I believe church health matters much more than church growth. Healthy churches grow. They grow stronger through worship, warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, and broader through ministry.
And they also grow larger through evangelism.
Healthy churches follow Jesus’ pattern by reaching out to new people with the Gospel.
Here are six evangelistic principles, modeled by Jesus, that will help your church reach new people.
1. Know who you’re trying to reach. No church can reach everyone. The moment you plan a worship service and pick a music style, you’re telling people who you’re trying to reach (and, conversely, who you’re not). If you try to reach everyone, you probably won’t reach anyone.
We know Jesus had a specific evangelistic target. He tells us that directly in Matthew 15:24: “I was sent only to help God’s lost sheep—the people of Israel” (NLT). Of course, that doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t love everyone. He did—and still does! But he was evangelistically targeting the lost sheep of Israel.
The same is true of Peter and Paul. Paul writes in Galatians 2:7, “Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility…
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