One of the best after-effects of the pandemic for the church …

While in the depths of the pandemic, it was difficult for just about anyone to think something good could come out of the impact of a global pandemic that disrupted our lives more deeply than we could realize at the time.

Now that we’re starting to catch our stride into the “new normal,” one thing is increasingly clear. That is, one of the best after-effects of the pandemic for the church is rediscovering the essential need of evangelism as being central to the mission of the church.

That was not the reality of most local churches in America prior to the pandemic.

The essentialness of evangelism to the purpose and mission of the church is a lesson still being learned the hard way. Most churches are still reporting that attendance is only a portion of what it was before the onset of the pandemic. The two years of shutdowns and challenges from local, county, and state governments regarding the ability for churches to gather “in person” should have been a sobering lesson that church leader’s “addiction” to the attractional model had been a resounding failure for making disciples for a long time and being dependent on a building (a physical structure!) to “be” the church was a colossal failure that now demands change.

Now church leaders are beginning to realize many of the people who haven’t returned aren’t coming back, and if they’re going to get back to their pre-pandemic attendance or larger, they’re actually going to have to evangelize the lost to make new disciples. The attractional model will not work any longer as a “quasi reliable” means of filling buildings with faux disciples.

That should have never been acceptable anyway!

The path forward, the path of real “growth” or increasing attendance — the path of seeing lost people become genuine disciples of Jesus — requires evangelism. For our part, the Gospel must be proclaimed and then believed; the Holy Spirit has always been faithful to do His part of enabling faith, convicting of sin, and saving souls.

It’s good to see that a few more church leaders are beginning to inquire about evangelism, and consider that they may need to equip their church members in how to effectively share the Gospel with non-Christians, something a vast majority of churches and church leaders did NOT do — in any way — for years (even decades) prior to the pandemic.

How blind we’ve been!

And not everyone is yet seeing the essential need for evangelism.

But more are waking up, and if an after-effect of the pandemic is that the church finally sobers up and returns to its mission of going into the world and actually making disciples — which begins with evangelism — then we can redeem the experience of having gone through the pandemic.

One thing that concerns some church leaders is that, for most of their ministry career they have never “equipped the saints” in the area of evangelism, so they’re not familiar with how to do that. Scott Free Clinic can be a help in that area, as I’ve personally used a highly effective evangelistic tool, paired with a simple methodology, that thousands of others have also been trained in and has reaped a harvest of new disciples all around the world. I would be happy to connect you with the person who developed this evangelistic tool and methodology, or even provide the training as part of Scott Free Clinic’s free consulting service. Further, much of the training has been put online and is available for use by anyone at the “It’s All About Relationship” website which you find by clicking here.

Scotty