Building a Highly Contagious Church

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Building a Highly Contagious Church

• Mark Mittelberg, CCN seminar
• July 18, 2002
• Chandler_at_vbmb.org

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Apostolic Culture

• The goal is not
• implementation of a program
• Training a few evangelistic front-line soldiers
• But
• To create an evangelistic, apostolic culture
• To create viral v.a.b.e.s

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Stage 1. Own and model evangelistic values.

• Overcoming evangelistic entropy
• Key idea leaders must model contagious lives

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4 Rs toward modeling

• Repent
• Read
• use key Gospel passages like screensavers)
• Relate
• To other contagious Christians who fire you up
• Reach out
• Take some relational risks

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Stage 2. Instill evangelistic values in the
people around us.

• Create a congregational culture where it is
  normal for people to think, pray, talk, and do
  evangelism
• Use your circle of influence within the church to
  complete discipleship by teaching evangelism

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Stage 3. Empower an evangelistic point person.

• There must a contagious leader(s) beyond the
  pastor to instill the value in the church
• When a pastor (or a committee!) is in charge,
  evangelism focus is, at best, erratic

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A caution about your point leader

• Dont necessarily put the obviously enthusiastic
  evangelist in your church in charge
• They are typically admired for zeal but avoided
  for approach
• Pick someone with the gift of leadership who
  can have growing evangelistic passion

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Stage 4. Liberate and equip every believer.

• Stages 4-6 are led by the point person of 3
• Here, train 100 of the members of the church to
  be contagious
• i.e., to understand their own evangelistic style,
  and the needs of hearers
• Help them learn by doing and practicing

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Stage 5. Build a diversified evangelism team.

• Use all of the gifts of the body of Christ to
  build a multifaceted approach
• Keep them together for cross-pollination and
  encouragement
• Yet dont pull together all of the evangelistic
  people in one segregated e-team
• Rather let them serve as pace-setters within
  various ministries

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Stage 6. Innovate high impact outreach ministries
and events.

• Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders,
  making the most of every opportunity.
• Colossians 45
• Moving from individual toward team evangelism

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Summary

• Own and model
• Instill the values
• Empower a point person
• Liberate and equip
• Build the team
• Outreach events/ministries

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Building a Highly Contagious Church

• John.chandler_at_vbmb.org