Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Missionize with the Missions Guys, a podcast of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention offering biblical and practical insight and strategies designed to equip and encourage missions leaders to carry on mission work. The goal is to fulfill the Great Commission from a church's local community to the ends of the earth. That is why we missionize.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Now.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Here are your hosts, the Missions guys, Sam Roberts and Quint Richie.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Welcome to Mission Eyes. This is Sam Roberts and with me is Clint Ritchie. And we are grateful for the opportunity that we have to host this podcast on everything about missions that we know, which I'm surprised. We're a year and a half into this thing right now, Clint, since I just said that, but we have quite a few, quite a few years of ministry experience as pastor. Some 50 plus years altogether and majority of that time the focus is on missions.
And one thing with that focus, as we've transitioned to our roles now at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, serving on our missions team is trying to find out how can we best help our churches develop a mission culture within the church.
One thing that Clint and I have done recently with other members of our team is we've developed a new workshop that we call Building a Mission Culture in the Local Church.
Been able to share that with a few associations, a couple associations so far, a couple of other churches that have had members of our team come in to discuss and lead that workshop where we're hearing some good reports. We got a few more of those scheduled coming up for the rest of the year. I'm excited about that workshop, Clint, and that goes right into what we want to talk about today. It's a topic we've addressed before and I just think it's really important. It's one of the most important topics that we can, that we can discuss when it comes to missions, and that is looking at the Great Commission and how do we move our congregation in that direction.
So developing that mission culture, just remind our listeners of what Jesus had to say.
All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations and baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and I am with you always to the end of the age.
The Great Commission is a foundation for everything that we do as a church in seeking to engage people with the gospel.
And so that's what developing a mission culture is all about.
It's engaging your community, engaging the state, the nation, the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One of those authors that both of us follow quite often is Chuck Lawless. And Chuck has an article that he entitles, 10 simple ways to begin reaching your community for Christ.
So we want to kind of talk a little bit back and forth on these simple ways that Chuck outlines for any leader within the church. Pastor, this is for you.
If you're struggling in putting together a mission strategy, developing a culture within the church that will help revitalize the church, we want to share these with you. And I'm sure we'll have the article in the show notes for this episode.
But the very first thing that Chuck says is, do a demographic study of your community, but then share the specific findings with your church.
Now, I think the second part of that is really important, Clint.
As Chuck points out, a lot of pastors do demographic studies, but they've been guilty of that, but they've been given to themselves. I've been guilty of that, been guilty of it myself.
I read this, and at first the only thing I read was, do a demographic study of your church, of the community, but then share the specific findings with your church. Why do you think it's important for a pastor to share the specific findings of a demographic study with the church?
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Well, I think it's a good reminder who actually lives in your community. You know, we get in our bubbles, and it doesn't matter what size your community is. We go to the same places. You know, we're in a small community, we're heading to the dollar store and the local mom and pop, the church and home, larger community. You may replace the dollar store with Walmart or have both of them, but we go to the same spots. And if we don't have people that we know in certain parts of our community, there's probably even certain parts we neglect. We don't even those segments of our community look like. So having a demographic study gives you and your church a picture of your community.
And it also, you know, when you look at that, yeah, there's a lot of numbers, but we know that those, those numbers mean people.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: And we have a pastor friend that did a demographic study recently and then went to ChatGPT and then put that in. And I don't understand all that stuff yet, but he asked Chat GPT to analyze that demographic profile against some research from the IMB on faith and mortality. And it, it put a picture, not just that you've got X amount of people here, but based upon their research, you've got X amount of people that don't have A relationship with the Lord.
And I think it even say no, they're say 10,000 kids that live in your five mile radius. And statistically, you know, 9,000 plus of those are not in a church. So it was really gave a very specific picture for that community.
Not just numbers of who lives there and what's their race and education things, but it gave a picture of. On a research based statistically, this is where they stand spiritually.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that, that's great stuff. And that just reminds us, you know, AI is something that scares us quite a bit.
And the older you are, the more, the more it does. But it's something that we don't necessarily have to fear. It's something we can leverage for the church and for the gospel and for evangelism and building a mission culture. That's a great example.
Now the mission team can help your church in obtaining demographic studies of your community. We have two of those that we provide for churches in our convention. And I'm sure if you're listening from another state, your state convention can do the same thing.
We do a ring study, R I N G which is a 1, 3 and 5 mile radius around the address that you provide for us.
That's your church address.
We'll do a 1, 3 and 5 mile radius study around the church, those rings. And that basically reflects census data that's been gathered in your community over the last census and then projected for the next five years or the next 10 years.
Great opportunity there of learning more about the community with who lives there.
And then we also provide a NAM demographic study from the North American Mission Board, which is kind of a tapestry study. It is really cool. Now this thing can be 75 to 80 pages long.
It is quite extensive and exhaustive.
It will describe in detail the kind of people that live in neighborhoods around your church in that community.
And it will list things similar to what you talked about just a second ago with the chat info.
It'll let you know how many people don't claim to be believers, how many folks or in other faith traditions.
It's just incredible data.
But the important thing, not only do a demographic study, but then as a pastor, share that with the congregation and find ways to share that with your mission team, with the leadership in the church, with the church at large.
Not saying take the NAM study and read every bit of it on a Sunday morning, you know, for your sermon, but you know, incorporate that data into, into the message about why is the gospel important, who lives here, who are our neighbors that we're trying to reach.
Because the more we know who lives there, the greater the possibility that love quotient for our neighbors is going to increase as well. So that's the first thing. It is to do a demographic study of your community and share those findings with your church.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: Let me say, if you are listening and need help getting that study, send us an email missionizebsc.org and we can have our ministry assistants work on that. And then we can look at that as well, see what input that we could give and help you to develop.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: That's at no cost.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: There are organizations out there, guys who, who will charge you 250, $400 to do this same thing and provide this same information that's at no cost to you. Just give us a call, let us know.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Second way to begin reaching your community for Christ is to ask a local police officer to take your leaders on a driving tour of your community.
We talked about that in early episodes of Riding with an officer and let them take you to places where they get the most calls. Again, that may be places that you don't visit regularly and may just really be ignored by the community as a whole, but specifically your church. And so if you can go with that police officer. But again, here is, you know, the number one was share the findings with your church. Well, this one is to take your leaders on a driving tour. You may have already done that as a leader, as a pastor, but get some other folks. I just encourage you. Don't everybody get in the back seat and go. That may start some rumors in town, but really they can help give you a different perspective of your community and your eyes will be open to the needs that exist.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And what you could do as well, instead of jumping into the patrol car, take your church van and ask an off duty officer to go along with you and just give you a tour through the city, through the community, in areas that you normally would not go.
I shared this in a previous episode, Clint but one of the most incredible ways my wife was an elementary school teacher while we lived in Stuttgart.
One of the most impactful activities that their principal had prior to school starting is putting every teacher on a school bus and then they drove through every one of the neighborhoods where the children came from, were transported from. And it opened the eyes of each teacher to say, now we know we know something about our students.
That's a great thing. Here's number three. Invite local school leaders to talk with your church.
We've talked about the importance of adopting a school, a classroom, a Particular grade. But being involved in local school, this is a way to bring that leader, whether it's a teacher, the superintendent, school board member, principal of the school, to come in and talk with your church.
Give them some time to say, these are the students.
These, these are the difficulties we face. These are the needs that we have. This is how your church can volunteer and help us in the best way possible.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. You know, especially when you don't have kids in a school or in the district as a whole, you can begin to forget the needs that exist. The, the kids that, that don't eat unless they're at school, but also the. The kids that could use tutoring help, kids that just need a mentor to come alongside. Those school leaders often know those things better than the rest of us.
Number four is invite leaders of ethnic churches in your community to speak to your church.
So you have these folks come in and they get to explain their culture, talk about the struggles that's in their culture, the needs that exist, and also the lostness that exists in their culture. And it helps your church see the nations that are living among them now. Also say, if you don't have an ethnic church in your community, why is that?
Could it be that you've got a segment of your community that no one's reaching, may speak a different language, and you need to look at planning a church, starting a church there in your community, or may just be a couple of families that work in a local business or own a local business.
Maybe you need to put an effort on reaching them and learning their culture in ways that you can minister to them and others that are like them.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: That's a great idea. Hey, here's number five.
Map the homes of your church members so they can see their great commission assignment.
We've visited several of our pastor friends who, in a conference room, office, whatever it may be. On the wall would have a huge, huge map of the community. Not a small thing they printed, but a large map, the whole wall.
And on that they would have certain color pins.
Some of those pins would be for folks who have visited the church that don't have a church home.
Maybe they're folks they've discovered during a prayer walk or whatever it may be or activities, the church sponsors. But they would also have a color pen for where their members lived, which let you know, hey, these are the folks in the church, my brothers and sisters who live close to me, that we can work together to adopt this particular area of our neighborhood, of our community, of our city and it can also indicate some areas where you don't have a presence as the church. If there's a large segment there and you've got no members who live there, then maybe that's going to be a trigger for having some kind of outreach activity, doing a prayer walk, whatever it may be in that area. But that visual is an important component of a mission strategy and just engaging the church in the mission, in the community.
[00:16:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I've seen guys that will even take that and then begin to challenge their people in their church to get to know their neighbors, share the gospel with their neighbors, and then maybe they take a different kind of a pen to identify where they've had gospel conversations.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: And.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: And so you get to see how you are really reaching your community and living out your faith where you live.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: And then how cool is it when you're able to take one of those pins and change it to the color that this person is now a member of the family here at the church.
Chuck also says under this show your folks that it's not an accident. They live where they live.
They need to love, pray for and reach out to their neighbors. That's a great point.
[00:17:15] Speaker C: That's right. And number six is, he says to do community prayer surveys. Again, a simple way to begin to reach your community is to do a prayer survey. We mentioned a lot about prayer walking. This goes beyond prayer walking. This is engaging people and asking them, how can we pray for you? This is asking that question of people you see at the grocery store, folks you work with, you go to school with, just people as you are interacting with them, asking them how you can pray. And he makes the statement, somebody will have a need that begins what could become a witnessing relationship. I mean, you want to discover the brokenness, see the brokenness in people, ask them how you can pray for them, and you'll begin to hear that brokenness, hear their stories, you can encourage them, pray for them, and it'll give you opportunities to share the gospel.
And I would say as you record those, it can revolutionize your Wednesday night prayer meeting or your small group prayer time anytime when you can go in and say, you know what, I was at the grocery store the day and I met someone. Ask them how we could pray or I could pray for them. And this is what they told me. And I want to ask you guys to join me in that, where it's just more than one person, but a group of folks praying. And so do community prayer surveys and pass those prayer requests and use that as you're creating A culture of prayer in your church.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: One thing that we added to this in Stuttgart, we did this several times in different communities in our neighborhood, in our city. And one thing that we added to this, Clint, we had just a small gift that we took with us. You know, I remember one year we did just a small 8 ounce plastic cup that had the insignia of the church and that sort of thing. Some little candies inside there, knocked on the door, just said, hey, we're from First Baptist Church and we're just in our community asking how we can pray for our neighbors.
Is there a way that we can pray for you? No. No strings attached. We're not trying to sell anything. We're not trying to gain information from you. We just want to pray for you. And we've got a gift for you as well. And it opened so many doors for incredible times of prayer, for some witnessing opportunities, but also gave us the opportunity to discover some other brothers and sisters who lived in those communities that may go to other churches. And so relationships begin to develop there too. That's right. Incredible.
Number seven lead members to develop a prayer list of non believers.
And Chuck basically says a good starting point is to try to get everybody to identify five lost people in their life that they can begin interceding for.
Now we have.
I've got some information. I've shared this before on a previous podcast that I put together during the last church that I served as a pastor there in Stuttgart on how to pray for our friends, relatives, associates, neighbors, the Franz F R A N in our life.
It's one thing to identify, it's another thing to say, okay, I'm gonna begin praying for them in these particular ways. And so if you'd like any of that information, just shoot us an email, mission eyes bsc.org or contact me directly and I'd be happy to get that to you. But developing a prayer list of non believers. Start with five.
And Chuck says your church will begin developing an outward focus.
[00:21:09] Speaker C: Yeah, and God moves in response to his people praying.
Number eight is reach out to the nearest local university.
He says if it's within driving distance, connect with Christian ministries, they are asked to start one. If you're in Arkansas and there's a university near you and you need to know who the BCM director is and you need to have a good relationship with him is a great way to again reach your community for Christ.
You know, a lot of our listeners may not be near a university. My, my thought is, though, your students are going somewhere and plug them into the BCM and figure out ways that you can support that work, even from a distance. But most of us are within driving distance of a local university, and there is a way that you could minister to them. A lot of times international students specifically are seeking relationships. They may have different needs. You know, simply someone driving them to the airport when the opportunity they get to go home, or even carrying them to Walmart. And so it's a great opportunity to build relationships that lead to sharing the gospel and reaching your community for Christ.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: And I can guarantee you this, there is not a BCM director in the state of Arkansas that would refuse a local church that says, hey, we want to come in and provide a meal for your students.
We would love you.
So reach out to that local bcm. And just like we said, if that college that is close to you does not have a BCM presence, start one, talk to administration there and just say you want to do a meal for the students who commute in, you know, once a month or whatever it may be.
Provide an activity, provide snacks during those final, you know, the final weeks.
Just any way that you can plug in, hey, here's number nine.
Personally, increase your evangelistic efforts in your community.
Now, pastors, this speaks right to us.
And this is so important that we, we are going to spend another episode talking about this one and really diving a little deeper into this.
We talk a lot about revitalization, and you're going to hear a lot about that this coming year in Arkansas. A lot of state conventions already doing some renewal aspects, revitalization process within the state convention and churches.
And we've been working for an entire year on something we're calling Renew Arkansas that'll be rolled out during our annual meeting in October.
We talk a lot about revitalization.
And Clint, as you and I have discussed back and forth quite often, revitalization at the heart, it has got to involve the genuine worship of God, the proclamation of the gospel and the sharing of the gospel.
And the pastor has to model that.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: And that's what Chuck is talking about here. Increase your evangelistic efforts in your community.
He says all of us need evangelistic role models to inspire and equip us.
Be one of those role models for your church family. In other words, model the behavior that you expect from the congregation.
If you're going to preach evangelism and sharing the gospel with lost neighbors, Pastor, you got to do that as well. You've got to increase your evangelistic effort within the community.
[00:25:18] Speaker C: Yeah. And as we'll jump in that future episode, talking about that a little deeper, but it's. It's, you know, having those encounters and sharing about those encounters, not in a bragging way, but just an equipping way and a challenging way to the people that are listening to you weekend and week out. So, you know, the. That may have been. I don't know why they're watching them, the order he did, but that may have been number one on the list that, you know, we can do demographic studies and ride around the community with the police officer and map and all this stuff, but if we're not personally doing evangelism, none of that other stuff matters.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: It does not matter.
[00:26:00] Speaker C: You know, all that's important, it lays a good foundation for you. But it comes a point in time when we have to do something and we have to increase our efforts.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: And, guys, if you want to move the congregation in the direction of the Great Commission, then evangelism has got to be front and center. And that begins with you as the pastor.
[00:26:25] Speaker C: That's right.
And it may be just you to start off with, but if you reach someone and you begin to disciple them, you're going to be teaching them how to reproduce what God's done in their life and someone else. And it will catch on.
Hey, number 10, last one is send out your church as witnesses with a testimony. What he means by that is to take a Sunday morning and teach your people how to share their testimony simply and then challenge them to share that with someone that week. You know, he makes a statement, even if only 50% actually do it. That's a lot more outreach going on than the week before.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Exactly right.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: You know, a lot of our folks have a hard time telling their story, and it doesn't have to be anything elaborate. You know, used to we would talk about, you do it in two or three minutes. It was, what was your life like before Christ? What was your conversion experience? And what was your life like? Or what is your life like since? What difference has a relationship the Lord made?
That's not hard to do. That's telling your story.
And I think that is telling it concisely may be one of the biggest challenges. But to know we've got somebody's attention and we've got to keep that. We've got to tell it very succinctly. And so what was your life like before Christ? How did you come to know Christ? And what difference has that made in your life? Teach your people how to do that and then challenge them to go do it that week and to you know, have some accountability in there. Ask them. Ask somebody the next week to tell their story of what happened as a result of telling their conversion story. So very simply send out your church as a witness with a testimony and that'll make a difference. I think in the restaurants we go to Sunday at lunch, it's going to make a difference as we encounter folks all along the week. We'll see people differently when we're praying for them.
We know the needs that exist. We begin to pray and build relationships with folks who the opportunity will come to be a witness with our testimony.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: And one thing that we've seen just recently, Clint, is with our spring outreach strategy that we have each year around Easter where we incorporate serve local and Big Day and Arkansas Baptism Day.
Those three events this last year we were able to add a fourth. And that fourth was 3:16 on 3:16 preach John 3:16 on March 16th.
And to help with that, we developed a an evangelistic bracelet. The 316 bracelet that is available to any of our churches.
You can go on our website.
Clinton will give that to you in just a moment where you can find the link.
You can order those bracelets. We designed symbols to go along with telling the story.
And here's what we heard from quite a few churches that purchased those bracelets on 3 16. They gave those bracelets to each person in attendance. They preached a simple message on John 3:16 and then they shared how they could use this bracelet to share the gospel with someone else.
And we saw some tremendous response to that. I believe we're going to see baptism numbers increase this year because of that intentional emphasis on pastors standing in a pulpit and intentionally saying, hey folks, here's the gospel. And. And here's how you share the gospel.
[00:30:12] Speaker C: That's right. Yeah. I encourage you. If you haven't seen that resource, check out absc.org 316 bracelet. So just simple 316 bracelet.
And there is a way you can order those the same price that we get them. You can. There's some handouts, there's a video.
And we want to come alongside and help you train your people. Not just tell them to share the gospel, but show them how to do it in a very familiar verse in a very easy way. And again, it's all part of building a missions culture as we talk about the new training that we're doing. And it begins with some simple ways to look at reaching your community for Christ. Some simple things you can do that will create that culture and God bless us. I think when we're very intentional and being sure we're sharing the gospel.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And guys, if we can help you in any way with that building a mission culture in your church, just send us an email. We would love to talk with you. If you got some questions about what does that involve, what's expected of us, just give us a call, Send us an email. We'd love to sit down and talk with you to see if this is something that would help your church.
And if it does, hey, praise the Lord.
Would be grateful for the opportunity to share this information with you. That's been compiled from years and years of experience of helping churches engage the community and the world with the Gospel of Jesus.
So, hey, that's going to wrap it up for us today.
We're going to come back in a couple of weeks and we're going to look more closely, like we said, at that one area of modeling the behavior we expect on increasing our evangelistic effort within our community.
So, pastors, hey, come back in a couple of weeks. We're going to have new material for you then.
Have a great day, guys. We'll see you next time.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Thanks for joining the Missions guys today. If you liked what you heard, rate and review us on your favorite podcasting platform.
And to keep up with what is happening in Arkansas missions, visit absc.org missions.
