The Most Effective Form of Evangelism

by Chad Estes

It's Sunday morning and you have made the decision to go to church. It has been a while since you've darkened a church doorstep, but you have been hearing some good things about a church called The Vineyard.

You turn on your computer and log on to the Internet. You need to find their location and meeting times and hope that church has a Web site with all the necessary information. They do.

The church is nearby, but the service starts soon. You don't want to walk in late because you don't want to cause an interruption. You decide that you don't have time to stop at Starbucks as you had intended. 

When you arrive at the church people are there to greet you at the front door. Their smiling faces reassure you. After exchanging handshakes and names, they hand you a bulletin that includes the events of the week and an interesting article. A syllabus inside the bulletin includes the text of that morning's message and an outline of the teacher's notes. There is also a sign-up sheet for you to fill out so you can be contacted by the church staff later in the week.

As you walk through the entry the aroma of fresh brewed coffee welcomes you into the church. You've never seen a coffee bar in church before. Your church coffee experience had been limited to a gigantic percolator with used Folgers grounds. It tasked like they brewed it once a year and just plugged it in when needed. But the person on the other side of the counter is asking how many shots of espresso to put in your caramel latte. 

You are also set at ease by the way people are dressed. People seem comfortable instead of stuffy. You are begging to like this place.

As you find a seat in the back a band walks to the stage and begins to play. These certainly aren't your grandmother's hymns. In fact you think she would turn over in her grave if she knew you were in church with an electric guitar and drums. And although you didn't know any of the music before this morning, you find the songs simple and uplifting. By the end of the session you are standing with the others and your feet has been tapping along. 

Announcements are given. People laugh. You feel as you've entered into a family. The pastor explains that he is teaching through a book of the Bible. You like that. In fact you look ahead to see what he will be speaking on next week. You plan to be back.

When the service is over people stand around talking. The kids pour in from the nursery and from Sunday school begging their parents to get them to McDonalds for the 39-cent hamburgers.

You've just experienced a typical Sunday morning - at the Meridian Vineyard.

You may wonder why the Vineyard Boise would be planting a new church at this time. With the possibility of expanding the Boise facilities in the near future it hardly makes sense to send part of your congregation, leadership team, money and resources to Meridian. But planting churches is part of our genetic code in the Vineyard. We believe that church planting is the most effective form of evangelism.

Peter Wagner, a professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary, explains five reasons why established churches need to plant new churches:

1. Church planting is Biblical. Church planting is the New Testament way of extending the gospel. Trace the expansion of the church through Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth and you will see that church planters led the way. This is a kingdom activity, strongly endorsed by God our King. Collectively, as a community of the kingdom, we can scarcely feel we are obeying God if we fail to plant churches and plant them intentionally and aggressively.
   
   
2. Church planting means denominational survival. While some may not consider institutional survival a worthy motive, deep down in their hearts most church leaders do. Most of us rightly feel our denominational emphases contribute something important to the wholeness of the universal body of Christ. But if the present rate of decline in many of the denominations continues for another 25 or 30 years, given the steady rise in the age profile of present membership, the future is bleak to say the least. One of the essential ingredients for reversing the decline is vigorously planting new churches.
   
   
3. Church planting develops new leadership. Many studies confirm that the most important institutional variable for the growth and expansion of the local church is leadership. In the local church no individual is more important for growth than the senior pastor but effective senior pastors make it a point to see that lay leaders also take responsible positions in the ministry of the church. For the most part existing churches have unconsciously placed a ceiling on both clergy and lay leadership, and as a result upward mobility of new people into positions of ministry is difficult. But new churches open wide the doors of leadership and ministry challenges and the entire body of Christ subsequently benefits.
   
   
4. Church planting stimulates existing churches. Some are reluctant to start new churches for fear of harming those churches already in the target community. They feel that doing so could create undesirable competition between brothers and sisters in Christ. In more cases than not, a new church in the community generally raises the religious interest of the people, and if handled properly can be a benefit to existing churches. That which blesses the Kingdom of God as a whole also blesses the churches that truly are a part of the Kingdom.
   
   
5. Church planting is efficient. There is no more practical or cost effective way of bringing unbelievers to Christ in a given geographical area than planting new churches. This applies both to "new ground" (areas of the world or people groups within those areas that are yet un-evangelized) and "old ground" (where churches have existed for a hundred or a thousand years). 

The Vineyard Boise believes that the more we give, the more we will be given. As we continue to disciple people, leaders will be developed who have the desire and calling to be a church planter. This happened in Tri and Nancy's life while they attended and then were on staff at the Vineyard in Lancaster, California. God brought them to Boise twelve years ago with twelve families to start a Vineyard. 

The church planting DNA remains in Vineyard Boise today. In those past twelve years our young church has had the opportunity to send out leaders to plant seven other Vineyards. 

This is also happening on the national level. Steve Nicholson, the National Church Planting Coordinator for Vineyard USA reports that we have close to 600 Vineyard churches nationwide, up from 500 just a few years ago.

Randy and Mae Rodes, the senior pastors of the Vineyard Meridian have adopted much of Vineyard Boise's culture and values in planting the new church. We expect that the value of church planting will also be in their DNA. 

For more information about church planting in the Vineyard, visit the national website www.vineyardusa.org. 

* Peter Wagner's material was adapted from Equipping the Saints, Vol. 6, No. 2/ Spring 1992.