Evangelism

Evangelism was once the scary word of the Church. I had one leader of church development recently introduce a new "E" word to me -"Elbow". The general idea is to help folks realize the truth of church growth today. The statistics say that for a church of Del Rosa's size (150 members, 100 attendance) we are likely to have 2 new "members" walk in the door during the course of the year. The other new "members" of the church will be folks who walked in on the arm of someone else (~%89).

The interesting thing about the stats is to watch it come into bloom in ways that may not make sense right off the bat. Two persons walked in during the past two years that then walked in with another 5 or more on their elbows (family) and a few more through contacts. When the truth walks through the door in that way it is kinda hard to ignore.

Then I got to thinking about how to reach out to our community here in San Bernardino, and the various pieces we have been working on: realizing who we are, who the community is, and what our mission is to the world in the name of Jesus Christ. We have had some real trouble recognizing the best way to be evangelizing the neighborhood.

All that came charging home when I read a blog from another hat tip about the look of evangelism. Check it out here.

Later, I will work on telling you all some of my experiences in each of these models.

Peace,