You work so hard this time of year (and always) to create communications to build your church and encourage your people. Take 2 minutes to watch this video to be encouraged and to remind yourself why you do all you do. Know you are loved and appreciated by our Lord and me at this Christmas season.
Give the gift of communication tools to your congregation, at Christmas and any time of the year
Christmas is the time for giving. This year give to the people in your churches communication tools to help them share the gospel. We all know that Ephesians 4 tells pastors and teachers that their job is “to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.” Communication tools can quip your people to do evangelism for the holidays and all year around.
Communication tools for evangelism
Most Christians know they are to be about sharing the good news of the gospel to people who don’t know Jesus. However, exactly how to do that keeps many people from doing that. Most of them think that sharing the gospel means getting up enough courage to say to a co-worker or stranger, “Are you saved?” and then proceeding to present a 3-minute canned gospel presentation.
God in His mercy does sometimes use that method, but it is probably not the most effective or is it one that most of your congregation look forward to using. In addition, current studies show that in our secular, post-Christian society it usually takes repeated exposures to the gospel message before an unchurched person really understands it and can honestly respond.
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Those repeated exposures usually take place in some church or church-sponsored activity such as a social event or small group. The communication tools you give your people gives them a way to bring friends and invite strangers to church or into a small group where they can get the repeated exposures they need to make an informed decision about the Christian faith. Some of the communication tools are:
Invitation cards
You can turn any standard business card from your church into an invitation card by simply placing a blank line where the name would be on the card and just below it, adding “member of Your Friendly Church.” In another place on the card place the words, “BE MY GUEST”. On the reverse side of the card put a map of how to get to the church, service times, website, and whatever additional information you might think is important, such as if child care is provided at all services.
Depending upon the size of your church, make up hundreds or thousands of these cards and ask all the members to take a handful of them, carry them around at all times and give them out.
You could also make up special cards for a special series. One idea would be to make up a small fold-over card the size of a business card. On the outside have a simple cross and the words: What if it’s true? Inside invite folks to a series of upcoming sermons at your church, such as: “Is the Bible Really God’s Word?” “Why Do We Say Jesus is the Only Way to God?” “Why Does a Good God Allow Evil in Our World?”
Gospel Presentation Brochures or tracts
You can either create ones specific to your church or use ones that you get from the American Tract Society (http://www.atstracts.org/). You can personalize them for your church by adding an address label on the back. The standard 2 x 3 inch mailing labels from office supply stores fit perfectly in the open space on the back of many gospel tracts. Use the label to invite people to a special event at your church. For example, on Christmas tracts create a colorful label inviting people to your Christmas concert or other outreach event.
CDs and DVDs
It is so easy to create CDs these days and many larger churches (and many teenagers) are quite good at doing it. If you need a professional source to create music CDs for you or CDs in bulk, contact http://www.discmakers.com/. They create very professional CDs for excellent prices.
If your church is known for its music and if your music the kind unchurched people respond to, create a CD as an outreach piece. Church members can give it to friends and tell them that if they’d like more, your church has wonderful music like that available every Sunday.
The small business card CDs would make great music invitations to youth programs that have bands.
Discmakers as well as local media production houses in your community can also create DVDs from your church videos. You might want to add a new invitation or introduction or perhaps shoot various programs in your church to include short samples on your DVD for various holidays or different groups.
Web site support
For each of the communications above, be sure include your web site on all printed pieces and on the CDs and DVDs. On the web site be sure to have current information on all your church events and schedules.
In addition, have links for additional evangelistic and outreach information. For example, to back up the invitation cards, you should have more background about your church, perhaps a bio and picture of the pastor and his or her qualifications for teaching that series. For the salvation tracts let people know that on the web site you answer the “Top Ten Questions People Ask Before They Become A Christian” and similar questions.
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The importance of a COMPLETE gospel message at Christmas and always
In the past, when the culture, school system, and world view was Christian, when you talked about Jesus and accepting him as your personal Savior, most people knew what you were talking about. They may not have believed it, they may not have thought it applied to them, but part of their cultural worldview was a Biblical view of the historical Jesus. Again, they may not have accepted it personally but they knew the facts about who and what they were rejecting. It is very different today.
Now, when you mention Jesus, you need to be very complete and clear what Jesus you are talking about. Are you talking about:
- A Jesus who is in every person, a sort of divine spark, which is what many new-age folks believe?
- A Jesus who was a first century Jew and who did good works and taught ethical precepts, but was not the Messiah, as Jewish people believe?
- A prophet, but not the prophet, as the Muslims believe?
- Or are you talking about the eternally existing second person of the Trinity, who came to earth, died, was buried, physically rose from the dead, and who is coming again, which is what evangelical Christians believe?
This is just the start of what you need to completely communicate about Jesus: his life, substitutionary death, his physical resurrection, his intercession for us today, his coming return. All of these truths are not part of most people’s current world view. You cannot assume that people have any knowledge of them when they come to your church. You can’t ask them to commit to a savior if they don’t even know who he really is.
A practical example of the dangers of incomplete communication about Jesus
Imagine it is Christmas and your church hosts a Christmas concert: wonderful organ music, uplifting choir pieces, moving poetry, and Bible passages all as background to a moving Christmas pageant. In the beautifully designed program (that the church communicator worked for hours to create and that cost a small fortune to print), is the statement:
If you have not accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, we trust that the joy of the music and message will so fill your heart that you will accept the true peace and joy of Christmas and become a Christian.
I do not want to be cynical, the Spirit can move in any way he desires, but if a person would then check on a card that he or she responded to this message, what does that mean? Does that person have any idea of the complete gospel message? Of the Jesus of history and not just the Jesus of beautiful hymns? Of cross-bearing and the crucifixion of Jesus and not simply Jesus the tiny baby in a manger? You may feel that you shared the gospel, that you challenged people to become Christians, but if someone responded to this incomplete gospel presentation, what really happened?
The early church required that potential converts go through a lengthy teaching time of many weeks and in-depth instruction before they were allowed to publicly proclaim their faith and be baptized. If we are not careful to completely proclaim the Christian gospel and completely teach people what a response to that gospel involves, we may be responsible for souls who think they have become a Christians but who are tragically, completely wrong.
Beyond the details of events and the essentials of salvation
The need to be complete goes beyond being certain we have all the details of events in place, though this is very important if we want to connect people with life-changing events. Being complete also moves beyond being certain people understand what it means to become a Christian, though that is the essential starting point.
We must also be complete in preparing our people to defend the faith. If we don’t take the time to completely explain, defend, and teach in depth about our faith, our people will be unprepared for those who oppose the Christian message, but who take time and care to completely put forth their false teachings. Though this component of effective church communications is most emphasized in Step 4, INSTRUCT; we must keep it in mind in every step of our communication ministry.
The challenge of those who do not believe the biblical, Christian message are sometimes more complete in their communications than we are.
The enemies of our faith are complete in their attacks. For example, a New York Times best-seller, Misquoting Jesus, the Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman, has been weakening and destroying the faith of many for years. Ehrman, who claims to have been a believer at one point in his life, drones on and on and on for 218 pages, in complete (though often distorted) detail, about why we cannot trust the Bible. His book is not difficult to refute, as his logic is faulty, his conclusions dubious, his seemingly shocking statements about supposed biblical inconsistences hardly news to any reputable biblical scholar. In addition, for any so-called scholarly author to use himself and his books, again and again as a primary citation of the truth of his facts, as Erhman does, is ludicrous.
But he is complete in a rambling, false, repetitive way and for a casual reader the simple volume of his argument is persuasive. I am not recommending his method, but it is effective.
Why his volume of distortions convince people
We somehow assume that if an author or authority takes the time to expound on a topic in detail and depth that it is important. Conversely, if we aren’t told about or taught about an important topic in depth it is easy to assume it is not very important. Consider the above two examples:
1. A Christmas gospel presentation of one paragraph.
2. A lengthy book detailing why the Bible can’t be trusted.
Based on the sheer volume, number of citations, seeming care and time taken to explain each topic, it would seem that author of the book about the Bible took his topic much more seriously, that he obviously cared enough to research and write about it in more detail. An uniformed seeker might consider it more true because of its completeness.
In contrast, a challenge to consider an eternity-changing decision presented in one brief, emotional paragraph, doesn’t have the same apparent importance. You may protest that a Christmas program is not the place to do into a lengthy, apologetic discussion of the Christian faith and that’s true. However, the lack of space in the program does not mean we should not explain the plan of salvation in its completeness.
Here is where the communication tools we have today and the ability to do multi-channel communication can be useful. We don’t have to put the complete details about salvation in the Christmas program. Keeping in mind the multi-channel resources we have, in the Christmas program, could be a short statement like this:
Becoming a Christ-follower is a decision that will change your eternity and the way you live the rest of your life on earth.
Don’t make the decision lightly. To explore what it means to be a Christian, please check out our website at www.churchwebsite.com.
There you’ll find answers to questions, links to explore the faith, and email addresses of folks waiting to interact with you. Not wanting to go there? Call 555-5555 and there will be someone to talk to.
We need to take time to be certain the messages of our church and the gospel are presented in completeness. Yes, setting up a complete web links, finding and training people to interact through email and the phone is difficult and time-consuming. But, if the enemies of truth can take the time to do this, we can do no less. Even if you can’t go into this much detail, at least including a well-done tract would be useful, but without anything more than a brief mention to consider Jesus, it’s hard to take the challenge to consider Jesus as Savior and Lord seriously.
One more note: An in-depth, complete critique and series of articles showing the falseness of Bart Erhman’s thesis is available on www.equip.org, the Bible Answerman’s website. In addition, one of the most complete apologists of the Christian faith is Lee Strobel and his book, the Case for the Real Jesus, deals with Erhman’s and other current critics of the Bible and Jesus and provides in-depth answers to their false claims. I highly recommend both sources and have used them prior to Christmas to do a series of lessons on Why Jesus is the Reason for the Christmas Season.
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