Untitled Sermon

When it comes to evangelism we do not evaluate a plan by the desired product. That is the spirits work. Our desired product of course would be people coming to know Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior. What we want to do is have a plan that pushes us to work hard and smart at the process of evangelism. Often times as believers we want and desire for people to know who Jesus but we do not know how to accomplish this or where to start. The result of this is usually two problems we come to in discipleship: we either get hung up at one point, or we do not know what we should do next. So it is important for us to come up with a good plan or guideline to help keep us focused and motivated.

During my year long church planting internship in Taiwan we practiced one method that helped us with these problems, we called it, “funneling.” And no this is not a pyramid scheme in disguise this is just a set of reminders and targets to help us with discipleship. “funneling” is also no the only way to do anything. This is just a way that worked well for us and can be applied any where with all types of people.

We base the structure of this idea off of the reality that most people will not decide to follow Christ. As sad as that seems that is just the truth we see and read about in the Bible. So, if you want to make many disciples of Christ you need to share with as many people as you can. So we break the funnel down into three simple stages to remind us what we need to do: Top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. We will go into each one in detail shortly.

One of the benefits of using the “funnel method” is that we never hide who we are, nor do we betray peoples trust. We do not con people into anything, nor do we encourage ill-founded professions. As missionaries a common temptation, as special in persecuted countries such as China, is to not be honest with why they are in that country. For example they will say they are just there on business or maybe to teach English. Other things that can happen that we want to avoid is coning people. We do not want, for example, to tell people they can come over to our house for a get to gather to play board games, but when every comes over tell them they are actually there for a bible study. If you want to have a board game night then thats great and I think that is a great activity to do to get to know people but if you are having a board game night then actually have a board game night. So we want to be completely honest with who we are and what we plan to do.

As people are moving down your funnel they are becoming closer and closer to you sharing the Gospel with them in an understandable way. I also want to note that each step involves fewer people (thus a funnel). This helps you to know who to spend more of your time with. Those who are further down in the funnel are better candidates for spending your time with.