. Our church having the evangelistic heart that they do complied and our parking lot was once again ready to be an evangelist to our guests.

Groundskeeper

Are your bushes trimmed, is your lawn mowed & green, do you have flowers blooming? The first thing that people see when they pull up to your church are these things and whether we pay attention to it or not, it is noticed by guests. If you don’t believe me think about the last time you pulled up to a persons house whose yard was falling apart. Did you notice? Of course you did! Especially if you were about to go inside. In fact you probably thought in your head, “If this is what the outside of their house looks like, I wonder what the inside looks like?” We’ve all thought it (if you haven’t you may be the one with the ultra shabby yard:)). Well do you think folk pulling into a church think any different? NO! And what is one of the most important rules of evangelism? Start by focusing on the positive. What do most our main stream evangelists start their meetings with? Daniel 2. Why? Because they want folk to see the credibility of the scriptures and honestly probably the credibility of us, in that we were so “smart” to show them the meaning of Daniel 2 (sorry mild sarcasm there:)). But this is a positive message for a positive start. It is no different each Sabbath morning, we want to start things off on the positive. And the positive is a green mowed lawn, trimmed bushes, and flowers blooming. Pastors are you paying attention to the evangelism provided by your groundskeeper?

Janitor

Really this evangelist follows in the same line as the previous. If your church is unkempt and dirty you are communicating a message you don’t want to communicate. Bathrooms need to be clean! If they are like ours in Visalia (literally the worst church bathrooms ever) then you really have to go out of your way to make them as useable as possible! Papers should not be lying around, the walls should be clean, the tables at potluck should be clean. I was once speaking at a small church in the Southern parts of these here United States. I was the guest so I showed-up early that gave me the opportunity to stand in the foyer and look around while I waited for the Sabbath Schools to finish, what I noticed made me wonder how many guests came back. There was a coat rack that probably had half the coats hanging on the rack and the other half were lying in a heap on the floor. Sitting on top of the coat rack were stacks of what appeared to be old Adventist Review magazines along with other various papers. Everything just looked disheveled. We don’t get points if the outside is beautiful but the inside it is a filthy mess, either Spiritually or as a literal church structure. Your janitor evangelist is important!

sprout-330x306-300x278

Greeters

This evangelist may be the most overlooked because most people consider their church friendly. But just because we as members think our church is friendly doesn’t mean that is what your guests experience. And unfortunately what has been discovered is that members almost always rate themselves higher on the “friendly” meter than guests do. All the other 6 1/2 minutes of a guests first encounter with your church are important but the first 30 seconds that a guest steps inside your church are the most vital and will leave an impression of your church that can be very hard to shake! I’ve found within Adventism that most greeting ministries are the same. Hand-out a bulletin and be done with it. In some churches that is even an overreach of expectation. One of my associates went to preach at another church in our area, when he walked into the church foyer there was no greeter. There was a table though with a stack of bulletins. My associate greeted the table and took a bulletin :) To be a greeter is not to be a bulletin dispenser. A greeter is an evangelist! Every pastor should do training sessions with their greeters. Have a plan for how to greet and where to greet. Yes, where matters. Guests should not have to come to the greeters, I can not count how many times I have had to tap a greeter on a shoulder in a church I was visiting and ask for a bulletin. One pastor friend told me how at a church he was serving at the greeters refused to come out from behind the hospitality table, they said if the people wanted something it was clear where they needed to go. Sounds so hospitable! :) I find the greeting ministry of our church to be one of the ministries I spend the most time thinking about and praying over!

So there are your four “most important” evangelists in Adventism! From personal experience and observation I believe if a pastor will take a little more time focusing on even just these four areas, he or she will see the retention of their guests increase.

 

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October’s Top Posts:

On November 8, 2012 by Chad Stuart

Here are the top ten for the month of October. If you haven’t read/watched have a look now. Be blessed and share with a friend!

  1. Faster Pastor Episode #2 Unity in Diversity with a full month to run and the little pick-up from the blogs Spectrum & Advindicate moves up from #4 to #1.
  2. The Ordained Women Pastors of China made me cry both times I watched it!
  3. Daily Disappointment a little piece I wrote as I reflected on the great disappointment of 1844
  4. Pastor Dwight Nelson’s Sermon “A Mighty Throng of Women: A Second Look at Male Headship” our third video is #4 this month.
  5. Donkeys, Elephants, & a Lesson Learned at Chick-Fil-A last months top post remained in the top ten this month.
  6. What U2, Bon Jovi, & AC/DC Teach Us About Church I wrote this blog more than a year ago, but my readership was much less then and so I reposted it this month & I guess enough folk hadn’t read it so it made it back into my top 10.
  7. Introducing Speiro Media Ministries thankful for the many that have supported this endeavor and praying many more will jump in!
  8. I Love Dayton one of my favorite blogs I have ever written. Probaly because of the deep nostalgia associated with this city and great love I have for Ohio/the people of Ohio and all they did for me in my life!
  9. Faster Pastor Episode #3: Training Journal Apps. This one is all about running.
  10. The Pink Slip another blog I wrote almost 2 years ago that I re-released brings up the tail of the top 10 posts for the month of October.

 

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Ark Kids

On August 26, 2012 by Chad Stuart

The Greatest Evangelists of the Ark (our church plant) have been…

, , , , ,

Introducing Speiro Media Ministries

On August 10, 2012 by Chad Stuart

  • Introducing Speiro Media Ministries
What would happen if there were a healthy, vibrant, multiplying Adventist church in every city, in every county, in every state in the North American Division?

What if there was one healthy, vibrant, & multiplying Adventist church for every 10,000 individuals in the North American Division?

There would be a lot of churches!

In fact if we had one healthy, vibrant, & multipling Adventist church for every 10,000 individuals there would be 35,000 churches throughout the United States and Canada.

Some one may ask: “Why would we want that many churches?”

The simple answer would be, “Because we are called to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ & His soon coming in the context of the Three Angels Messages with all 350,000,000 persons in our Division (and beyond) Matt. 28:18-20.”

You may ask, “why 1 for every 10k?” I would encourage you to read my blog post by just said title: 1 For Every 10k, but to answer quickly and succintly studies have found that a church of 200 individuals can realisitically only have an impact on 10,000 persons.

So how are we doing with this goal, this need of 35,000 churches?

Well we are a little behind? We currenly have 5326 churches.

But wait at the top we said we are in need of 35,000 healthy, vibrant, multiplying Adventist churches in the North American Division.

Dr. Joseph Kidder in his excellent book, “The Big Four” points out that in Adventism 80% of all churches in North America are Plateauing or in decline. That means that out of the 5326 churches that we already have in existence only 1,066 of those are healthy, vibrant, multiplying churches, while 4,260 churches have stopped growing and are whithering.

Which is why we Jason Lombard–a marketing, web design, creative type–& myself–a pastor, talks a lot type–started Speiro Media Ministries.

To plant new churches & re-plant the churches that have lost their health, their vibrancy, & their ability to multiply.

Speiro Media Ministries is a ministry with a deep commitment to seeing local churches change lives for eternity, a deep belief that God will still do the impossible (even plant 30,000 Adventist churches and revive 4,260 others), and the deep conviction that as believers in Christ we have no other option than to give our lives for the salvation of others!

So how will Speiro work?

The best way to understand how Speiro will work is simply to take you through our intended process & to do that I will use a local town that has been on our radar ever since this conviction and dream began to formulate in our hearts.

Kingsburg, CA.

In Kingsburg, CA a city of 11,537 persons there is currently no Seventh-day Adventist Church. We believe this must change, so what do we do about it?

  1. We establish connections in Kingsburg through media content. How? Through direct mailing, google ads, Facebook ads, hard print ads, and various other marketing techniques. All of these things would direct people to our website. On this site people would be able to hear messages, full length & devotional length. They would be able to read blogs, sign-up for interactive Bible studies, and receive prayer support. In many ways your typical media ministry website content in a new & updated package. 
  2. When, through the analysis of data, we see that we have a decent following within Kingsburg we will then advertise & hold a series of meetings, aka public evangelism, though with a twist.
  3. The twist to these meetings is that almost simultaneously we will begin, through media provided to meeting attenders, & through short training sessions held in conjunction with the meetings train people for what it means to be part of a church. The meetings will not just be evangelistic or doctrinal, but they will be practical as well.
  4. One of the key differences with Speiro is that at the end of the meetings, rather than just baptizing and leaving, we will seek to establish a “permanent work” a church plant in the city of Kingsburg. (This of course will be done in accordance and in conjunction with the local Seventh-day Adventist Conference).
  5. Speiro to unburden the conference will initially provide resources to the local body for a Bible worker to help oversee the church as a local elder.
  6. The evangelist, right now that is me:), will continue to preach to the local body on a weekly basis. How? Through a satellite feed from the Visalia Seventh-day Adventist & or The Ark Seventh-day Adventist Church. 
  7. Continued training will continue to take place in the new church plant, and a continued proactive media presence will remain in Kingsburg to support the new believers as they take on the responsibility of reaching their family, friends, coworkers, & neighbors to grow their church.
  8. End result: A healthy, vibrant, multiplying Adventist church.

Ellen White wrote:

“In every city that is entered, a solid foundation is to be laid for permanent work.”   –Testimonies for the Church, p. 38.

We want to be faithful to that counsel! Our media ministry will not be the typical big coverage, TV, expansive meetings, famous speakers. It will follow more in the steps of the greatest church planter ever, Paul. Ours will be a missionary journey to go from city to city through modern technology seeking to establish churches that the good news of Jesus & His soon coming will be more widely spread through.

One of the other components of Speiro is helping to revitalize plateaued or dying churches. What is our intended plan to accomplish this agenda?

Well it is three fold:

  1. Quality Content–For churches that are plateaued and dead without a consistent pastor, there is often a lack of consistent, cohesive, & quality preaching.  This prevents growth in the local church, because the #1 reason given by people, even in this post-modern world, for why they choose to attend a church is the Preaching! (90%). Speiro through satellite will provide a consistent, cohesive message that was written with the knowledge of that specific church in mind. Some people ask, will people really come to see a preacher on a screen, the overwhelming answer is YES! Hundreds if not thousands of churches are utilizing this method of providing quality preaching, and sometimes even quality worship to other venues.
  2. Experienced Training–Our team will take the things we have learned in turning a plateaued church into a growing church, combine them with the things we have learned through our church plant and provide training for these churches. Simple things that won’t cost money, just a love for reaching people, and a desire to grow. The reason this training is so important is because although preaching will get people to choose your church, if we want to keep them in the church we must love them, care for them, and get them involved! If not they will eventually go out the back door.
  3. Evangelistic Support–Speiro will, like with the church plants flood the area with content, seeking to make connections, and leading them to their local church. We will also in time provide a live evangelistic series, and help offset the costs of Bible Worker that will assist with continued evangelistic growth.

In time we believe that Speiro will provide many levels of content for all people, but these two objectives will remain the consistent focus of Speiro. We are not trying to be big, we are trying to be faithful missionaries, journeying from town to town, leaving a lasting legacy in each town the Three Angels’ Messages are preached!

This missionary journey is already underway in many steps of faith, but to move forward even further we need your support! Speiro is in need of $10,000 seed money. This money will help provide the quality camera for filming and producing content (our one video thus far was filmed on an iphone:)) and the beginnings of the equipment we will need to establish a quality live stream to the churches that are already wanting to join us in this endeavor.  Would you prayerfully ask God what He may desire you to give to this ministry. Please we ask that you not give us your tithe, that should go to your local conference, through your local church, but if God is calling you to give a gift above and beyond your monthly 10% we would greatly appreciate the support.

You can give at our website Speiro, & in advance I thank you for your generosity!

(Speiro is a non-profit 501c3 and all gifts are tax-deductible).

 

, , , , , , , ,

I Can’t…

On June 23, 2012 by Chad Stuart

“I can’t”

those are the words my Dad spoke to me not more than 2 1/2 years ago. That was his response to a question I had asked him, “Dad will you do a Bible study with one of our contacts?”

“I can’t”

Let me tell you a little about my Dad, almost all of his adult life he has been a teacher. He taught in Adventist academies for about 6 years and then at Pacific Union College, Loma Linda University, & Andrews University Dayton, OH campus, & University of the Pacific. He has a degree in Education, Physical Therapy, and it seems like there may be something else. He has a Master’s degree, two in fact, and an earned Doctorate. He started a Master’s Physical Therapy program from scratch and was the director of it for 10+ years.

“I can’t”

Seemed like a pretty ridiculous answer!

And even more importantly than all the above, and really all that mattered, he was constantly telling me how much he loved Jesus and how much Jesus was blessing his life.

“I can’t”

Was then an even more unbelievable answer!

“I can’t”

Is the answer I hear a lot when I talk to folk about giving Bible studies to another individual.

I used to accept this answer as legit.

“I can’t”

I believed some people really couldn’t, I no longer believe that.

Why?

Because–

“I can’t”

Doesn’t fit at all with the promises of scripture–

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. –Matthew 28:19, 20.

“I can’t”

Really doesn’t go with, “I am with you always”

“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” –Acts 1:8

“I can’t”

Doesn’t work with, “you shall receive power”

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” –John 14:12-14

“I can’t”

Does not correlate with, “greater works than these he will do” “whatever you ask” “If you ask anything…I will do.”

“I can’t”

Does not work with John 14:26 either,

 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

So even if my Dad had zero degrees and zero teaching experience, it would seem quite silly for a man that says he loves Jesus and is blessed by Jesus to say…

“I can’t”

“I can’t”

is foolish for any of us to say.

“But it is not my gift which is why…”

“I can’t”

Knowing the Bible and sharing what you know with another person has nothing to do with gifts. Because even if you are nervous, you can have word for word what you want to say right in front of you…and yes people

“CAN”

come to Jesus this way…and they DO!

So the only way

“I can’t”

works is if that is the answer to one question, “Are you capable of caring about the eternal salvation of another human being?”

If you can say…

“I can’t”

to that, okay you’re off the hook.

But that wouldn’t go with,

“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven;” –Matthew 5:44, 45

In other words if you’re a Christian…a Jesus follower…

“I can’t”

NEVER works when it comes to sharing the truths of scripture with another human being.

So let’s be real and admit…

“I can’t”

is really

“I won’t”

and after we admit that, let’s repent of it…

And trust Jesus to help us move from…

“I can’t”

Which is…

“I won’t”

To

“I can!”

My Dad did and praise Jesus I have baptized several he has studied the Bible with.


 

, , ,

The Most Exciting Numbers!

On May 29, 2012 by Chad Stuart

I look at a lot of numbers. If you follow this blog, you know that “Church Growth” is the most tagged topic, and that naturally is about NUMBERS.

But of all the numbers I have written about I believe the numbers I am going to share with you in this blog are the most exciting thus far.

At the end of 2011 we decided to be a host site for the John Bradshaw/It Is Written evangelistic meetings being broadcast from Las Vegas.

One of our prayer warriors came to me with the idea that we get folk from in our church to pray for every single name on our membership roster and any others that we have in our “friends” list. That was a list of over 750 persons. I thought it was a great idea and so we went to our Prayer Director Kristin to see if something could be set-up. The decision was made to call folk to see if they would take a list of names to pray over.

After much calling & some emails Kristin had 7 individuals, not the number we were looking for :) ,  that agreed to take a list of names to daily pray for. So they started with praying for all our active members.

But maybe more importantly, we began to pray for more prayer warriors!

That is a prayer we knew God wanted to answer in the affirmative, and He definitely has!

Today (ALL) just shy of 800 folk connected with our church are being prayed for daily by at last check 60 prayer warriors!

We started with 7 and we asked God to send more prayer warriors and now 5 months later we have 60 folks hitting their knees daily for their church & their church family!

I believe we have seen the difference. Between the Visalia Seventh-day Adventist Church & our northside church plant The Ark we’ve had 20 baptisms, 2 Professions of Faith (so 22 new Adventists), & 7 rebaptisms. An entire family is attending our church because they were led to do so in a dream, and 12+ more are in Bible studies.

In the past those are the things we have primarily prayed for, this year, while we have still prayed for decisions for Jesus, without much forethought our primary prayers and emphasis in church have been, “Jesus give us a greater spirit for prayer.”

The numbers the conference will look at & the numbers church growth statisticians look at are nice, but I believe that all those numbers are a direct result of the most exciting number of this year–SIXTY–60 interceding on behalf of the names on their lists.

I am so thankful for those 60 and I praise the Lord for the many more He will convict to be warriors in prayer for His people and for the city of Visalia.

Where do you live? What do your prayer warriors pray for? What would happen if you started praying less for church growth and more for prayer growth? Would your church grow anyway?

“It is a part of God’s plan to grant us, in answer to the PRAYER of faith, that which he would not bestow, did we not thus ask.” –Ellen G. White, The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, p. 348.

 

 

, , , , , ,

March: Val Kilmer, Porn, Apple, & a Tiger

On April 1, 2012 by Chad Stuart

The following are the 10 most viewed posts on this blog for the month of March. Maybe you read them all and want to read again, maybe you missed a few & would like to catch-up, or maybe you’d just like to share one with a friend. And perhaps you want to leave the page now. I’m cool with any of those options :)

1. The Porn Pandemic–I woke-up earlier than I normally do one morning and felt impressed to write this blog. Wasn’t really something I planned on writing and the content wasn’t the direction I was thinking of going when I started writing it. But it turned out the way it turned out and several folk have said they appreciated the honesty. In many ways it was written as a Dad with two boys, whom prays for God’s protection over them and God to give me wisdom in how I & my wife can help Him in that endeavor.

2. Bittersweet Moving–Two of our dear church members are moving in late July and the thought of them moving and also the reflections on what I had learned from them compelled me to write this tribute to them & encouragement to pastors & young leaders to be mentored.

3. Val Kilmer & I — This was orginally a post simply for the purpose to encourage encouragement that I wrote in February. It turned into a hit in March on the internet because the web manager of the Official Facebook U.S. fan page of Val Kilmer got a hold of the post and reposted it, due to my uncanny resemblance to said actor. That ended up getting this post a lot of traffic:)

4. Childhood Friday Nights — I love music! I especially love older Christian music & it seems like many others do as well!

5. The Apple Store — I believe churches could learn a lot about “customer” service from secular businesses! This was just another example.

6. 1 For Every 10k — I love church planting, I believe it is the best avenue by which to have mass sustained evangelism! 

7. The Negativity Pandemic — I am sick of negativity!

8. Flee the Tiger — One of my members Kay Rizzo has recently published her first ebook. I was excited for her and wanted to help her get out the word.

9. Zechariah’s Beautiful Picture of the Gospel — I love Zechariah 3:1-5 and I wanted to share a couple thoughts in regards to this passage.

10. The Twitter Blessings! — I meant for this to be a compare & contrast of Facebook & Twitter with my views on why I prefer to Twitter. It turned into just a Twitter lovefest!

And those are the top 10 for the month of March & here just for good measure are the top for the first quarter of 2012:

  1. Val Kilmer & I
  2. The Porn Pandemic
  3. The One Project Analysis
  4. Bittersweet Moving
  5. Thoughts From Pastor Carlton Byrd…
  6. This Is Discipling
  7. Childhood Friday Nights
  8. The Apple Store
  9. 1 For Every 10k
  10. One of Many Goals for 2012

Hope y’all enjoy and would love your feedback!

 

 

, , , , , , , , , ,

1 For Every 10k

On March 13, 2012 by Chad Stuart

That is not a 10k race…for those runner friends out there. I am writing of 10k as in 10,000, & the 1 is representative of 1 church.

We need 1 church for every 10,000 people, to be precise we need 1 church of 200 active members for every 10,000 people. This is the conclusion many have come to, including those in the North Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Why? Well let the folks at NPUC explain:

“A typical church of 200 active members will impact a maximum of 10k people (200 members x 50 contacts = 10k if there is no overlap).”

Now let me throw in this caveat that I believe to be absolutely 100% truth, and definitely verifiable through the stories of scripture. God could reach everyone with just 1 person. I don’t know how, but He could do it. And although that is true that is not the way God seems to work. In fact He seems to work in the way we would typically think of working, at least when it comes to numbers.

More people reach more people!

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” –Matthew 9:37-38

The idea is MORE laborers MORE reaping!

So yes God could reach everyone with just 1 person, but He has chosen to use people and to call for more people to help Him in reaching everyone. Which is the very reason why the statistic above is significant. For a church to truly impact 10,000 people it must have 200 soul winners, engaged members in its midst.

In most communities where there is an Adventist church of 500 or more folk will often ask, “Why do we need another church?” It doesn’t matter if the city is 20,000, 50,000, or 100,000+. A church of 500 or more is usually quite satisfactory to folk and again people ask, “Why do we need another church?” How do I know this? Because we have recently started another church (in my mind it is a campus, but to the community it is another church) The Ark a Seventh-day Adventist Christian Church, & because there is already a significant size church in our community, The Visalia Seventh-day Adventist Church, (740 members and growing) I have heard many times, “Why  another church pastor?”

My answer is this:

Because 1 church cannot reach 125,000 people quick enough with the Adventist message (and yes I do believe in proselytizing) That is how many people there are in my city. Which would mean we need at least 12 churches of 200 soul winners to reach all 125,000+ people in our community.

What about in your community? How big is your city? Does your city have a population of 10,000 or more?

And if so…

Do you have an Adventist church? Are there 200 engaged–on fire, Jesus loving, people serving, Good News spreading–members in your church? Do you have enough churches & or enough members if your city is 20 thousand, 30 thousand, 40 thousand, 100,000, 500,000 people?

For most of you the answer will be NO!

How do I know? Because in the United States the mean size of a typical Adventist church is 215 members. That is good, except…there are only 4950 churches which in comparison to the population of the United States computes to just 1 church for every 63,267 people.

(Even if we took our total Adventist membership in the U.S. and divided it by 200 we would still only have 1 set of 200 people for every 58,900 people. Now probably wouldn’t be the right time to mention that only about half of all professed Adventists are “active” in their local churches right? Yeah that would be a much more dismal picture, so let’s at least let something be rose colored:)).

Back to our situation. In order to have 1 church for every 10k in the United States, we need 31,317 Adventist churches of at least 200 in the United States. So roughly, 26,350 more of our mean size (215) church.

So do we throw-up our hands and say impossible? Can’t be done? Do you remember that God that could reach everyone with just 1 that you were defending earlier when I was throwing-out numbers? Yes, He is still on the throne and He can very well do this! And He can very well do this through us!

Based on some quick adding and some quick math on my part. Let us state that there are about 750 churches with 300 members or more.

What if every church with at least 300 members, encouraged, taught, made a part of their culture, a membership tithe from the church. In other words if a church has 300 members they would ask 30 members to step out in faith and plant a church. If they have 400 members, 40, 500, 50…600 they plant two churches and send out two groups of 30.

What if a church such as Loma Linda University church made the decision to tithe their members. To call for 600 members to step out in faith and plant churches…what if they sent out 6 different teams of 100 to plant a church. 6 churches in 1 year. The same could be true for Pioneer Memorial Church, Pastor Dwight Nelson if he were to stand-up every year and teach every year his congregation to tithe themselves? Could they plant 3 churches of a 100 members every year? Why not? On faith they could!

Here is what I know about tithing financially. With an honest tithe I am never found in need! I believe the same would be true for our churches. If we stepped out in faith and said “we will not be satisfied with the inability to reach more people; we will not ignore the call to pray for more workers, we will actually send out more workers.”

If we were to do this, our churches would never be found wanting and the Adventist message would spread like wildfire!

Are you a Seventh-day Adventist believer? Then the above scenario is not something nice to throw around it is your calling!

“Upon ALL who believe, God has placed a burden of raising up churches.”

–Ellen G. White, Medical Ministry, p. 315


 

 

 

 

, , , , , , , , , ,

Thoughts from Pastor Carlton Byrd on Worship, Church Growth, Evangelism, etc.

On January 12, 2012 by Chad Stuart

A few months ago I attended the Pacific Union Conference Ministerial Meetings in Ontario, CA.. While there I attended a seminar by Pastor Carlton Byrd has in the very near past become the speaker/director of Breath of Life Ministries and also just recently became the new Senior Pastor of the Oakwood University Seventh-day Adventist Church in Hunstville, Alabama.

I attended the seminar because I wanted to learn from Pastor Byrd, not about preaching, which he is a great preacher, but about how wherever he has gone his churches has grown (yes I know part of that has to do with great preaching)? I believe it was last year at the church he is now transferring from Berean Church that they baptized 800 folk. Their membership is now 4077 people, they have three sevices, they have a closed circuit feed into their basement for the overflow of folk, and all of this without being attached to a Seventh-day Adventist school of higher education (in the United States our mega-churches have typically only existed next to our colleges).

So I was curious…people come to your church for great preaching, but 800 in one year don’t get baptized without first of all the Spirit of God, but secondly some intentionality.

The following are the notes I took. I didn’t edit them or pick and choose what I thought was great or not. I am simply sharing with you the thoughts I wrote down from him in this seminar.

“I’ve never had a vision for ministry I could afford; If I did, it wouldn’t be from God.”

“Do good (pardon my English) just to do good and God will bless you.”

“If worship is to contribute to the growth of your church, three things must be true:

  1. Members can’t wait to attend
  2. Members are proud to bring their friends
  3. Whoever attends is eager to attend again

“The greatest advertisement for your church is word of mouth.”

“Intentional careful selection of parking supervisors, greeters, ushers, and worship leaders must be done!”

“Don’t let people box you in!”

“Sabbath needs to be a celebration!”

“We can’t do music just to please older generation.”

“We’ve kept our hymnals but lost our children.”

“Should the church be held hostage over someone picking at the instruments? NO!”

“The Senior Pastor should be involved in decision of what songs we are going to do.”

“Singers sing, preachers preach. Don’t let your singers get up there and think they can preach a sermon or share something they think is just so wonderful. They are there to sing.”

“Don’t let your minister of music say, ‘I am running this (worship). LET’S BE CLEAR, there is ONE leader! If there were multiple leaders in Israel the children would still be slaves in Egypt. God gives the vision of the ministry to the leader and it is not a compromise of your idea and my idea.”

Evangelistic Outreach:

  1. Musical Programs & Concerts (have had major Gospel singers at their church)
  2. Block Parties (very much a city and Southern thing)
  3. Tract attack: Once a quarter each of the elders lead a group out to knock on doors and hand out literature. Seniors at the church call individuals and have prayer bands.
  4. Service oriented ministries: Health fairs, oil change ministry every Sunday
  5. Civic Initiatives: civic guests, honor community guests, clean-up of city
  6. Marketing: Television, Radio, Billboards, Internet
  7. Bible Workers

“An evangelistic cycle throughout the year with good worship, a friendly environment, and strong leadership will grow.”

“Build database from EVERYTHING done at or through your church. I have over 8,000 names in our database that are not members but have attended one of our events.”

“Send communication by Monday to every visitor within two days of their visit.”

A Bible Workers work six weeks before the evangelistic meetings:

  1. Week One: They gather one hundred names each day (2 or 3 Bible workers always). “Yes I said 100! They may not always get there, but they can get pretty close by simply knocking on doors to pray with people. And if they don’t try or I don’t see them trying, they don’t get paid. PERIOD!”
  2. Week Two: Follow-up w/ prayer interests. You’ve been praying for their requests, now you go back to check on those requests and to build further connection.
  3. Week Three: Follow-up w/ prayer interests & leave Bible Studies 1 & 2
  4. Week Four: You’ll begin to weed out folk that may not be yet ready to respond. Pick-up Bible lessons 1 & 2. Leave Bible studies 3 & 4
  5. Week Five: Pick-up studies 3 & 4 conduct some time visiting in the home w/ the Bible studies. Drop off lessons 5 & 6
  6. Week Six: Conduct home visit drop off studies 7 & 8. Invite to public evangelistic campaign.

“When folk come to our public campaigns and become interested or are baptized they are assigned a Spiritual Guardian. We don’t want to just baptize people, we also want to keep them. We don’t want people going out the back door where we wouldn’t notice, especially in our large church.”

“Singers sing & preachers preach” (seriously he said it again, must be a pet peeve)

Typical length of meetings 2 weeks 5 & 5

I always cover and usually go in this order:

  1. Salvation
  2. 2nd Coming
  3. 1000 Years
  4. State of the Dead
  5. Sabbath
  6. Sabbath Change
  7. Diet
  8. Baptism–”I make a baptism appeal and a come to Jesus appeal EVERY night!”
  9. True Church–Someone asked him about this one and whether or not he thought it was too early to cover some of these topics and this one in particular. “When I was younger I danced around it, I was a little more concerned. But look this stuff is in the Bible and this is who we are, we are the remnant and I don’t want anyone joining our church that doesn’t understand what we believe and why. And besides for a lot of these people it isn’t the first time they heard this message if they have been receiving the studies leading up to the meetings. Some of you might not like that, but that is fine. I’m old enough now (I think he is 38) to not mess around and try to be secretive about stuff.”

“I always then do some special midweek. Why? I don’t want someone that just was convicted of the Sabbath or true church or something like that to then go back to their church and be discouraged from our message. I don’t want them at their old church I want them at Berean!”

“I do two to three public campaigns a year.”

_______________________________________________________________________________

And those are my notes from Pastor Byrd. Some powerful stuff. He is a dynamic individual that beleives 100% in what he is doing and Whom he is serving!

 

 

 

, , , , , , , , ,

Facts About Christianity

On January 6, 2012 by Chad Stuart

Here is a trailer from Amazing Facts for their series “Reclaim Your Faith” I post it because it has some very interesting facts about Christianity and our great need to get out there and introduce people to JESUS in a way that truly models Him–LOVE! Are you searching for the 1?

, , , ,