What’s Your Evangelism Strategy?
My wife, Amy, and I have been involved in ministry on council estates in the North West of England for the last twenty years. We have a calling and passion to see churches established in our council estates, to see people from these communities commit their lives to Jesus, and to see local leadership grown.
In our last church plant, Oldham Church, a friend once asked me what our evangelism strategy was? I remember thinking, “Lord, what’s our evangelism strategy cos I don’t think we have one.” We had seen a handful of local people give their lives to Jesus and a bunch of people on the edge of church looking in. Did we have a strategy? We certainly had a passion and a calling to see local people give their lives to Jesus, but a strategy?
The following week I sensed the Holy Spirit lead me to chapter 6 of John’s gospel. In verse 44 Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
I began to reflect on the idea that at any moment, in any place there might be someone the Father is drawing to Jesus. That means my job is to ask the Father whether the person on my street, the person I meet in my local park, that colleague, that family member is being drawn to Jesus. Once I discern the answer to that question, I can determine my response. If they are being drawn, they need feeding with the gospel of Jesus and the Christian faith. If they are not being drawn at that time, my job is to simply love and serve them as my neighbour. I began to experience a deep sense of release and empowerment.
“It turns out our evangelism strategy is simply to ask, “Who’s next?””
Here’s one example. A local guy called Sean in our church had given his life to Jesus, been baptised and had started to realign his life to Christ. We started to talk about our ‘new’ evangelism strategy in church. We challenged each other to ask the Lord, “who’s next?” Sean told me that one of the people on his list was his friend Jamie who most certainly wasn’t a Christian and, in Jamie’s own words, was very lost. Sean and the church family began to pray for Jamie. One night at 2 am Sean messaged me saying: “Jesus has got our Jamie.” Over the following few months, Jamie gave his life to Jesus and was baptised and then moved into a Christian discipleship house called the Oaks, part of The Message Trust. This month, Jamie and his fiancé Danielle are getting married—two beautiful new followers of Jesus committing their lives to each other and to Him.
Have you’ve made evangelism more complicated than it is? Maybe evangelism feels beyond you because of the scale of the task. Maybe it’s become so alien and unfamiliar in these disconnected and unfamiliar times. Maybe, then, you need to allow God to renew your thinking when it comes to evangelism—it is His job to draw people to Jesus, and our job to discern who they are and, if they’re not being drawn, to love and serve them, if they are being drawn, feed them with the gospel.
Who’s next?
Rev Ben Woodfield
Ben is a Church of England Planter Priest and Co-leader of the Antioch Network in the diocese of Manchester. Ben has a calling and passion to see church established in our council estates and inner cities, to see people from these communities commit their lives to Jesus, and to see local leadership grown.
He, his wife Amy and their 3 children live on the Breightmet estate in Bolton where they lead a new church plant.
