I am so thankful for the State Missions Offering! Through the gifts of Oklahoma Baptists, and beyond, we are able to provide more evangelism training and resources to assist the churches across our state in seeing souls saved and lives changed.

When we take the time to tune things up, which is often referred to as preventive maintenance, we can make things last longer and run smoother. This is a common practice for most people with cars, computers, sewing machines, etc. It should also be true for our evangelistic efforts as a church and individually.

Our evangelism needs a tune-up to make certain evangelism is running smooth in the church and in the individual lives of church members.

The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma (BGCO) Evangelism office is leading out in evangelism tune-ups beginning in August of 2017. 

This will be a threefold teaching that will be shared statewide with directors of missions, pastors and church leaders.

A breakdown of the first part can be found at www.baptistmessenger.com/first-person-evangelism-tune-up.

The second part will consist of a teaching titled, “How to get your church ready for company.”  If you have company coming over to your house, you probably don’t want to be in your pajamas when they arrive. The same can be said for church attendance. When company arrives, we want to have everything working and running smoothly. We wouldn’t want a family to show up with children and not have anyone ready to teach.

I am not aware of any church that can grow without having guests. Actually, a church cannot grow unless the guest returns and keeps coming. We need to ask ourselves, “What are we doing to reach out to guests who attend our church? What are we doing to keep them attending?” Some people might believe that they are doing enough to “get by.” However, is “getting by” the proper approach?

This teaching time will focus on multiple areas in the life of the church. We will process everything from audio to the manner in which we welcome guests.

Although this teaching will not be in depth, it will allow every participant to begin thinking and processing their own churches preparedness for company.

For more information please contact the BGCO Evangelism office. Email me at mnapier@bgco.org or Bettsy Yarbrough at byarbrough@bgco.org.  The third part of this series will be in a future edition of the Baptist Messenger.