As a culture, we've become wary of making the ask. We're afraid of offending someone or pushing too hard, but often the response is, "I would have done it sooner, but no one asked me." Below are some ideas to help you make the ask to call people into life with God.
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Ways You Personally Can Practice Reaping

1. Share your personal faith story and ask for a response.
2. Write a reaping letter to a friend.
3. Share the “One-Verse” Gospel presentation from Romans 6:23.

Ways to Reap as a Small Group
Pick an activity that everyone in the group enjoys. This could include:

• A common interest event (e.g., sports events, shopping, meals, bowling, arts and crafts, board game nights
•  A thought-provoking movie

2. Share It Again
Maximize every opportunity for your friend to hear God’s truth and meet other Christ-followers. Remember, most people need to hear the Gospel seven times and know several Christians before they are ready to trust Christ.

3. Confess
We can plant seeds of God’s truth as we live out genuine Christianity by confessing our sins and seeking restoration in relationships.

• If you lose your temper, confess that it is wrong. Admit that as a Christian your display of unrighteous anger was not right.
• If you gossip or lie, confess your sin and ask for forgiveness from the person you wronged.
• Invite friends over to your home and include them in your time of prayer before a meal or a nightly Bible reading.

By modeling true Christianity, we help our spiritually lost friends see what it means to follow Christ. God has not called us to model perfection, but progress.

4. Listen
Get to know where your friends are coming from… what’s their story?

• What’s your most important relationship?
• Where do you turn for comfort when you’re lonely?
• Do you think it’s possible to have a friendship with God?
• Can I pray for you?
• What do you think happens after we die?
• Does God seem close to you, or far away, distant and impersonal?
• Was Jesus a liar, lunatic, legend or Lord?

5. Persevere
“Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.” 1 Timothy 4:15–16

Sharing what God has done in your life is a persuasive tool for communicating God’s truth.
Revelation 12:11 affirms the power of personal experience: “They overcame [the accuser] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” 

Hey everyone,
 
I was praying over you this morning, asking God to open up your church for new people whom God will bring to bless you.
 
I regularly keep my eye open for ideas and resources to help you. One of the resources I’ve been paying attention to lately are the videos from Pro Church Daily. These guys are worth listening to. They’re classic millennials. Working with churches is what they do. They keep things short, direct, and innovative.
 

This morning I watched their video “How to Reach People When You’re a Church of 50 or Less.” Here’s Brady’s phrase that caught my attention:
 
“If you want to get somewhere you’ve never been, you need to be willing to do things you’ve never done.”
 
Here are three statements we talk about within Kairos that help us take those steps that move us forward to growth:

1. I don’t know what to do. 
   This is a knowledge question. If we don’t know something, we can’t do it. The way beyond this is to open up our imagination through exposure to others. Become an explorer of what others are doing.
   
   
2. I don’t know how to do it. 
   This is an experience question. I find myself here a lot. I know about something, but I don’t know how to do it. The way through this is to partner with those who are doing what we want to do so we can learn from them.
   
   
3. I don’t want to do it.
   ​This is the motivation question—and it’s the tough one. Before we can make progress with this question we’ve got to investigate why we don’t want to do it. This takes courage because it often asks us to address our fears. Am I afraid to fail? Am I afraid of what it will require? Am I afraid how others will react? But it’s going to take courage to grow, so we might as well start it now.

 
Brady’s challenge is to make this year a year to try things out.

If you want to do it, but don't think you can go it alone, we're putting together a Spring Surge group to help each other through. Click here to download a Spring Surge Preview Calendar to see if it's something you're interested in.

Let’s do it!

 
Recently a group from our church attended the Discipleship.org conference. We engaged with about 1,400 other “Discipleship First” folks to be encouraged by brothers and sisters from around the world and to hear the ways they grow disciples who make disciples.
 
Here are 5 key points that I walked away with from the conference:

1. What’s your end result? Not every discipling process has the same end goal. Some processes focus on becoming an essential learner and doer of the word. Others focus on helping people be firmly rooted in faith. Others help with specific problem areas of life. Still others are aimed at those super disciples who are going to change the world. Know who the people are you will disciple and what you want to see Jesus accomplish in their lives for that specific period of time.

​2. The Word of God is powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrew 4:12). Make engagement with the Bible a central feature of your discipling process. What scriptures will you memorize together and why? What biblical readings will focus your attention?

3. The discipling leader sets the stage. As a discipler, you are inviting others to learn from your life. You determine the time, place, and the content. If they’re not willing to work with your schedule, they may not yet be ready to engage that level of discipling.

4. Discipling is best done in groups of 3 to 5 people of the same gender. The focus is on obeying scripture and reflecting on the interaction between scripture and doing. Being small in number and gender specific allows a greater flow of interaction, confession and accountability.

5. Any plan is more effective than no plan. There were 18 tracks at the 2018 Discipleship Conference, each led by a group with disciple making as their goal. Here are 3 of the plans presented:​

1. SOAP journaling method:  Scripture to read and write (about 10-minutes worth), Observations (what do people notice?), Application (what will they commit to do?) and Prayer (what do they need to pray to obey?)
2. HEAR journaling method by Robby Gallaty: Highlight, Explain, Apply, and Respond.
3. DBS (Discovery Bible Study). A simple discussion format that reads the text 3 times, then asks what it says about God, people, and what will we commit to do? 

What struck me is that discipling doesn’t need to be hard; it needs to done! Who will you disciple?

Does your church have a podium or a stage?
 
That may seem like a strange question, but it is important if your church is going to attract and hold 21st century people. One of the major concepts that drive 21st churches is that worship is an experience—not a service. Services are by nature stable events that follow a standard, non-changing script. Experiences, on the other hand, are intended to be adaptive, creative and designed to communicate a story.
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In many cases, the time prior to the evangelistic event is as important as the event itself.  This is your chance to train church members and have them identify and pray for their spiritually lost friends.

TO PREPARE YOUR CHURCH:
Communicate the Outreach Core Values. You might want to communicate that:

• We're holding this event to to help you share Christ with friends.
• Evangelism is a privilege and process. We'll be doing this regularly.
• Fruitfulness will be in proportion to faithful obedience and prayer.
• You(church members) are the best people to follow-up with new believers.

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​Help your people identify the spiritually lost that are in the natural path of their life.

• Give each person a 3 x 5 card and have them identify four non-Christian peers.
• Train them how to evaluate their effectiveness at the event by PAC(ing) it!

1. PRAY before and during the event for God’s work in the lives of our non-believing friends and for God’s help to genuinely express His love to those present.
2. ASK a conversational question of nonbeliever in attendance that will help you either cultivate, plant, or reap in that relationship.
3. CHALLENGE non-Christians to take their next step in yielding to Christ.  It may be just to come back next week or to consider thoughtfully the topic of the event.

 
IF THEIR FRIENDS COME, THEY NEED TO . . .

1. Pray during the event for their friend.
2. Introduce their friend to other church members, leaders and ministry staff, where applicable.
3. Be sensitive to where their friends are spiritually.
4. Be willing to ask a conversational question and challenge their friend forward in their relationship with Christ.
5. Enjoy the event.

 
IF THEIR FRIENDS DON'T COME, THEY CAN . . .

1. Pray during the event for all the guests.
2. Meet others’ friends and be genuinely friendly.
3. Serve others by helping out with details during the outreach.
4. Enjoy the event.
5. Be open to helping someone share Christ during the interaction time following the message-as God the opportunity.

In 2012 my wife, Katie, and I went through a Discovery Lab, our assessment event for potential church planters. Since then I’ve learned some about how other networks assess planters. It’s been interesting to see how much we have in common.Most assessment processes start with Chuck Ridley’s Church Planter Profile. He pinpointed 13 characteristics of successful church planters. He refers to the first six as “knock out factors,” or non negotiable.
I’ve always been drawn to church planting even though my training and most of my experience is in campus ministry. Really, it’s amazing how much overlap there is between the two. You see it when you get into Ridley’s competencies.
Church planters are missionaries. Campus ministers should approach their work with the same mentality. In fact, I think the six non-negotiables for church planters exist for campus ministers as well.
They are…

Preaching to the context of unbelief has not been normal. Try to find a book on the topic. Google: Preaching to Unbelief. You won't find much. Yet in our country where the Nones (those religiously unaffiliated) are the fastest growing segment of religious identification if we don't learn how to preach to unbelief we will lose our voice in society.
I was thoroughly schooled to preach to belief: 1) begin with the propositional truth of the biblical text, 2) describe and explain that truth to the audience, 3) illustrate that truth in action. That was the bones of the sermon. Deeper than this sermon structure is the sermon purpose. In preaching to belief the purpose is to confirm the already existing belief of the audience. We want our people to leave the worship experience confident in their belief and affirmed that they are right. But what happens today when people do not believe our presuppositions about God, Jesus, or the Bible? How do we connect with them in a way that recognizes their unbelief and provides room for us to engage one another around the question of belief? This is where preaching to unbelief enters.

​Here are 4 keys to help you explore the idea of preaching to unbelief:

1. Begin with a question. Where preaching to belief begins with a truth proposition preaching to unbelief begins by uncovering the question of unbelief. This may be the most challenging of these 4 keys because it means, as the spiritual guide, we must first explore our own unbelief. What in the biblical text do we find ourselves doubting? What is too hard to do? To difficult to understand? To good to be true? It takes courage to allow our own doubts arise so we can speak to them, but remind yourself that wherever your doubts lie many other people will have those same doubts. We must learn to cry out, "Lord! Help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24).
2. Don't assume knowledge. It is so easy for those of us who are preachers, who have dedicated ourselves to the biblical text or spent our lives in church pews, to forget that most people have little knowledge of the Bible. They don't know the stories. They don't know why this book has all these different chapters with funny names like 1 Thessalonians, Mark, or Philippians. And what in the world are these big and little numbers all over the page? People who are not yet believers need us to orient them, to give them background, to provide them a place to stand so they can engage the story of God.
3. Create a yearning future. Tim Keller describes the idea of defeater beliefs that keep people away from the gospel story. His conclusion is: A person must come to the point where he or she says, "that would be great if it were true--but is it?" As you preach to unbelief help your audience yearn for what could be. Help them see a future so appealing that they yearn for it to be true. Can a marriage actually be fulfilling? Can I really escape my addictions? Can life be worth living?
4. Ask them to test it. Every sermon is an invitation to test the Word of God to see if the God of the Word really is. If God is our creator, our Lord, the one who knows us better than any other, then what he says must make sense in life in some way. God's story challenges us. His call to our hearts is not shallow; it is a deep, powerful current pulling us deeper into Him. Invite your hearers to engage God. Ask them to try it out, to see what happens, then ask them to come back and share their experience of God. God is big enough to hear our questions. By asking people to test God you are giving God the space to work in their lives.

More people in America will be in church on Easter Sunday than any other Sunday of the year. Why? Easter represents spring, hope, and renewal. It's a time for family. And somewhere in the psyche of many Americans Easter still reminds them of church.
Still, consider that 39% of those who rarely attend religious services and 19% of those who only attend on religious holidays haven't decided if they will attend an Easter service or not. What can help them make that decision? You can--by inviting them to attend services with you.
Inviting people to a church service can be a scary thought for many people. Here's a few key steps to help your people gain confidence to invite their acquaintances to come to your Easter services.her with your church.

​1. Pray for the people by name before inviting them. Prayer turns God's attention to these people and opens their hearts to God. We believe that God works supernaturally to make people ready to receive our invitations.
2. Be specific. People really do need specific, accurate information to make decisions. Tell them what time to be ready, how long, and briefly what to expect. Church is a scary place for people who are not or have never been part of a church. Take the mystery out of the invitation by giving them a good idea of what they will experience. By doing this it also helps them know you are really serious about  your invitation. And don't forget to talk about how they can dress. Help them dress in a way that they will feel comfortable and not stick out abnormally at your church.
3. Pick them up at their house that morning and ride to church together. It's easy to just expect your guests to find their way, but how much better to make it a shared event. You, after all, are their guide for the day. Introduce them to people. Show them around. Minimize their fear and discomfort by being their tour guide to faith.
4. Put something in their hands. Even in our electronically saturated, social media world don't underestimate the power of a piece of paper stuck on the refrigerator. If your church has printed information cards great. Circle the date, time, and put your name and phone on it for your friend. If you don't have a printed card give them a handwritten note with the same information, the name of your church and when you'll come by to pick them up.
5. Arrange a time to visit with them later about their experience. This can be a phone call, a cup of coffee, a lunch date, or even a hallway conversation. Thank them again for coming. Ask them what stood out to them. Ask them what questions the experience raised in their minds (then be ready to listen carefully). Assume they do have questions so they won't feel awkward about not understanding everything. Finally, ask them how they might see themselves connecting furt

We don’t often put those three names together in the same sentence. Yet the idea of the third space—those places where community forms, distinguished from home (first space) and work (second space—is a powerful concept becoming part of the the conversation among those for whom church continues to be an important third space.
Yet somehow the idea of church as a third space doesn’t quite feel like it makes sense. Our church is currently exploring the idea of third space as part of our mission focus to “create places where people can experience life with God.” The conversation has raised questions like:
Can church be a third space and do we need a third space that is separate and distinct from church?
Ray Oldenburg, the popularizer of the third space idea, defines third spaces as those settings “beyond home and work in which people relax in good company and do so on a regular basis.”
Oldenburg suggests that third spaces are characterized by:

• Ready accessibility, they are welcoming, comfortable and easy to find
• Neutral ground, there is little or no obligation to a larger idea
• Conversation is the main activity: playful, witty, common and valued
• Wholesome atmosphere, they are not snobby, pretentious, or out of local character
• People whom you know come and go as they please

City planners and environmental designers also suggest that third spaces are places of food and drink, music and art, health and wellness.


Because of Starbucks we often identify coffee shops as the most common third places. But coffee shops are often not nearly as active third places as other opportunities. In our town the local Foundation of the Arts may be one of the most vibrant third places around. They have collected a great community of volunteers and attenders. Cafes and homegrown restaurants serve as third places. Sporting leagues, hobby clubs, and schools provide great third place opportunities. Service programs that serve people with specific needs—like reading programs, recovery groups, and food banks—often generate their own third place communities.
Can Church be a Third Place?
There’s a lot about church that characterizes it as a third place. In earlier years churches were main street institutions, sitting right downtown where they were daily entities as people worked, were schooled, and played. In fact, churches were often the center piece of social life. They were where you went to see friends, to engage in conversation, and to enjoy fellowship and entertainment. I think James Emery White is on the right track when he suggests that early Christians occupied third spaces such as the Jewish temple, the synagogues, and even the marketplaces of the first century world.
For those of us who are Christians church is one of our significant third places. Church is where we gather, we talk, we relax. In our large worship gatherings we find significance in numbers and outlets for our interests and needs. In our smaller gatherings we connect in relationships that are close and affirming. As I reflect on my life church has been my most significant and ever present third place experience.
Do we need a third space separate and distinct from church?
For the last thirty years or so our country has experienced a growing antagonism towards Christian faith with a commensurate barrier between those whom we would wish to influence towards Jesus and the very faith that gathers those of us who believe as church. Our church as third place is often considered hostile and neither welcoming or accessible to those not of our faith tribe. Faith removes the neutrality so essential to third place context.
If we are to gain the opportunity to influence those estranged to faith in Jesus most likely we are going to need to begin by engaging in their significant third places. Their third places are bridging opportunities where we get to know one another as we develop significant conversations. We’ve got to go to them, to their places and spaces, to build enough credibility to help them feel comfortable enough to come to our places.​