We have just finished having an evangelism seminar, a seminar which
I guess I need to stand over here.
I forgot I'm not mic'd up.
It's one of those days for me, I guess.
We had an amazing seminar.
Rob came and gave us a lot of information, and it was a lot of information, but it's a lot of useful, good information.
Rob did a great way of explaining exactly what we're going to need to be doing from contacts to a growing church.
When I first saw this, he described it as a pipeline in several different ways.
I couldn't help but think of the life cycle of a frog.
You have the eggs, then they hatch into tadpoles.
The tadpoles swim around for a while, eventually become frogs, and so on and so forth until you're back to the eggs.
It's kind of the same thing.
And I can't help but think that his model is a life cycle for our congregation.
We have to change
our way of looking at things.
We have to be able to know what we're doing, all the different steps involved, and I know it's a lot, but the plan tonight is to break this down into small little pieces.
This evening we're going to review.
So I'm not giving you anything new that we haven't heard from Rob unless you missed the seminar, in which case this is a good explanation for you to hear, but we're going to go a
bird's-eye view one last time over the evangelism model and all the different steps.
90 % of our work is going to be in the contact phase.
The contacts are how we get the people that we're going to reach out to.
Unless we have people to reach out to, we can't evangelize.
There's a lot of different steps in this.
And we're gonna break down each one, and I'm gonna have to, because it's so small on the screen, I'm gonna have to bring it up here so I can see it.
In the contacts, we have what Rob calls contact lists, visitors, new movers, door knocking, community outreach, and congregational activities.
Now, every one of you tonight, at some point, will receive these.
Yeah, you can go ahead and hand them out.
I should have told them to do that earlier.
But.
We're gonna have them go around right now and give you guys this little card, just a little postcard that you can keep on you, keep in your Bible, and this is going to explain
the congregational model.
So we're gonna go from the contacts to the prospects, the Bible studies, the baptisms, the new converts, and the growing church, which comes around full cycle to getting more
contacts.
Now Rob likes to say that it is quantity over quality, and he's right.
We always hear quality.
over quantity.
Yeah, I said it right.
We always hear quality over quantity, but in this case we want more contacts.
The more people we can reach out to, then the more people we're going to get to become new Christians.
It's going to take a lot of them, so this is one of those rare instances where it's quantity over quality.
If you look at your list, we're going to go through it a little bit at a time, we're going to look at target lists.
This is how we're going to start out with
Everyone should also be getting one of these School of Evangelism bookmarks.
This bookmark needs to stay in your Bible, stay in your portfolio, whatever it is that you carry around with you each day.
If you're a woman, if you have a purse, this is a great thing to keep on you.
Our assignment for this next week, next Sunday, is I want 10 names of people who need prayers, people you know, people you might have studied with, people that you would like
to study with and reach out to.
We can all write down 10 names.
And if you can't think of them off the top of your head, just go down through your contacts list.
We all have cell phones full of them.
I probably have 500 that I don't have photos for.
There are tons of people that we can reach out to.
But we're going to put 10 names on this card by next week.
And on the back, it'll even show you the categories of the people that need to be here.
These will eventually move from the contact list to the congregational list for prospecting.
Now eventually we're probably going to rename the prospect category.
We were talking a little bit about it and maybe calling it Collierville cares.
That way we can care for those people, but we're looking for visitors, airing brethren that haven't been here for awhile, people moving into the area, and we're actually going
to be getting those metrics as well.
So what Rob has set up for us is he's calmed down and he has purchased.
all the information for new movers for the past several months.
And we're going to keep receiving this information so that we can reach out into the community of people recently coming into Collierville.
We're going to reach out to them.
We're going to go give them a basket, just welcoming them into the neighborhood.
And we're to get them hopefully interested in the church.
Nobody hates getting a gift at their front door.
When we first moved into the apartments for MSOP, all the wives had come together and we got this nice little basket with
some cleaning supplies, a couple of little snacks, things like that, is a really good welcome gift full of things that you may or may not have thought of when you're moving.
And so that's what we're going to try to do.
We want people that are sick.
We want scheduled for surgery.
Those recovering from surgery, we have those on our list.
We have cancer, those dealing with therapy, loss of loved one, newly married, birth of child, graduation, new job.
lost job, depression, the list goes on and on.
But one thing that you're gonna notice is a lot of these are life events.
From moving to having a baby, they're all having something large happening in their life, something changing.
We want to be there for our visitors and the people in the community for this.
This is a community outreach event kind of thing.
Because our goal is to reach the community and get them in here.
There's a lot of steps.
There's a lot of stuff that I'm going to repeat tonight over and over and over again, but it's because it needs to stick.
We've got to be practicing this.
But we're going to do it slowly over the next couple months, and we're going to put everything into place piece by piece.
Again, it seems like a lot.
You thought it was a lot listening to Rob?
You should try reading this stuff.
Because I sat down for over 15 hours this week, and I just read through the material.
And it's all the stuff Rob said, and he's a great speaker.
He got us all revved up for getting through evangelism training and getting us out into the community.
But we've got to take it slow.
Again, like you said, how do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
You're not going to eat the whole trunk in one go.
So we're going to do this.
So again, you have the contact.
This is personal.
This School of Evangelism bookmark is what I'm going to call it.
This needs to be your best friend over the next several months.
Get used to always having one of these.
And when you scratch someone off the list, we're going to have a table in the back.
It's an evangelism table where you can get more of these.
I want you to refill it.
If you can get a list of 20 people, 30 people, even better.
We want to have these lists filled.
So don't think that you're done once we have just 10 lists, because each week we're gonna take one to two people off your private list, and this is just yours.
I don't need to see this, your neighbor doesn't need to see this, this is just you.
We're gonna go through and we're gonna go down the line slowly, and we're gonna look for people that are dealing with surgery, those maybe who've lost a loved one.
And we're gonna take those people off the list and slowly move them over onto our contact card.
Once we've got them on the contact card, the coordinators can go through these and we can start sending them cards.
We can reach out to them.
We can't take, if everybody in here has 10 people and we have 35 total members, just throwing a number off the top of my head, that's 350 cards.
We can't do that day one.
That's not feasible.
We're going to get there and we're going to do it together, but it's going to take a while to get it all set up.
The contact cards are transfers of a personal contact.
So your personal contact will go over onto the contact card, and it doesn't have to all be filled out.
You see here we've got first name, last name, phone, email, location for study, date contacted.
You don't have to worry about all that.
Today, I even put it into practice.
We had a couple of visitors.
I know they were members here at Collierville once before, but I just wanted to see how I could do it.
So I walked over, introduced myself again.
We hadn't talked much previously.
But just through conversation, I was able to get names, I was able to get birthdays, I was able to get phone numbers, I was able to get a mailing address, because come to find out,
her birthday is next Tuesday.
That was Lindsay.
Was it Lindsay?
I think Lindsay, yeah.
And then her husband, his birthday, Ashley.
Ashley, that's it.
Ashley, I don't have it in front of me.
I've got the slides up in front of me.
Ashley's birthday is next Tuesday.
Their anniversary together is Wednesday.
And his birthday is Thursday of next week.
So we have three opportunities with one family to send them a card.
And when they said that, obviously I said, happy birthday.
you know what?
Let's practice.
You know, we're a congregation.
We love to send cards.
Do you mind if we send you a card?
yeah, that'd be fine.
It just fell into place.
It wasn't hard.
All you do is ask.
I don't know of anybody that would say, no, don't send me a card.
Don't send me a happy birthday card.
So we're going to do that.
I've already written down all their information and we're going to send them a card.
I'm not saying we're going to send three.
In this rare instance, we may send three cards in one just to save on the postage.
But we have the opportunity now and all it does is take them there.
Is take you going over and saying hello to them.
Just asking them for their information, getting to know something about them.
We were laughing because they had two small children and we've got one on the way.
We invited them, hey, you know what, we're gonna have to have them over as soon as our little one, well, not as soon as he's born, but we're gonna have a play date.
They should come over to the house and get to know each other.
I think we got three little best friends going right now and they don't even know it yet.
You know, that makes them happy.
It makes them smile.
The important part is we're not going to be asking them anymore to fill out the cards on the back of the pew.
It doesn't work.
I don't even like to fill them out.
We need to be talking to them.
We need to be engaging with them.
We need to get to know them on a personal level.
Evangelism doesn't work unless you show a genuine interest in the people that are here.
We have to show them that we love them, and it's far easier to get that information than crossing our fingers that they pulled a little card out of the back of the pew and handed
in at the end of service, or when the basket gets passed around, which we don't pass the basket around.
So we have to search the pews after.
Eventually we're going to take these contacts from the contact cards and we're going to put them into...
Man, it's so small.
We're gonna put them onto the congregational contact list.
These are the ones that will be getting not only the cards, but we're gonna try to reach out to in a personal manner, maybe go to their door, invite them to come to service, take
them out to lunch, things like that.
Outside in the foyer, by next week, we're going to have the evangelism table.
This is where you're going to see all the literature that we have.
You're gonna see these training cards that go over and have all the stuff on there.
You can get these guys, we'll have back to the Bibles, believe the Bibles, everything's going to be out there, and we'll even have framed up the posters of our congregational
model, of the pipeline, or our new circle of life, as I like to think about it.
Because life keeps moving, and we've got to keep moving, too.
We don't have to move fast, just one step at a time.
As long as we are all working together and we can push towards the goal, we're going to get it done.
As Aaron said, I believe we can do this.
If there's a congregation in the world
that can evangelize and grow their numbers, it's us.
Because I know each and every one of you has a heart of gold.
You guys love visitors and love people more than I've ever seen a congregation, even ones that I've visited.
We just need to know how to show it.
So the goal for visitors, they're going to come in, and I know that it's so small, but we're going to identify and we're going to greet them.
By greeting them, we're going to get their information.
We're going to give them a gift bag.
We're going to have the gift bags on the table or next to the table or somewhere in the building.
We haven't decided that yet, but it's going to be available to all members.
They are not going to be behind a locked door.
This way, when a new visitor comes in, you meet them, you greet them, we can give them a gift bag.
It's something very nice, gets a smile in their hand.
Through talking with them, we can fill out the contact card.
You can sit there.
I sat there today and wrote down their information as they talked to me.
It didn't bother them at all.
In fact, we even joked about it whenever I pulled out my iPad and I'm like, here, me write down your name just so I know I don't forget it because I'm notorious for it.
And then eventually we'll move them over onto the prospect list.
It seems like a whole lot until you start.
putting it into bite-sized chunks, and then you realize when looking at the individual pieces of, okay, I can do that.
All right, I can do that.
It's like building a Lego set.
You look at the one piece of direction.
You don't go to page four before you've done page one of your Lego set.
You've got to build the base model first, right?
The boys know more about the Legos.
Next we have Heart to Heart.
We're gonna be able to send this out.
This is a new publication.
He's going to help us get this out to the community.
House to House Heart to Heart has a publication that will be completely, what's the word, customized for this congregation.
So it's gonna have our information on it, our visitation times, link to the website and all that, and we're gonna send that out as well.
Aaron, I think the slides keep getting smaller and smaller.
Our goal is introduce, inform, gain interest, and to invite.
When people come in, we can introduce them.
We can ask them, along with asking them if they want to go to lunch and everything, over the period of time, we can ask them, do you receive house to house, heart to heart?
Have you ever heard of it?
well, I actually happen to have a copy of it right here.
It's great.
There's something good in here.
But it gets our information in their hand.
I'm not sure if we're going to be putting those in the visitor bags or not.
or just mailing them out or giving them out by hand, but we're going to get them in their hands one way or the other.
New movers, again, we're going to get those list of new movers.
We have addresses, we have times of when they moved.
I believe we get the names too of the people that move in.
So we even have their names, we know if they're a family, if they're a single, we get all that information from the metrics.
So when we go, we've done our research, we've done our homework, we know who we're talking to.
And whether it is in an area that says, you know, no soliciting, that's fine.
We're not soliciting.
We're just welcoming our neighbor.
The whole goal of going to the new movers and meeting with them is just to meet them, just to welcome them into the neighborhood, give them the gift basket, let them know that we
are here and that I promise you, we will be the only church that walks up to their door, knocks on that door and gives them a gift.
I think that...
puts our foot in the door way further than anything else that we can do for new movers.
People in the new community, know, back when, you know, and a lot of people, a lot of Christians nowadays still do it.
When we move, typically we try to have a place planned that we're going to go to worship for.
You plan that ahead of time.
You visit around at the congregations and find your new home congregation before you move.
The world's not like that anymore, especially the non-denominational world.
When they move, they have no idea where they're going.
Typically, it's a flavor of the week kind of thing.
They're gonna find wherever they feel most welcome.
Why don't we beat them to the punch this time?
Why don't we go to their front door, give them a gift, welcome them in the neighborhood and say, hey, if you're looking for a place to worship, we're right down the road.
We've got you.
We've shown interest, we've shown care, we've shown love, and we can get them to come.
New movers, again, it's the same thing.
Introduce, inform them with a new mover postcard.
We're gonna give them the new mover basket and we're gonna invite them to come to church with us.
That's it.
We're gonna be friendly to them.
Door knocking reinvented is what Rob calls it.
It's different from normal door knocking.
Now if you've ever been on a door knocking campaign, who's ever been on a door knocking campaign?
Let's raise our hands.
Okay, so quite a few of us, but not all of us have.
It's kind of like cold calling if you've ever worked at a call center.
It's hard stuff.
You have no idea who's gonna open up that door.
You have no idea what the reaction is going to be.
It works.
In so many parts of the world, door knocking works.
Our society now, door knocking doesn't seem to be working nearly as well as it used to.
It just doesn't.
We have a society set up that's based on separation.
Who are you or why are you at my door?
Are you here to axe murder me?
I don't know you.
Why are you here?
It's a little different when they've just moved into the area and you're carrying a basket of gifts and say, look, we're just welcoming you to the area.
That's a whole lot different than walking up and inviting somebody to the gospel meeting or to the seminar.
Hey, we're running this seminar.
Okay, well, I didn't ask for that.
It's basically soliciting.
Now, I know soliciting by the letter of the law is trying to sell something and we're not selling, we're giving away, but that's how they look at it.
We've got to be able to know who we're gonna help.
We need to go to them and inform them how we are going to help them.
We need to show them that our purpose is there to help them and be kind and loving.
And then the goal is to show them why we help.
So if we can get them in the building, we've basically won them at that point.
It's game over.
We're gonna get their information.
We're gonna ask them out for lunch.
We're gonna get the Bible study.
It's all a ripple effect and it all starts with the contacts.
It all starts with the door knock and the new movers.
It all starts with asking those prepping questions of, I can't help but notice I haven't seen you here before.
What's your name?
you got a cute little child there.
Just what I did this afternoon, just for practice.
And I did that on purpose because I saw the opportunity and I wanted to show that it works.
invitation cards will be in the baskets.
I'm getting behind on my slides here.
Actually, his slides are different on, interesting.
Okay, so it's good that we have VBS, it's good that we have trunk retreats, it's good that we have benevolence, it's good that we have graduation banquets.
He's not saying, and I'm not saying that these are bad things, these are good things.
But what's the purpose behind doing them?
We've gotta make sure that our purpose for anything that we do from here on out is strictly for evangelism, getting people to come.
What is the Great Commission?
To seek and save the lost, right?
That's what we're supposed to be doing.
It's great that we have a VBS.
It's great that we have a trunk retreat.
But if we're going to have the trunk retreat, we need to figure out how to invite people from the community.
How do we get more people that we don't know than people than we do know?
These are not private shindigs anymore.
They don't need to be.
We need to have people from the community here and we need to evangelize with them.
We need to show them what God's love is for them.
We need to inform them.
We need to show them the purpose.
And again, we need to show them the goal.
It's the same thing.
Again, I know I feel like I'm up here feeling like I'm repeating myself.
You guys who have been to the seminar have seen this, but it's very important.
Every section of this is incredibly crucial, and we're gonna be setting all this up over the next several weeks to months.
Greeting cards.
When we send out the greeting cards to our prospects, I've lost it on here, I'm just gonna go by the slides.
We're gonna send these out for three to four weeks, and they're gonna get,
one greeting card a day.
So when we have a visitor that comes, we're gonna take them out to lunch, we'll talk to them, great.
When they go home, the next day or two, they're gonna receive a card.
The day after that, they're gonna receive a card.
And we're going to keep doing this for three to four weeks.
He suggests at least doing this for 10 prospects at a time and mail them out evenly.
Put them in the mail every day, one letter.
It's gonna take legwork.
It's not easy.
having to write a letter, sign it, envelope it, put it in the mail, stamp it, and send it off.
Does anybody else get tired of getting junk mail in their mail?
I know I do.
Back in the day, I used to take the junk and I'd send it back to them.
I'd tear it off, I'd leave my name on there, and they always had the little prepaid envelope.
I'd shove it back in the envelope, I'd leave my name on it, and I'd send it back and let them throw their own trash away.
It's totally different, though, when every single day you're getting a card that says, hey, we miss you.
Hey, thanks for coming to our congregation.
It was great speaking to you.
I really hope.
insert line about their family that they told you.
know, hoping and praying that your little one is still doing well.
We can't wait to see her again.
He's there encouraging.
This is great.
Rob goes to people and he sees them literally lining them up on their mantle place.
And then whenever we go to door knock later on and we follow up with them, they go and show them, you guys are the ones that are sending me all these cards.
You you guys came with a new mover basket too a few weeks back.
Four weeks of cards.
a basket with things I needed when I moved, a constant invitation to go out to eat with us, who wouldn't be happy about that?
That's how we get them in the door.
That's how we open up their hearts to a Bible study.
We got to contact.
We got to show them the example that has been set forth, and we have to show them our hearts and compassion towards them.
Another thing we do with prosthetics, we always eat.
He said over and over and over again during the seminar, we have a tradition here that when a new visitor comes in that door, we take you out to eat.
Don't worry about paying, we're gonna take you and your whole family out to eat.
This tradition starts today.
Today, for everyone in here, when we get a visitor in, we invite them to go eat.
If they wanna come over to the house and get homemade cooking, great.
If they don't, take them to a restaurant.
First time's probably better to ask them to a restaurant, that way you're on even ground, public place.
We've gotta invite them out to eat, no one's gonna say no.
But what's better, to have the five minute conversation on the back row with them or as they're walking out the door, or gain an extra hour and a half with them at Chili's and
sit down and open up their hearts and get to know them?
You can get way more data that way.
We can show them how much we care so much more that way by spending time with them.
If we're not willing to spend time with them and getting to know them, why on earth would they want to spend time and get to know us?
It's a give-give relationship.
We've got to be the first ones to give.
We've got to involve them.
We have to investigate them.
And then we have to invest in them.
They're not going to invest time and especially not their hearts if we're not invested in them.
We need to become genuinely interested in what they're about.
And I'm going to tell you right now, sports are not my thing.
Go sports ball.
But I'm telling you, if I have no other way to talk to someone and get to know them, I will learn about sports.
I will ask about the teams.
I will be inquisitive.
And you know what?
What better teacher than them?
If they love it and they want to talk about it, and I promise they'll talk about it.
They'll teach me.
And that gets almost a teacher-student relationship at that point.
They'll be happy about it.
They'll be smiling about it.
Whatever it is, wood carving, mechanic work, sports, we need to show interest.
One of the best speakers out there isn't a speaker, but one who listens.
The more we listen to them, the more we can learn.
And some of the best conversations I've had throughout my life are ones where, and I'm bad at this sometimes, I'm just as bad, I like to talk.
Don't nod your head, Jacob.
He goes, yeah.
Some of the best conversations I've had is when I've just kept my mouth shut and just asked questions about them.
Everyone,
loves to talk about themselves.
And me growing up, I wanted to talk to my parents about everything that happened in my life.
I wanted to share that with my friends now, even today.
I'm itching for that.
communication, that connection with other people, and I know they are out in the world too.
Why would we deprive them of that connection by talking about ourselves when we can just sit and listen?
We can be an ear for them and an outlet, and that's going to endear them to us.
Love thy neighbor, what?
Love thyself.
If I feel that way and I want to share parts of my life with people to show that I care,
Wouldn't they also?
Of course they would.
Home is where you find it.
Home hosts.
Now he showed this picture and one of the things that he brought to attention was that every member in there used to be of a different denomination.
You had Muslim, you had Catholic, you had Protestant, you had...
insert denomination there.
But everyone in the home in this picture are all Christians.
They were all baptized and changed because they were invited out to eat.
were invited into the home, they came and visited.
It works because they got involved with the people.
They learned to love them.
They took time to learn about them, and they taught them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The whole purpose of this isn't the opening statement—let me say this—the opening statement is to get to know them, because once we get to know them, they will naturally
want to get to know us.
They'll want to know why such an interest.
Why do you care?
No one else in the world asks me all these questions and takes me out to eat and sends me postcards every single day for four weeks at a time.
Why do you care so much?
You guys know what Rob would answer, right?
I happen to have these three little booklets.
The whole point is to point them towards the cross.
Why do I care?
Because Christ first cared for me.
And I was eventually, I was started out in the same position wondering why.
Why did my God come to earth?
Why did he become a man?
Why did he suffer on that cross and die for me, a lowly sinner?
Because he cared and I can love because Christ first loved me.
That's the whole point is driving them to the cross.
And we're not going to do that without doing it in steps.
Christ did it.
The apostles did it.
He always showed care and love for them.
and taught them the gospel.
eventually we'll get Bible studies because they're going to want to know more.
They're going to be asking, why do you care?
Well, because of these three little booklets which point us back to the Bible and back to the cross.
We're going to have these on the evangelism table.
It will look somewhat different than what we have in the picture here.
We're either going to set it up in the back of the foyer underneath the, as you're exiting, the right coat rack or more than likely probably right on the corner there where
we currently have the the donation table.
for the children's home.
We may scoot that down a bit, we all know where that's at, but that gives us a nice central location and that way the sunlight too won't fade all of the paperwork that are
there sitting on the table.
Which, I'm just gonna say, even if we do put it in that table, I better not see any fading on that paperwork.
I want that stuff to be used, it needs to be utilized.
If it sits there so long that the words are starting to get hard to see and the colors are starting to fade, we're not doing our job.
and then shame on us and shame on me.
We gotta be picking this stuff up and using it.
We need to be replenishing that table constantly.
It needs to be a fight.
Because if we're not replenishing that table, we're not replenishing souls into God's kingdom either, are we?
We're not putting in the work.
And it all starts with 10 names.
It's not hard.
It's not revolutionary.
10 people you care about, 10 people you heard about.
But we're gonna try to reach those souls because they need it.
We purchased the material.
We have a place for it all to be set up.
It's gonna be presented out there and we're gonna go over and train you guys on every aspect of the table so you know what all the pieces do.
We have training cards that I will eventually go over with you for all these steps.
This is just training card one.
Now this is the big overview again.
They're not all going to be this in depth.
Lots of them are going to be shorter than this.
But it's all in pieces.
We will get there together, but we need to work together to get it done.
And then we need to preserve them.
We're gonna assign someone to take care of the table.
They're gonna restock it.
So the rest of you don't have to worry.
Everyone's going to have their piece in the machine.
So just like a watch is made up of all kinds of several gears, you've got a big gear over here that does the hour.
You have a gear that runs the little hand.
You have a gear over here that does the date.
It's the same thing.
That gear that runs the date is not concerned with the minute.
It's concerned only with the day.
We all have a part to play and we're going to get those assigned.
Bible studies, basic training.
After we finish our study through John, we will be going through back to the Bible.
Now we've got to leg up on this a little bit because before this seminar happened, I've been going through and trying to teach on Sunday evenings, believe the Bible.
You should be well equipped.
You should know these believe the Bibles and you should know the back to the Bible by the time we're done with this.
I highly, highly suggest, I cannot suggest enough that
everyone in here finishes back to the Bible all three booklets on their own.
Outside of worship, we need to do them ourselves because we're not going to ask visitors or people that we want to have a Bible study with to do something that we're not willing
to do ourselves, right?
We need to be the examples.
We can get through it.
It's very easy.
It's simply a question.
It tells you where the Bible verse is, and then it says, what does the verse say?
It's fill in the blank.
the whole thing.
It doesn't get any simpler than that.
It's a self-made study, but we're going to go through.
We're going to assemble you guys together, we're going to teach you, and we're going to go through all the back to the Bible to arm you for this.
That way you're well acquainted with it.
You're going to know the ins and the outs.
You're going to know how to address the questions.
There are some that need to be focused on a little more than others while going through the study of back to the Bible.
There are key questions to ask, like when it says, when you're supposed to partake of the Lord's Supper.
That's one you need to take.
You can do back and forth reading through the books, but when you get to that section, you need to ask, hold on, do you mind if I get this one?
I know it's supposed to be your turn, but I like this one.
I try to do it off memory.
Every second Thursday of the month, every Friday of the year, so on and so forth.
You're getting them to correct you.
We're gonna teach you that.
Then we have advanced training.
We'll eventually go through fishers of men.
For the ladies, we have this great book out here that should be on the back table.
If it's not on the back table, we will have the resource available for you.
This is recipes for evangelism.
When we invite people to eat, we gotta know what to cook, don't we?
Not just the ladies, the men, if you cook, I know I cook from time to time.
I'm gonna be making stew tomorrow night for a family that's coming over to my house.
I looked up a great stew recipe.
I'm gonna follow that recipe.
This has it in there for you.
Another one we're gonna go through after we went through the back to the Bible is how to close the study.
You gotta know how to finish it.
What happens when you finish the last book, the third book, and they're not ready to be baptized yet?
Are you just gonna throw your hands up in the air and give up?
No, we have to know how to close the study.
We have to know how to keep going after that, how to keep talking with them, how to keep pursuing.
When we get these visitors, these prospects,
as it's called on these slides.
When we get the people we love in our sights, we need to be trained on them.
And we're not gonna stop until we reach our goal.
You ever sat there and tried to run forward while you're looking back over your shoulder?
It be real hard to run forward, isn't it?
We have got to focus on that finish line one step at a time, no matter how hard it gets, just like a relay race.
You're not gonna finish the race all at once.
Again, this is a lot.
We're gonna break it down into tiny little bite-sized chunks.
It's gonna take us a while to get this all set up, but we will.
Kitchen table Bible studies, you guys are gonna be conducting those.
Not everyone is fit to do a Bible study, that's okay.
Not everybody's the best at welcoming visitors, that's okay.
Not everybody's the best at sending out greeting cards, I know I'm not.
I've got terrible spelling, that's okay.
We all have a part to play and we all got going to be assigned to these positions.
That's why we had you fill out that survey so we can better choose who to get where because we want you in somewhere where you're comfortable, somewhere where you can go.
But we don't need to get too comfy.
We need to make sure we're still working.
We can't stop.
other Bible studies.
We've already been through Believe the Bible.
We're also going to teach Does It Matter?
What happens when you get somebody that says, okay, I'll give you a Bible study, but you got one hour and that's it.
I'm not giving you another Bible study, just the one.
Are you going to try to slam all three back to the Bibles in one study?
No.
We're going to teach you how to use Does It Matter?
Time is of the essence.
You need to get it done.
You have one hour.
Does it matter?
Same thing.
It's a condensed version of the three back to the Bibles.
Very quick.
We also have these in multiple languages.
We have them in Spanish.
I'm working on them right now.
Rob sent them over and I'm going to try to get them in booklet form.
We're going to take them over to Japan next time we go.
We're have them in Japanese.
We can get them in any language we need.
The next step you'll see on your card, the red one, baptisms.
We need to be ready.
If we have our goal being to get baptisms and grow our church,
That needs to be something we're focused on, Not only does it need to be something focused on, we can't have a defeatist attitude about it.
We just went through and cleaned up that back room and made it a lot cleaner.
We didn't do it because we were just spring cleaning the building.
We did it because our goal is to get it used.
We don't want it empty.
We don't want it full of cobwebs because it's going to be used.
Baptismal garments, we're gonna get new ones.
It's gonna be clean.
It's gonna be ready.
And that's the first step is readiness.
If we're not ready to get baptisms, how are we going to baptize people?
We're going to record it.
Any chance we can, whether it's in a lake or here in this baptist tree, anywhere we have a baptism for this church, we're going to record it.
There's a time to weep with each other and there's a time of joy for each other.
We're supposed to...
Plubbing up all my words here.
We gotta be happy for each other and we're gonna rejoice together whenever we have a baptism.
There's nothing greater than rejoicing in bringing a lost person back to Christ.
If we threw $3 million and was only able to baptize one soul, forget the metrics for a second.
I know that we have the metrics.
We have the goal of doing six to 10 baptism a year.
That's great.
Numbers are good.
But what happens if we only get one?
It's just as good as if we got six.
What's the worth of a soul?
infinitely more than this world can hold.
One soul is a fantastic victory.
So if we don't see the metrics grow as fast as we want, don't get disheartened.
Every one is a fantastic victory.
And if it takes two more years to get another one, we're going to get it.
We're not going to quit stopping.
Think about how much that soul means to God.
Think more about the fact of how much that means to that soul that we didn't give up, that we didn't quit trying.
that we kept on with the faith and kept on with the work.
It's going to mean everything to them when eternity comes.
Every time we get a baptism, not only are we going to record it, but we're going to give them a new Bible.
I will even be willing to custom engrave it with their name.
Not going to charge for it.
Just want to do it.
If we want to order them and get them stamped, great.
If we want to save money and do it that way, I can do it.
But we're going to give them a Bible, brand new, and we're going to personalize it.
Whether it's stamped, laser engraved, whatever, we want to put the Word of God in their hand and give them the tools they need to succeed, much like Rob has given us the tools to
succeed now with this congregational plan.
After that, we're going to enroll them in the new converts class.
We got to teach our new converts.
We have a book to go through called Growing in Christ.
There's another one, the acts work book.
We're going to teach them all the basics because we know the gospel plan of salvation.
We've got them baptized.
They're in a safe state.
We want to make sure they don't fall back.
We don't just dunk them and leave them.
They need a good supporting structure.
Unless you have a great foundation, a skyscraper is not going to keep standing, is it?
It's going to topple over once it gets too tight, too many floors.
They need us to be their foundation, and they need their foundation, us, to be centered on the Word of God so that theirs is the Word
We've got to teach them.
We've got to connect them with each other because our new converts are going to grow together and they're going to help support each other as well.
And then what happens?
We go full circle again.
All of those now start being taught the same congregational model, going through all the steps slowly, and they're going to bring in contacts.
Contacts become prospects.
Prospects become Bible studies.
Bible studies become baptisms.
Baptisms become new converts.
And new converts give us more contacts.
and we'll grow that.
Member mentoring is going to be a big step.
I know in this church we don't have a problem with that.
In this church, everybody's family, and that's great.
We need to make sure we keep treating the new ones in here the same way.
We're gonna go through compassion card troubleshooting.
I'm gonna also teach you guys, did everybody get the email reaching the lost?
Raise your hand if you did not receive the email reaching the lost in the past week.
Okay.
Okay, if you didn't, come see me after.
I'll get your email and we'll get that to Rob and get it sent out to you.
That's the newsletter update that's gonna keep coming through and we're gonna get you guys set up with that.
We're also going to give you access to the curriculum.
It's the same curriculum I have.
It's the same curriculum Aaron has.
So if you want to know more about your specific role when you get the role, you have it all right there.
There's nothing that I will tell you that's not in this website that will teach you.
It's easy to navigate.
You've got sections over on the left-hand side, contacts, prospects, Bible studies, new converts, all the way around the congregational model.
And all you do is click it.
It's got a drop-down menu.
You find your section.
It'll tell you all about what's to be done.
and what's needed.
We all have access to this.
We're all going to learn from this.
We have a recommended training and preaching schedule.
That's what we're following right now.
This morning, Aaron started us out with John chapter one, or not John chapter one, John four.
The first section of John chapter four, it's a three part series.
I'm going through the model right now, the review.
There's nothing you haven't seen before if you came to the seminars, but it's good to have a touch up.
It's a lot.
It's still a lot, but we're gonna go through.
It may not be every single week.
We, some weeks we may not be able to follow it perfectly, but we're going to keep making progress.
If we keep making progress, just like any job, you're going to reach your goal.
We have a checklist.
I have this digitized on my iPad right now.
I'm going through the initial setup.
We're gonna go and teach you guys about the evangelism table.
We're gonna teach you about contact cards.
We're gonna go through back to the Bible.
There's a lot of different things, and we're gonna be doing that over the next several months, slowly but surely, until we have all the pieces in place to build our watch.
And then we can all work.
We're going to be the membership that powers the batteries of said watch, and we're gonna watch it tick.
And every second that ticks.
It's gonna get closer to a baptism.
I promise you, I know it's gonna work.
I've seen it work.
This here is our...
our evangelism model, like assignment roster.
I have this also digitized.
This is to where I can keep up with who has what assignment, what you're doing, and I'm gonna try to oversee as much as humanly possible.
I can't do it all myself, so I'm gonna rely a lot on all the members here, but I need your participation, I need your help.
We're gonna get people assigned, we're gonna get weekly or bi-weekly updates on how things are going.
If you have new prospects, contact list, bring them to me.
We're gonna get them there where they need to go.
Does everybody see kind of how this all works?
It's just a big circle.
It's a lot to do.
There's a lot of parts and pieces, but all we have to do is slowly make it around the circle, just like running a relay race.
And when every time we make it around the circle, we get a new baptism or two sometimes.
We can increase our numbers.
There's no doubt in my mind that we can reach that six to 10.
But even if we don't, the worth of even reaching one makes every single bit of this worth.
So again, what I want you to do is your bookmark.
want everybody to have a bookmark.
And I'm going to go around over the next couple of weeks and I'm going to ask you, do you have your bookmark?
And if you do not have a bookmark on your person, I will have a bookmark to hand to you because I want it on your person.
If I see you out in town, I'm going to ask you, do you have your bookmark?
I will give you a pass if it's in the car.
I want 10 names.
We can all put 10 names on here.
We're just getting started.
That's all.
Just 10 names for the week.
That's it.
Think of it like homework.
I can't think of it like homework, not myself.
I love it too much.
Because we're reaching people we care about.
We're saving lost souls.
We still have the invitation open for anybody that needs it.
If you haven't been reaching the lost, you found yourself not caring, if you found yourself growing apathetic towards God's work, you need prayers.
you need anything, anything we can pray for you for, or you simply want to put on Christ in baptism tonight, we have that open for you now.
And we'll help you out however we can as we stand and as we sing.