I remember listening to Wayne Cordeiro at a Global Leadership Summit talking about the moment that changed his life. He shared how he thought his job as a minister was to take God’s truth and give it to God’s people. But after having a mental breakdown he realized that his job as a minister was to take God’s truth, and put it into his own heart, before giving it to God’s people. God wanted to speak into his life as much as the lives of his congregation. That observation changed how I looked at my personal devotional time and my sermon preparation. It became not just a time to glean wisdom for others, but for God to speak into my life.

This idea of changing how we think about things has the potential not only to change our personal lives, but to change how we do church. Kevin Harney, in his book Organic Outreach for Churches talks about Seven Simple Mind Shifts That Unlock Outreach Potential (chapter 4). In fact, he wrote a whole book about this principle called Seismic Shifts. Over the next few weeks I want to look at how changing how we think about church can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of our churches.

From Random to Strategic

The first mind shift that Kevin talks about is from just doing life, to thinking strategically about how we reach out to the lost with the Good News of Jesus.

I’ve always loved reading the Bible, even as a teenager, but for most of my early life all it did was grow my knowledge of the Bible, it never really changed me. But after hearing Wayne Cordeiro I started thinking about reading the Bible in a whole new light. I stopped reading the Bible randomly and at random times, and instead I started reading the Bible systematically and at a specific time every day. Instead of just reading and moving on, I started writing down observations, and what God might be saying to me, and finally a prayer (Wayne Cordeiro calls this the SOAP method – Scripture, Observations, Application, and Prayer). Randomly reading the Bible didn’t change me, but now that I’m strategic in my Bible reading, God speaks to me every day.

The same is true when it comes to evangelism and outreach. The Apostle Paul tells us to, ‘Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. (Eph 6:11)’ We need to prepare ourselves to face spiritual opposition. In fact, Paul tells us to put on as shoes, ‘the readiness given by the gospel of peace. (Eph 6:15)’ We need to be ready with the gospel. Satan is quite happy for us to stay in our holy little huddles, or to just muddle our way through life, but the one thing he hates is when the church becomes strategic in proclaiming the gospel.

We plan our sermon series, we are strategic in our preaching. We plan our Sunday school lessons and catechism classes, we are strategic in discipling our children. We plan our Sunday morning services and our songs, we are strategic in our worship. But when it comes to evangelism and proclaiming the gospel we don’t really have a plan, we aren’t strategic at all. And we wonder why we don’t see our family and friends giving their lives to Jesus, or why our church isn’t growing, or why our denomination is shrinking!

If we don’t plan for evangelism, it won’t happen. How are you and the leaders of your church thinking about reaching the lost with the gospel? How are you planning to evangelism those in your local community? How are you intentionally making outreach a part of your church culture? Don’t just be random when it comes to sharing the gospel, be strategic about it – think about it, plan it, review it, fine-tune it, try something different, be creative, don’t give up, rather give everything to save some (1 Cor 9:19-23). Whatever you do, don’t run aimlessly (1 Cor 9:26).