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VOL. 14, NO. 16

 Making the Connection

Raising evangelism IQ can spur growth

Every church can grow spiritually and numerically. Thats what our bishop told participants at the School of Congregational Development last month, and thats what he writes in a letter to Baltimore-Washington Conference churches. What an audacious statement, one that overlooks, or looks beyond, the challenges to growth that many churches face, including aging memberships and leaders unprepared or uninspired to make evangelism and disciple-making a priority.

But what does it mean? It means growth in membership and worship attendance, growth in ministries of worship, outreach, discipleship and stewardship. It also means personal growth among members who learn to practice spiritual disciplines, fortify their faith and strive to emulate the life of Jesus Christ.

Can that happen anywhere, in any church? Yes, when the right ingredients and attitudes are in place.

After attending the School, I journeyed to the Louisiana Conference to observe a daylong training event on the second step of the Igniting Ministry initiative, which promises to help churches move to the next level in developing a welcoming lifestyle. Again the ideas flowed forth, along with success stories from churches that had used what they learned in the first-step training.

At our conferences Sept. 20 Igniting Ministry training, at North Bethesda UMC, we, too, will share ideas, challenges and success stories, while revisiting the first-step principles of using advertising media and evangelism strategies to attract church visitors. Well also preview the second-step training and the valuable new resource, Beyond 30 Seconds: Developing a Welcoming Congregation. Then well follow with a more in-depth second-step training early in 2004.

We hope your church will send a team to this months training and purchase Beyond 30 Seconds (a reference to going beyond the 30-second Igniting Ministry TV ads, which will air again this fall). You can visit www.ignitingministry.org or call, toll-free, 877-281-6535.

Clearly, theres no shortage of ideas and resources to help stimulate church growth. We must only summon the determination, faithfulness and intelligence to seek them out and use those that best fit our various situations. You might call it a new kind of IQ, an Invitational Quotient that measures ones aptitude or instincts for evangelism and hospitality.

Of course, being invitational means more than merely inviting people to church. It means inviting them into our open hearts and minds, into the lives of our congregations. It means welcoming them in ways that will inspire them to return again and again.

Igniting Ministry resources and training can help individuals and churches refine their welcoming instincts and raise their IQ. But our conference will host other learning opportunities as well in the coming months. You can learn more about them in UMConnection, e-connection and on the conference Web site. For example:

• The Board of Evangelization will sponsor three Home for Christmas training events on Sept. 13, 20 and 27 to prepare congregations for inviting visitors to Christmas Eve services, the time when, research shows, unchurched people seem most interested in attending a church.
• Share Life, Share Faith, Good News in Action, the boards 2003 convocation on Nov. 22, will involve local laity and clergy in teaching their own principles and proven methods of evangelization and faith-sharing.
• The Board of Congregational Life opens its third season of the groundbreaking Academy for Initiatives in September, offering local church leadership teams monthly instruction in ministry and church development trends and tactics.

Of course, there will be evangelism and discipleship classes during Leadership Days in January, and learning and faith-sharing experiences at FaithFest for adults in February and ROCK for youth in January. Moreover, the General Board of Discipleship and the United Methodist Publishing House will bring Connecting: Making God Real in a Fragmented World, an evangelism and discipleship training event, to our conference March 26-28, 2004, at First UMC in Hyattsville.

The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, according to the United Methodist Book of Discipline, 120. That means avidly inviting and welcoming others into our family of faith at every opportunity. Far from seeing our churches as ours alone, we are called to exemplify the words of William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who said, The church is the only organization in the world that exists for its non-members.

If we can be so bold and selfless as to believe that, then we may yet see the truth of Bishop Mays claim with our own eyes: Every church really can grow.