Some reflections on evangelism at All Saints.

First some data:

For the question: How appropriate for an evangelistic series were the talks given by Leigh Hatcher? (Not very appropriate     1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10       Extremely appropriate)

The average rating was 8, but only 6 for effectiveness of the series. Most wanted another series next year.

For the question: To what extent did you pray for the ‘I love Petersham’ series before and during? (Not at all     0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10       Fervently)

The average rating was 4.

For the question: How many people did you invite to come to the series?

The average rating was 1 for this outreach series and 2 for the last twelve months.

For the question as to why more did not come the most common answer was both the business of potential guests and fear of asking.

For the questions asking if we could explain the gospel of Jesus Christ, and answer people’s questions 80% of us thought we could do this easily or give it a go but not be sure if we were getting is spot on.

The great majority strongly agreed that there are sufficient evangelistic events at All Saints.

A majority had confidence in All Saints to evangelise their friends.

A majority would like to see evangelism take place in their bible study groups

Most did not want All Saints to some something evangelistic at their place of work

Most did not want to be involved in planning evangelism at church.

Some reflections:

Tin Can Collection:

Given other comments, it seems that we’ve not been clear enough in explaining the purpose of the Tin Can collection, nor in explaining expectations and required of people to be involved. Furthermore, the advertising for this was buried amongst the other events and probably lost its potency. These will be addressed in 2011.

Our prayerlessness:

If the series was as ineffective as the survey indicates, then a large part of the cause must lie in our prayerlessness. There was no sense of expectation, no sense of entreating God, no desperation on our part to see our lost neighbours won for Christ. There are individuals within our fellowship who buck the trend, but as a whole church this is a problem. We need to turn this around. It must start in our personal prayers for friends, family and neighbourhood and it must be evident in our prayer times as a church. Is it the case that we have so secularised our faith that our prayers reflect western values of self only? Challenge 1: to become more prayerful about reaching the lost.

Our lack of boldness:

It appears our problem is not lack of skill or ability to explain the gospel or answer people’s questions. Rather our failure is to fail to seize the opportunity. If we are each only inviting 2 people to church every year, one of whom lives further than 15 minutes access of All Saints, then we have no hope of reaching our 70,000 neighbours. Not enough time or effort is made interacting with non-Christian workmates and neighbours. Challenge 2: to become involved in the lives of our non-Christian world and boldly promote the gospel, with a gospel explanation or an invitation to a church event.