MAY I ASK YOU A QUESTION?

 

"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4:19.

Hello Friends:

Welcome to the Soulwinnersr.us website. I entitled my post today, "May I Ask You a Question?” After last week discussing thoughts about the possibility of church analytics, I was excited this week when some gospel tracts from EvanTell.org. arrived in the mail.

I was in sort of a lull with introducing Jesus to people. Remember the teaching by Dr. Larry Moyer, the EvanTell Founder, that the goal is to “introduce Jesus to people, and not introduce people to Jesus”. I know that it seems a little bit nitpicky and trite, but Dr. Moyer’s point is that if we introduce Jesus to people it takes the pressure off the introducer to feel responsible for the outcome. The introducer’s job is to plant the seed.

After the introduction of Jesus to another person, it’s then the Holy Spirit’s job to nurture the planted seed and to make it grow. You can use a farmer as an example. All he does is till, fertilize, and introduce the seed into the ground. Then it’s up to nature to take its course, with perhaps some watering along the way.

Paul explained the process in 1 Corinthians 3:6. He said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Other verses in the Bible talk about harvesting the crop after it grows to maturity, but I’ll save that topic for another day.

I had been using my homemade Roman Road tracts to give to people, but I had stopped giving them out and talking to people about them. But, I really liked the EvanTell.org “May I Ask You a Question?” approach that I learned in the Dallas Theological Seminary classes, but it took me some time to decide to buy the tracts associated with them to introduce Jesus to people.

Dr. Moyer stated three steps in the seminary classes to use before using the tract.

• Step 1: Plow and Pursue: Discuss jobs, families or backgrounds.
• Step 2: Free Up, Don’t Freeze Up: A method of talking about Jesus to other people “frees us up, it doesn’t freeze us up.”
• Step 3: Secular to Spiritual Focus: You then use a tract like, “May I Ask You A Question?”

You ask; "Has anyone ever shown you from the Bible how you can know for sure you are going to heaven?"

• “The Bible contains both “bad news and good news.”
• “The bad news is something about YOU.”
• “The good news is something about GOD.”
• “The bad news has two statements, two verses, and two illustrations.”

• Statement 1: “We’re all sinners.”
• Verse 1: Romans 3:23. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Note: Sinned means we have missed the mark and the standard God has set.)
• Illustration 1: "Rock." “Two of us might throw a rock at the north pole. You might throw it further than me, but we will both miss the goal. In the same way we all fall short of God’s standard of perfection.”

“But the bad news gets worse.”

• Statement 2: "The penalty for sin is death.”
• Verse 2: Romans 6:23. “For the wages of sin is death.”
• Illustration 2: “Wages”. “If I work a certain amount of time I'm paid a wage, of perhaps $50. It's what is owed to me. A wage is something we earn for our deeds. The Bible declares we all have earned the wages of death because of our sin, and not just a physical death, but a spiritual death separated from God forever.”

“But God made a way for us to live and be with him forever.”

• “The good news also has two statements, two verses, and two illustrations.”

• Statement 1: “Christ died for you.”
• Verse 1: Romans 5:8. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
• Illustration 1: “Cancer”. "If someone said they will take on your cancer cells to save your life, what will happen? They will die and you will live. They die in your place. That’s what Jesus did for us."

“Just as the bad news got worse, the good news gets better.”

• Statement 2: "You can be saved through faith in Christ."
• Verse 2: Ephesians 2:8-9. “For by grace (underserved favor) you have been saved (delivered from sin’s penalty) through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
• Illustration 2: “Chair”. "Just as you trust a chair to hold you up while providing no effort of your own, so you must trust Christ alone to get to heaven through no effort of your own. Any good thing you might do can't get you to heaven. It's through Christ alone."

You might say, “I’m religious”, or “I go to church”, or “I’m a good person”, or “I help the poor”, or “I don’t do anything that’s really bad”. "These are all good, but doing these things or any other good thing can’t get you to heaven. You must trust in Jesus Christ alone, and God will give you eternal life as a gift.”

“Is there anything keeping you from trusting Christ right now?” If there is nothing invite the person to pray, but tell them, “It’s not the prayer that saves you, prayer is simply telling God what you have done.”

The prayer is very direct: “Dear God, I know I’m a sinner. I know my sin deserves to be punished. I believe that Christ died for my sins and rose from the dead (10 simple words explaining the Gospel). I trust Jesus Christ alone as my Savior. Thank You for the forgiveness and everlasting life I now have. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

What do you think? I think that the “May I Ask You A Question?” tract might be helpful to me, and perhaps to you . . . as you introduce Jesus to people.

See you next time,
Arlen

HOW ABOUT CHURCH ANALYTICS?

 

"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Matthew 4:19.

Hello Friends:

Welcome to the Soulwinnersr.us website. I entitled my post today, "How About Church Analytics?” With this post I’m going away from my normal direct evangelism emphasis to an indirect evangelism emphasis.

Analytics have become a large part of our lives. Professional and college sports have embraced statistics to make calculated analytical decisions. They go against the grain of old-school coaches and front office workers making decisions based on “gut feelings”.

Whether we like it or not, analytics also plays a large role in marketing on all types of media. Being a senior citizen now I’m totally tired of hundreds of Medicare ads, phone calls, and mailings. Medicare companies spend millions of dollars for these ads based on the fact that analytics has told them they will get a certain “bang for their buck”.

So, I’m posing the question whether there should be “church analytics”. I’m half-joking and half-serious in posing my query about this. I’m half-joking because I know that church leaders, and even members, would likely never embrace such an outlier activity, and they would likely say that the Holy Spirit is their only guide.

But I’m also half-serious because I think the way churches are run perhaps might benefit from a motivation to improve their decision-making processes, that they not just rely on “gut-feelings”. I think it would also help a seeker to have a better chance of finding a good church home.

I’m not speaking about seeker-sensitive decisions here. I’ve been in churches where these decisions led to a watering down of the gospel message, perhaps focusing on aesthetics rather than substance.

If analytics were to be used in evaluating churches and church decision-making, what would be some important criteria or statistics to use?

Following are some criteria that I think might be important if there were rankings, perhaps on a 1-10 scale:

1. Love: Churches are ranked how many times leadership in each month states the importance of the verses, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”, and, “your neighbor as yourself.” All church decisions are made with these verses as a guide.
2. Evangelism: Churches are ranked how many times leadership in each month states the importance of the verses, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations”, and, “you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Churches would also be ranked how many evangelism classes they have each year. All church decisions, especially evangelism efforts, are made with the thought whether the decision will bolster or hinder the church’s role in fulfilling The Great Commission.
3. Discipleship: Churches are ranked how many classes and/or individual sessions they have each month to teach disciples, including newly converted disciples and older ones. Churches don’t only focus on Sunday morning sermons as the vehicle for discipleship.
4. Church Member Community: Churches are ranked how many times each month leadership and members visit church members outside the church building. Extra points are given if the pastor, leaders, and members that are visiting other members live in the local community.
5. Local Community: Churches are ranked how many visits leadership and members make to local community people and events. Extra points are given if the pastor, leaders, and members that visit the local community and events live in the local community.
6. God’s Word: Churches are ranked by the evidence that the pastor deeply loves God’s Word, teaches it very fluently, and doesn’t compromise it.
7. Addressing Issues: Churches are ranked by evidence that the pastor and leadership only address member shortcomings when there is evidence of open sin, open resistance, or open laziness in doing the work of the church.

There you have it. What do you think about church analytics? Do you think they will ever be in our future? And do you think they would be helpful for a seeker to find a good church?

See you next time,
Arlen