If you learned today your family will be having a baby, you would get the nursery ready by painting the walls and buying the furniture. Perhaps you would register at a baby store so others might supply the incidentals. You start buying clothing and stockpiling diapers. The point is this: you get ready because you know new life is coming to your home.
That approach should be no different in the church. Leading a church to be evangelistic—that is, leading a church to reach non-believers who experience new life in Christ— requires churches to be ready for the new life that God gives. Why should God bless our churches with evangelistic growth if He knows our nursery is not ready to take care of the baby believers?
The disciplines of evangelism and discipleship are so interconnected that they are two sides of the same coin. Evangelism without discipleship often results in inch-deep believers, and discipleship without evangelism produces a classroom more than a Great Commission church. Hence, leading a church to be evangelistic also demands leading a church to develop an ongoing discipleship strategy.
Even as I write this post, though, I am aware of one danger. Because most churches have so poorly done discipleship, I fear those who want to make a difference will spend all their energy fixing the discipleship problem—and evangelism will suffer as a consequence. In fact, the church that focuses solely on filling the discipleship void will seldom get back to evangelism. For that reason, the solution is “both/and” rather than an “either/or” approach. The church must do evangelism even as she also addresses the discipleship issue.
The easiest way to do both is to return to the time-tested method of discipling through mentoring. Pastor, do you want to lead your church to be evangelistic? Start by asking God to direct you to two or three church members in whose lives you will invest yourself. Challenge them in their own walk with Christ. Show them how to read the Bible and pray. Help them to understand their spiritual gifts. Model evangelism for them. Hold them accountable to developing relationships with non-believers. In this entire process, equip them to disciple new believers—and expect them to do so.
More specifically, the discipler will walk alongside the new believer, responding to questions, guiding through temptations, teaching Bible study and prayer, and encouraging in times of struggle. Grounded in faith through the help of a mentor/discipler, the new believer becomes a strong witness for the life-changing power of the gospel.
A pastor who mentors a few, followed by the few discipling new converts – that’s an evangelistic nursery that God blesses. Any church can start building this kind of nursery today.