For a half hour Pastor Jones had been trying to get out of his Claremont church office. Telephone calls, drop-in visitors, and office business had kept him. At last he was ready to leave. Just as he pushed the door open, two of the more enthusiastic women of the congregation arrived. They had something important to say. "You know how we have talked about doing some kind of distinctive outreach here at Claremont," one of them said, "and how concerned we have been to do something that would actually work in our community. We realize that traditional evangelism does not bring people out like it used to, and we believe something should be done. We would like to be part of a scheme to get something going."
Pastor Jones listened patiently. When he left the church, he was overwhelmed by a sense of elation and foreboding. He was encouraged by the enthusiasm of the women and their desire to be involved, but he was not sure how to break the inertia that had settled over Claremont an inertia that was partly because of the meager results that any outreach attempts had achieved in recent years.
It was his frustrating sense of "I-don't-know-what-to-do-to-change-things" that led him to call his "Pastor's Advisory Council" together. He had handpicked the members of this group after almost a year at Claremont, when he had had time to sense who would serve best as candid, confidential evaluators of his ministry, as well as wise supporters of him as a person. They had become his cabinet of counselors, and he had come to love and respect them.
He put it to them: "How can we break the back of the evangelistic inertia that has become a part of Claremont? How can we bring ourselves to the point of reaching out in the name of Christ with nerve and courage, and with some expectation of success?"
There was a lot of discussion, but one consistent thought pattern emerged: "We know we can't expect much from conventional spirituality and traditional outreach methodology. It just does not seem to turn us on, or anyone in the community. So let's put together a task force of our best people, commissioning them to be a creative think tank for the congregation, to forge prayerfully a workable plan for special and ongoing outreach at Claremont."
Special approach
Right then and there, nine names were suggested, two of them were part of the Advisory Council. Pastor Jones met regularly with the group over a four-month period as they struggled to come up with a workable plan for their outreach. The task force conceived something quite unique, consisting of five consecutive weekends of special meetings. The best speakers available (one for each weekend) would be scheduled to present subjects highly relevant to the life of the community, and significantly oriented to basic Christian and Adventist belief. A seminar-styled meeting was planned for the Friday evenings of each weekend, when the guest speaker for that weekend would lead out. Sabbath services were carefully planned with particular attention to hospitality, unobtrusive registration, along with the very best they could provide in music.
On each Sabbath a special luncheon was planned. This was followed by a panel discussion again covering the theme of the weekend. Pastor Jones was active in all of the meetings, preaching on a sixth and final weekend, and then involving the Claremont church in comprehensive follow-up.
Evangelism from the ground up
The story of Pastor Jones and the Claremont church is, as you have guessed, partly true and partly imaginary. The point of the story is not the meetings themselves or the activities of the Pastor's Advisory Council (although I think a pastor's advisory of some kind is a great way to enrich one's ministry). The point is that the pastor, along with a group of members, took responsibility for sitting down and creating a way of doing evangelism from the ground up, as God was calling them to do it. Simple as this is, it is not a thing that is often done.
In principle, this is a plan that can be carried out adaptively in any church anywhere at any time. It is something that needs to be done, even in areas where evangelism is going well. It will provide a freshness and vitality in the hearts of the people and in the way evangelism is carried out.
Traditionally the full-time evangelist (thank God for him or her!) has been called into a given church community to run a series of meetings. He or she has had a program of tried plans and procedures. Even the pastor has not been involved significantly in the planning or creating process. Over time this approach has become a tradition. It has become as natural as breathing, but it has contributed to evangelistic staleness and inertia. This is so because it has kept out of the process the crucial contribution of the minds and hearts of the people of the local congregation who know their God and their communities.
Start, then, a creative outreach task force in your congregation (if you haven't already done so). It will take much of the weight of responsibility from you as pastor. A new enthusiasm for outreach may well stir in your heart, as well as in the hearts of your members.