Restoring the Rightful Responsibility for Evangelism

For a long time I have been puzzling as to how we can encourage the Church Body to assume the vision and responsibility for evangelism.  Much of our outreach fails because our congregations see themselves as helping the church leadership in their responsibility to evangelize.  The way I see it, those of us in leadership have a biblical mandate and imperative to reverse this unScriptural relationship.  Our task is to help the members of the church fulfill their responsibility to evangelize.

Our church, in Drogheda, Ireland, has grown to the stage where we have more worshippers than we have seats.  I worked out that, with a little creative squeezing together, we can cram another 150 seats into our worship center.  We also have about 150 families in our church.  Coincidence or Serendipity?

We launched 2007 by introducing the Empty Chair Program.  We invited every family to purchase a chair.  This is their chair – if they leave the church then they can take their chair with them!  Every family who purchased a chair also made a commitment to do everything they can this year to win someone to Christ and fill that chair.  The vision we painted was that, on the final Sunday of 2007, each family could look across the congregation and see someone that they have led to Christ sitting on a chair that they have paid for.

Take-up was pretty good.  Some families chose not to get involved, but others got excited enough to commit to purchasing and filling two or more chairs.  We got our 150 chairs – and 150 commitments to reach others for Christ.  But something much more exciting has happened – the Body has reassumed the responsibility for evangelism!  Now our people no longer see themselves as helping the leadership to evangelize – they are viewing each outreach event or initiative as the Church leaders helping them to achieve their goals.

Five weeks into the program, and our Sunday worship attendance has jumped by 60 people (an increase of 15%).  Already we are planning to go to 2 services to cope when the extra 150 chairs are filled.  This is an idea that could be adopted by many churches as a gimmick for church growth, or, much more importantly, adapted as a plan to restore the rightful responsibility for evangelism.