By Rev. Mike Pearson, Superintendent of the South District

What expectations are placed on the evangelism committee? What does the congregation expect from the evangelism committee? What does the pastor expect? What do they think their function is? In broad terms, there are three common (and very different) responses:

1.  The most common is to assign the evangelism area the role of doing evangelism on behalf of the whole church. This usually means it is the committee's responsibility to design and implement a strategy for:

• New Member Recruitment
• Call on Prospective Members
• Plan or Help with New Member Orientation
• Call on Inactive Members

This view is based on the assumption that the committee will actually do evangelism for the rest of the congregation.

It might be wise to ask whether this approach is fair, biblical, or even pragmatic.

Obviously, delegating the responsibility of evangelism to one small group does injustice to the church's doctrine that evangelism is part of worship, education, social action, and the way each member is called to be a steward of the gospel. From a pragmatic perspective, delegating the responsibility means fewer "hooks in the water," and fewer ideas for evangelism coming forth.

In other words, the assumption is that evangelism, like the care of a building or youth ministry, or social action, can be delegated to a small group of members, and that this group will be able to do an effective job of evangelism for the local church. Instead of depending on one committee, composed of a small proportion of the membership, it might be worthwhile to consider one of the following two alternative approaches.

2.  In the second response, the evangelism committee's manifesto is to plan and manage a new member recruitment strategy. They would design a system, recruit, train volunteers, make sure the volunteers are doing their tasks, and evaluate the plan's effectiveness.

One approach might be through direct mail evangelism.  This might include (1) identifying the recipients of evangelism through a community needs survey (e.g., recently widowed, new to the community, single parents) or through demographic information that is purchased; (2) designing a special program to meet those needs of that slice of the population; (3) deciding on either mass mailing, select mailing, print advertising, etc.; (4) recruiting people from the congregation to address envelopes, train those responsible for the special program, do follow-up visitation on those who respond. In this response, the evangelism committee has both an active "doing" role and the very important management role of planning and overseeing a comprehensive program. The five-to-seven member committee might represent one fourth or one tenth of the people directly involved in the evangelistic effort.

3.  A third response has the evangelism committee asking questions and encouraging each activity in the church to include the evangelistic outreach in its programs. For example, they might ask the Youth Council, "What changes could you effect in your schedule, program or style that would attract teenagers who aren't now active in the church?" or it might ask the Women's Fellowship, "Do you expect your members to invite unchurched friends?" or "Are there programs that we could offer to reach women not actively involved in the life of any congregation?"  Obviously, the questions need not stop here, but should include the trustees, finance committee, education committee, the pastor, the worship area, the annual bazaar, the choir, the ushers, the greeters, the membership committee, the nursery, and so on.

Over the course of two years, if the committee asks enough leading questions of various individuals, organizations, and committees, they may change the focus of evangelism from being led by a committee to being led by the congregation. They could help the congregation realize evangelism can't be delegated to one group.  They also might successfully get a reputation for being pests, obnoxious, or pushy.

Putting Together the Team
Another dimension of the evangelism committee is its make-up. Does the committee reflect who we are as a congregation or who we would like to reach? Most growing churches have discovered ways to remove barriers that prevent people from either visiting the first time or those that prevent them from returning and getting involved. Typically, these congregations rely heavily on the input of the newest members, and those members of groups they are actively seeking, but who have little or no active participation in the congregation at present. For example, a church actively seeking the so called "Baby Busters" would do well to have those people well represented on the Team. Committees on Evangelism, Marketing or Church Growth should be made up of people with a passion for the church and its ministry. They should view the committee and its work as the most vital in the life of the church.

Where are your congregation's best leaders to be found? Pastor Parish, Education, Finance, Trustees? Leadership tends to be a limited resource in most congregations. Where we choose to spend that resource gives a fairly clear picture of what is important to the congregation.

Let the mission statement of the marketing team reflect its overall commitment to equipping the congregation for marketing (evangelism) rather than doing it for the church members. "Every member in ministry" can be understood as "Every member in marketing."