Tuesday, 6 August 2013

Growing a Church: Reaping...

When the Engel scale moves on to Reaping (becoming a Christian) you need to look at where in your programme you are giving people the opportunity to respond to the gospel.  Where is that point? 

At King’s it used to be the Alpha Saturday and at baptisms. Alpha Saturday still remains for us a major event in this respect but now we would provide that opportunity more frequently – it could be at almost any Sunday meeting.  The statistics go something like this.  Before Lex Loizides started to come to King’s 2% of the people who were saved at King’s were saved through our preaching on a Sunday.  After Lex came and equipped us that became 20%.  Suddenly we had the ability and the confidence to make an appeal more often and see people respond to the gospel.  On other occasions we would get a guest evangelist to come along. 


We run a New Christians group on a Sunday.  It’s not unusual for people who have done Alpha are not yet Christians to then join our New Christians group - but then they become Christians at the New Christians group!  We are sometimes aware that people have not yet made a commitment but we let them go into that group and as a result we’ve seen a number of people that have come to faith there!  The important thing is to provide opportunities for reaping the harvest.