Category: Church Development

Many congregation take advantage of social media to communicate with members, friends and the general public. One such tool is Facebook, and though powerful and potentially helpful, it can be used by congregations in ways that are less than effective. A common mistake is posting too often—loading up the page with pictures and other posts that have little to do with the congregation and its ministries and thus become distracting “digital noise.” For some helpful ways to maximize the effective use of your congregation’s Facebook page, click here to read a recent post from LifeWay president Thom Rainer.

Last week in GCI Weekly Update we featured the topic of evangelism. We continue that focus here with an Alliance Life article from Steve Irvin who notes that some Christians give up on evangelism due to a perceived lack of fruit. But Steve urges us to not give up, and instead rethink our approach to evangelism, “giving the Gospel a chance” in light of the fact that “Jesus earned the right to be heard.” To read his thought-provoking article, click here.

A recent post on The Surprising God blog highlighted a brochure produced by GCI pastor David Gilbert (with assistance from Ted Johnston and Gary Deddo). The brochure gives a simple presentation of the gospel grounded in incarnational Trinitarian theology with an invitation to the reader to attend the church that distributes the brochure. David has made this evangelism tool available to anyone who wishes to use it within their congregation or ministry. To download it in Word for Windows (.docx format), click here. To download another GCI-produced gospel tract click here.

In this issue of GCI Weekly Update, Joseph Tkach highlights our calling to evangelism (click here), and we share a tool to use in proclaiming the gospel (click here).

On this page we share a recent post on the Patheos blog titled “Trinitarian Confidence in Evangelism.” It’s a helpful reminder that the basis for our confidence in evangelizing is not ourselves, but the being and activity of our Triune God. Below is an excerpt from that post; to read the full post, click here.

How can we go out boldly and share Christ with confidence? God not only saves us, God IS our salvation. It makes sense then that God Himself should be the ultimate source of our confidence when we are sharing about His great salvation. We can trust that God is working in us and the people we speak to about Christ.

“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” (Isaiah 12:2 ESV)

God works together as Father, Son and Holy Spirit to perform our salvation, to be our salvation and to bring men and women to salvation. Sharing the gospel works because God works when we share the gospel. Our confidence is in God –God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

Does your congregation have its own website? If so, is it effective? In a recent post on Thom Rainer’s LifeWay blog (click here to read it), Jonathan Howe noted that effective church websites prominently display the church address and worship service times on the home page, then make it easy to navigate to the following eight “must-have” sections:

1. Staff names and titles (preferably with pictures)
2. Information about children’s and youth ministries
3. Sermon archives (video is best, but audio works too)
4. Church calendar
5. Contact information (with someone responsible for responding to inquiries rapidly)
6. Statement of beliefs
7. Links to social media profiles (being active on social media is vital in our culture)
8. Major church news items

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Note from editor: It also is vital to keep the website up-to-date (fresh). Showing out-of-date material (particularly on the home page) suggests the church is out-of-date (if not dead). Check your website today and see how you’re doing.

On The Exchange blog of Christianity Today, Ed Stetzer wrote recently of the “missional posture” presented by John in his Gospel. This is a posture of “sentness” grounded in Jesus’ words, which define a Trinitarian theology of mission. Here is a representative quote from the post:

The missional impulse of sentness is found in John 20:21, where John records Jesus saying, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” [Holman translation]. It may seem on the surface that sentness means going. While sentness certainly implies going, the Johannine mode of mission stresses something far deeper and richer given that it connects the sentness of the disciples to that of the Father sending the Son.

To read the full post, click here.

Below are links to two articles and a blog post that shed light on the important but sometimes misunderstood topic of evangelism—our participation in what Jesus is doing, through the Spirit, to draw people to trust him and then follow him as one of his disciples.

Early Church Evangelism

How did Christians in the past share their faith in Christ, and can their experience positively affect the ways we go about sharing our faith today? For some helpful insights, see the Outreach Magazine article at http://www.outreachmagazine.com/features/14296-early-church-evangelism.html.

Re-engaging the dechurched

A team from the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism (BGCE) journeyed to the Burning Man conference a few months back to learn more about this community, to research the dechurched, and to share God’s love. Many of the 70,000 people who attended did so to express their creativity, find community and seek spiritual encounters. Ninety percent of the people the BGCE team interviewed were from mainline Protestant and Catholic backgrounds. They are, at this point, very dechurched. Most attended church in high school and earlier, but did not stay. They are not hostile, just disinterested. They have an interest in spirituality in general, but not in any particular religion. To learn more, see the Outreach Magazine article at http://www.outreachmagazine.com/features/14283-14283.html.

For more about dechurched people, see the blog post about “once-churched people” at http://johnpavlovitz.com/2015/08/16/what-church-people-really-need-to-know-about-once-churched-people/.

Given that presidential election activity in the U.S. (and elswhere) is heating up, we are republishing here a briefing from our Legal Department concerning what congregations may and may not legally do with respect to political activity. Note in paragraph two a specific GCI policy statement on this topic.

Although the 2016 presidential elections are almost a year away, the media is currently all abuzz with talk about the various potential candidates and the primaries for the major parties. Every election “season,” this one included, the IRS issues guidelines and cautions for churches about what is permissible and impermissible (mostly impermissible!) in regard to political involvement. Often, other groups, including in previous years the National Association of Evangelicals, issue long, detailed reports explaining where the legal “line” is separating the permissible from the impermissible. It is important for churches to avoid any impermissible political involvement, since violating the law in this area can bring serious penalties upon a church, including the complete loss of its tax-exempt status.

Although the law regarding involvement of churches in political matters forbids most such activities, some very few political expressions or actions are allowed, under narrow circumstances. However, notwithstanding any narrow or slight activities that might be allowed under the law, it is the denominational policy of GCI that its congregations (local churches) are not to engage in any political activities or statements whatsoever. This policy is based on two overarching principles:

1. The law is complicated and even lawyers can and do argue about how it might apply in any given case, which means staying completely out of the political field is the only safe course.
2. The denomination does not believe that local pastors or church leaders should be trying to influence local members or the community at large about whom they should support or what political view or position they should take.

In light of this strict “no political activity” policy, pastors and church leaders should refrain from all such activities, including refraining from statements in sermons suggesting one political party is better, more Christian, more in line with the Bible, etc. than the other. Neither should any leader praise or condemn either party, any candidate, or any current office holder, including the current President, for things done, said, or not done or unsaid. While it is plain that some issues that face our society are issues about which Christians care, no one in the congregation should feel that he or she is being pushed or pulled to support or vote for or against any party or candidate. Indeed, the congregation should not be able to discern the pastor or other church leader’s political positions from his or her public statements. A pastor’s public statements should not include political content at all.

Another issue regarding such political activities is the issue of local church pastors or other leaders using the names and addresses of the local church members and attendees in order to send them letters or memos with political content, including, but not limited to, actually encouraging them to vote for or against a certain candidate or party. The practice of using member addresses for this purpose is against church policy and should never be done. Mailings to church members and attendees should be about, and only about, religious or other church matters having no political content.

In short, our sermons, teachings, member mailings, and community involvement projects should be strictly about the gospel and not about politics. To be clear, our policy is not to be “politically neutral.” Our policy is to be “apolitical,” meaning “without political content” at all. It can be helpful for our pastors and leaders to state this policy of being “without politics” and “without political content” to the congregation from time to time so that our members understand our policy. If members wish to be politically active in some way, they are free to pursue such activities on their own or through affiliations with political groups, but not through the denomination or its local churches. We do not forbid political activism, per se. We only forbid political involvement by and through the church.

A primary challenge faced by churches is encouraging growth in per-member giving. Thom Rainer of LifeWay Research looks at this challenge in a recent blog post, noting that churches that experience increases in this giving tend to exhibit seven dominant characteristics. You can read his post at http://thomrainer.com/2016/01/seven-traits-of-churches-with-increasing-per-member-giving/.

We recommend that our very small congregations (those with 15 or fewer people attending—we call them fellowship groups) utilize a small group style meeting format that is effective for both nurturing believers and connecting with unchurched people. Resources to assist in operating fellowship groups are found on GCI’s FaithTalk Equipper website at http://faithtalkgroups.blogspot.com/ where the CAD team has posted videos for small group facilitator training, discussion guides to use in group meetings, and instructions related to starting small groups and conducting small group meetings. At the GCI-USA 2016 regional conferences (listed at www.gci.org/events) we’ll have sessions specifically addressing fellowship group operations.