Reaching Our Community For Christ Pt. 3

Add that you are here tonight. And I appreciate that song their Victory in Jesus, you know this morning on the daily devotion. I said we were marching our way to heaven. We are Marching, we are on the way and once you put your hand to the plough, don't do what don't look back. That's exactly right. So, that's what we need to do. We need to put our hand to the plough and look straight ahead in so that we can plow some straight roads with the gospel event.

Today.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely, he did. That's right. That's something to celebrate. I know it's sad, but it's something to celebrate. This is and that's a and you going to be there one day with so it's not the end when someone passes if it's not the end just see you later. That's what it is. Well, tonight we want to continue vision2020 for the healthy Church initiative and I know we stopped off last week. I think I remember where we were. Let me give you a little Kind of what I'm thinking that we're going to do will do this tonight. And then next Wednesday night, We may be able to finish up this Outreach. So once we finish that, then we'll have to now we'll have this emulation down and the Outreach and so what I'm going to do is I'm not just going to continue on system after system. We're going to take a pause after we do the Outreach and we're going to try and Use this assimilation and Outreach for a big event. Say the end of September 1st of October. So we going to put into practice, what we're learning here. And that way, then we can kind of see how things are and then as we go on from there, then we can go on into our other system. So what we'll do is we'll finish this probably maybe next Wednesday night and and then we'll just get together and we'll discuss exactly what we need to do. I need to talk to the Deacon, some about the work that we going to do, still want everyone to be praying about, maybe something that you can do as far as, You know, we're going to need people to enter people's name into a fake life account and all that. So continue to pray about that. And what I'm going to do this fall is I'm going to do a series, probably only going to be five or six messages. I'm going to do a series on. I'm going to call it. God I need answers. And I'm going to ask some questions and answer those in my Thurman's. The first one will be Is God real, does he exist? Cuz if you have some people here, this unsaved. That's a question. They asked

Haha.

Right.

Yeah. How how old is he?

I know. But you know what, that shows that he's thinking about it, that shows that he, he asked that question because he's thinking about it. That's exactly what he sees you. He sees you and he, how does she do this? Why does she think like this? And so and and that's that's a good thing. That is a good, he he would be the perfect person that we want here. People who's at God I need some answers. You know, is God, real is, does he exist then we're going to talk about well if he exists and he is real, and if he did, if he does love us. What is my self-worth? What, what am I worth? Does? My life, even count? Does he have a plan or purpose? For me? Or am I just a number? So we'll answer that will probably answer why the good things happen to or why do bad things happen to good people? I'll answer that. So it'll be a five or six weeks series, but it's going to be a position toward those who may have questions, you know, those who may our are not safe, you know that have quiet, that's what it's going to be pushed towards. So, but when we stop this, in a couple of weeks, we can get all that down and and we'll talk about that together as well. Well, At 18 says this, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you should be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the Earth and Jesus walked. And he said, I got to pick me out 12 men that I can train for three years and so he comes up to Peter and a couple of them. And he says, come with me, I'm going to make you Fishers of Men because they were fishermen. He said I'm going to make you Fishers of Men. So that's what we're doing. That's what this 90 Day, prayer challenge is to get our hearts right toward those who don't know, the Lord, that's why we've been praying this prayer that the Lord will give us his heart for the lost and also give us his eyes. That's why I've been talked about on Sunday mornings, the last few Sundays, how we can see things well tonight. What I want us to do is I want us to pick up on your sheet there, how to invite your neighbors? Is that where we left off? Okay, how to invite your neighbors and the first little point there or not a point. But sin is every Church ought to have What did I put in your all to have? How many? Okay, that's how I normal on a normal good-sized church for 26 special or elevated weekends per year. Like a new series is starting a marriage conference, something like that. We can't do 4 to 6 to hear. So change that to 2 to 3. That would just be too much. We can't do 4. I mean, you'd be doing something that's like, every two months. If you do that, I still want to get in a routine of preaching to, you know, not just special things, but we'll talk more about that will ever Sunday out to be a good day to invite your unchurch guest. Because once we pray, this 90 Day, prayer Challenge, and once the Lord breaks our heart for the Lost, We can start going after those in our family. Like Miss Farrell, just mentioned when planning our services and inviting them to church, but sometimes what help is if we can plan events plan a new series and you do something around that, let's say four to six weeks out will start planning and will start inviting and we'll start going and giving people maybe look like little business cards like with our church name on it or maybe something with the series that I'm going to preach on. I'll have something like that, that you can hand the people and is it gets to three weeks away will put those out. I can I'll get Jenny if she would to put them on, but I'll paper clip onto the bulletin about 2 or something, just so that you will have this that you can use and pass out to people. But when you lie, Get these elevated days. Of course there's some days or some Sundays, that's better than others in the first three that you see their Easter Christmas? And Mother's Day. There you go. Easter Christmas and Mother's Day. Now Easter a lot of churches will have something special. Of course, there are a lot of bigger churches, do a lot of things at Easter. They'll have a program or drama or something like that. The same thing for Christmas. A lot of churches, have Christmas Eve services, which I think that's pretty good idea myself. But again, when you have a Christmas Eve service, you want something there it's going to be a play or drama or something like that. We're not there with the amount of people that we have yet. It would be hard for us to plan a Easter and a Christmas shebang if you want to call it that when we're so small. So what we want to do is we want to reach people, so people will come in and then maybe later on we can do something big on those days. they're so but one that we can do is Mother's Day We can do that because a lot of people will go to church on Mother's Day. So like I said, we'll probably have some invite cards or something that you can hand out, it would say something like, join us. Mother's Day at new Grace Church will have a little map service times on the card, our web address, email address, something like that, just trying to paint a verbal picture to your friends and acquaintances and neighbors that you going to hand this to

And in a lot of times and I try to do this on Sunday morning sometime, I don't know if you noticed it or not. Lot of times when I my sermon is over, I'll say something like well who can come back next week and I'll say a little something about next week's sermon. That's a that's a good thing to do. You don't have to tell the whole program, but just say something, you know, I hope you'll be back next week. I'm going to cover our topic. I think that will change your life. Well, that that the hair that gets my attention right there more so than I say, why hope you come back next week, cuz we're going to study. Do a geographical study of Jerusalem down to Jericho now. Who wants to see here? That nobody wants to hear that, but if you want to hear something that's going to change your life, people perk up. So just things like that. So when we come to our events, or when I'm going to start a new series, It's got to have a little and I don't I don't want to sound like a marketer. It has to have a little Sizzle to it. He's got to do things that lost, people think about. Just like is God real.

Is, does he have a plan or purpose? For me? Things that lost people think, and if you think about it, lost people have those questions. But we as Christians, we have the same question. So it's just things, you know, that we think about. So, save for Mother's Day in most churches, Mother's Day is the third highest attendance. On Mother's Day, you don't have to do a lot to get people to attend. Now, if we had some young families here, That had small children babies, you could schedule a baby dedication on Mother's Day. That way that young family is going to bring their baby to be dedicated. But not only that, that Mom, that little young mom and dad is not going to Mama's Church. Mama is going to come to their Church. To see that baby dedicated. So just a little things like that on Mother's Day have a a baby dedication. Katie, and Kevin Bentley. If we could do a baby dedication on Mother's Day, yeah, that that would be great because I'm sure somebody from their family would come. So if you, if you can you want to do things, you know, like that. And I'll tell you something else about Mother's Day. A lot of people don't think, but I thought about this You think of Mother's Day? What type of sermon should you preach on Mother's Day? What? Most time? I preach something about Mother's this year. I preached on how to honor your mother. You know, I'm, I was thinking of Mother's day, you'll have a lot of men here at church. That usually don't come to church. I think her Mother's Day y'all to do something, maybe I'll do something pointed at the family or maybe even pointed at men in particular. Do you know the most church is 68% of the people are women? 68% of people are, are women. So, so, the problem is on Mother's Day, that's the one day that wives, sometimes can get their husbands unchurched husbands to come to church. And now most men who don't come to church, they have a preconceived idea that church is for women. That's just the way that they think but then if you get them to come and you have a message kind of directed toward the family, or even directed toward them, what does men think about? Well I mean you know men they you know, they think about, you know, Sports in the business world. You know, I could have some type of sermon where you throw that in there, I think about hunting and killing things and do things like that. You know, is what men do you want? The kind of compliment them and thank them for being here and for being good providers and all like that. But for many of not be the only time you'll go to church that year. So you need something Evangelistic in that as well. So maybe on Mother's Day, It would be good to have a message directed toward me and cuz there's going to be a lot of men here that wouldn't normally be there. But then and also when we were when we were thinking about this, you can invent your own special day, doesn't have to be Easter Christmas Mother's Day. You could do a teacher appreciation day, Military. Appreciation day. Don't have to be a series. You can just do one sermon on this Sunday where other people will be here. Now, one thing that we used to do it at church that I Martha not went to is we had old fashioned day. Now, I don't know if she's seen my Facebook page, but there's a picture on there of me and Martha. Jacob and Craig, and Craig was one. Jacob was three. I was holding him. We all had our Garb on dress up old fashioned day and that was a lot of fun. They would put like, old-fashioned stuff up on the stage and the preacher would freeze with have a meal afterwards and things like that. Well that's something that we could do. Hear you say. Yeah. But that's not really pointing toward the lost people. This in our community here. We're we're surrounded by eight hundred thousand million dollar homes. Not many of them going to come to an old fashioned. A well that's okay. You don't have to have everything at your church directed toward the lost. You can do something directed toward those who are saved. And so we can have an old fashioned. A I remember the first year we were, here we go. I think we ate out here, and we playing cornhole in a bunch of stuff was going on. You can have that on a Saturday and then the next day, Sunday could be old-fashioned day. Did me and you ride the horses, one time. The truck. Yet we rode we had horses. We rode them to church cuz we were, we only live, a half a mile from church and we rode the horses that Sunday to church, you know. I doubt I'll be riding one here, but but anyway, it was, it was really good and people dressed up in the ladies were there, you know, their big hats and all one. If you saw the picture, how Martha was dressed a bonnet or whatever you want to call it, and But I think she still wear that dress. She had on in that was 20-something, okay? And she still wear it, I can guarantee. And I know I can't wear what I had on, so don't even ask me. But anyway, just something like that. We can make up our own day. Another one would be Vacation, Bible School. I know we had it the first year I was here, I believe, but we could do something, you know, Vacation Bible School. You can call it, whatever you can call it that and call it Kids Camp. Lot of times, they like to use the word Camp called, kids. Love to go to camp and parents like their kids to go to camp. And when you have something like that, you want to make sure that say for vacation. Bible school, did you have something for the adults? Cuz a lot of parents are just coming, dump their kids off, and then come back and get them. We'll have something for them. Or what could you have for them? Well, why the kids are back here studying and learning and making things? I can preach a series on parenting. That's another thing. Unbelievers and just people in general, they want to know more about. They want to know about how can I be a better parent. I've got a rebellious child or my terrible to lose, whatever it is parents won't help their constantly thinking about that. I know I told you the story of the church that went through this big neighborhood and they said, what is your greatest need? The greatest need not neighborhood with children to be potty trained. Party, who who would ever think of that you know but they sent out of cards at what's your greatest need and I'm bunch of young. Mom said potty training, don't know how I wish somebody would help me. It's just practical things. You know like that. So vacation, bible school that is a another day. It's now what disease, what we call a elevated days. What? What do they do? They just give us extra incentive. To go out and invite people. Now, don't get me wrong when I say we going to have these two or three days a year, don't think? Okay? Well we can just wrap up to these days and will invite people then, but then the rest of the year, we just kind of sat around and don't know. We invite every week, if you can see something to find the see somebody that, you know, or you run across them, you invite them every week. But this here just gives us the chance to wrap up and and invite a friend or so forth at a special a special time and then somehow, you know, to get out and serve the community. So let's look at some of the others here under number to how to invite your neighbors. I got there a while weekend that would just be something. If you have a special speaker, Or if you have someone come and say that's going to do a like a a four-part series conference maybe on Friday night, Saturday night or Saturday Sunday, something like that, we're not the size of church that we would do that now, but that's just a possibility later on. And then like I said, here teacher appreciation day maybe sometime in September when the school year starts military, appreciation day, whatever is big in this community. If this community are some little communities, have certain things that they, you know, who are really are really big, you know. So and how to expose lost gas to Grace and Truth. I think I talked about that last week. How we always show Grace first, and then speak truth, how to invite your neighbors to Christ. A a a is a public invitation. And that would be me, a course when I'm preaching, if they were here on a Sunday morning, I certainly when we have the special days, I certainly want to give a good invitation if we have people who are unchurched here and then be a private invitation that's when you just talked to him yourself and invite them to accept Christ how to grow new Believers. Well, that's start up. Start follow up immediately. If someone gets saved, we have to have a plan in place, a class in place that they can take next steps or first base, whatever you want to call it. We have to have something in place that we can. Help these new Christians to grow in their walk. You can't just Pat him on the back and hug your neck. Glad you got saved and then leave them by their self. You can't do that. That's that's just not, right? So we'll have to have a class or something for new Believers to go to both children and adults, we need both and that we can teach them the fundamentals of the faith, how to pray, tithing the holy spirit, all of that, they need to be taught elevated events. Schedule. Attractional, series not put their best. Did I put the best time September? In late, January. How about yours? Okay, Easter something like that and there I put create an invitation card. This is like a little business card that everybody needs to have 10 or 15 and just keep in your billfold. When you come across somebody, you can give them that, that would be an invitation to our church. But probably, if we have an attraction or series will have some cards with the actual series on it, and maybe the messages that I'm on a preach, and we can either give that to people or maybe we can use direct mail. If it's not too expensive and also, I'll be doing some Facebook ads as well. So that's how we can get the word out to the communities. If we want to get door hangers, we can, if you live in a neighborhood, you can go and other people's homes hanging on doorknobs. If there's plenty. Subdivisions around here whether you can go to him and do that, I'm not sure but still that is a bat is a another way. So But again, attractional series, it's got to be attractive. You know what? What do they want? What do non Christians or Christians really? What do they want help with? They want help with parenting, they won't help with marriage. They won't help with money with family, making wise decisions making their life. Everybody wants their life to count. I can remember when I used to work and I would think to myself what am I doing? I'm just living day to day. Just working. There's no meaning and purpose in my life at all. I can remember thinking that way and that's just the way, you know that I was people want their questions answered. How do you know it's real? How do, you know, godhra how do you know, all this is real. Well, people want answers to those questions in the good thing is the Bible, addresses, all of these issues that people face. So if I was going to do a series, I can say, God I need answers or raising raising great kids. How to build a better marriage, how to experience Financial Freedom? Just topics like that, that will catch people's attention. Say, yeah, you know, Rick Warren wrote a book called The Purpose Driven Life and so you can have a series of Purpose Driven Life. How do I find purpose in life, you know, you, you know, all of that. I was looking at a church that Martha. And I attended when we were in Hendersonville and I went online, I was looking at that church cuz I was wondering who the pastor was because the passion that was there. When we were he left, as I was researching that I found out that the pastor that was there when we did, he died about two months ago. He was only, I think it was Martha's Age and and he died, but they have a new pastor. Now at that church, and I went to their website and every time I go always, click on sermons that have to listen to a sermon just to see You know what, how he preaches and all. And so, as I was going to looking at the sermon, I looked at the title of it, the Sunday, the previous Sunday, I looked at the title and this was in the title.

Understanding the transformation that Paul experienced. In galatia. And I thought to myself, if I was looking at wanted to listen to a sermon and I saw that title, What I click on that. Listen to it, though. Know what, who cares about Paul's transformation in galatia? People don't come to church to hear about Paul's transformation. They come to church to hear about their own transformation. I want to be transformed, that could have been the greatest sermon ever. He could have titled it that and then talked about how God transforms up. It may have been a wonderful sermon but that title heck that I just wanted to email them, anonymously titles. Got to go, you, you can't, you can't you can't title message that, that tells people that this is just going to be a history lesson and who wants to come to church for a history lesson? You don't want that. You want something that you can apply and take out and live your life? That's what you want. So if you got to be, you got to be kind of a good Market or if you want to use that word, I hate to do that but it's an attraction or series run for 4 to 6. Weeks nothing longer than that, most of my series last 8 to 12 weeks because I do buy a book of the Bible or something like that, but this one here will only last five or six weeks at the most and of course, again, you can hand out these little cards or whatever on on that and then the wild weekends, we already talked about that. That probably wouldn't be. For us.

What's next on your

Create.

All right, let me look. And cry. That's that's where we are create. Elevated events. Yeah. Create an invitation card we already talked about that hose. Wow, weekends. And then number three, I may have put that I don't know if I did or not, church-wide campaigns but our church is small. So we're not going to we won't think about that.

Which one?

Wow, weekend host. Wow wow. That's like some big speaker to everybody knows all weekend. And and there's no traction on series, maybe sometime in the fall. This year, will do one in the fall. Late January is good Easter. That would probably be a good day to start a series. So we will, we will do that. These are just elevated days when you that you point to that, you can take six or seven weeks before it happens and really ramp up our inviting and things like that. So,

All right, and then the next one is, do you have something there that talks about Easter and cut? Now, what I did here on that one, is this comes from another church. I just looked at what they did. and I wrote this out, We wouldn't have to do it exactly like this. But this gives you an idea of how you want to ramp up. Let's just say if you're doing something Easter or Christmas or something like that, so Asus 7 weeks out. And what does that? What does that say? Does it say 7 by 7 or 3 by 3, by 3 by 3. So what that is 7 weeks out, three by three cards, right? Three names of three friends to pray for an invite to that service, where there is Easter Christmas, whatever it is. So you're 7 weeks out. So you're right three people's names on cards and those are the ones that you're going to pay for it. And those are the ones that you want the church to pray for. Now, this is now, this is 7 week, that's almost two months before your special service. Same thing with six weeks out for about three cards again. Then 5 weeks out, the random act of kindness cards. You got the suggestions did not print the suggestions and put in your hand out, okay? All of those things to, you know, when a good time is To reach people. When they're at home, one of the best times. Halloween day. Halloween date before before night, before the children, get out. And start going, parents are home getting candy and stuff like that, ready? And I was talking to a gentleman, I ate breakfast with him and he's at a big church over in Durham and he said, on Halloween day that a lot of their ladies get together. And each of McCook about 10 plates of cookies or whatever and they go throughout the neighborhood and give those give the candy and cookies to the parents before the children ever come out and said they fine people at home all the time and they just love to get that. I would have never thought that myself but Halloween Halloween day. So But anyway, are random acts of kindness bacon. Somebody something. Or you got the list there. I mean there's just a thousands of things that you can do 4 weeks out. Same thing 3 weeks out and you can put a banner or you know some side yard signs out here. If you're if it's BBS you can have a VBS sign or something like that. I think the the the where the line there is to fill in the blank that would be Recruitment and bumper stickers. We probably not going to do that now.

That's a bad storm in it. The bad one. Oh yeah. It is a good, right? I hope we getting it at our house. I didn't get any today. None whatsoever today.

G week before Invitational evangelism. Sermon for days out. We can scratch that that would be an early bird service for big churches on Easter launcher. Attractional series, that's what we've been talkin about day after Easter work, your simulation or whatever day it is a Christmas or whatever. This simulation what we've already talked about follow-up work your assimilation follow up the week after the event. If you have enough people to have small groups, you can launch that

And so that's just kind of an outline of when you're having a big event. What you do, starting at 7 weeks out, you don't have to go exactly by this, but just know that You can't just have, I can't come up here in and out that we going to have a big attractional series starting next week. I mean, we can't have this stuff has to be planned and it right yet. Got to be playing. You got to give people time enough to get out and, you know, talk to people and give them cards and things like that. So I think what we'll do is we'll close it right there tonight. When we come back next week to see next week we'll have a business meeting as well. So next week, I'll finish. A little bit about BBS and then the evangelism system won't take but about 10 or 15 minutes. So we should finish this next week and I may talk a little bit next week about how we going to do the Facebook ads, you know, and things of that nature. So I haven't getting antsy so I better. Pray course, we can't, we can't leave. Okay, not right now. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you, and praise and love you tonight. Lord for your word and Lord. As we continue to try to reach out and Garner a heart for the loss that you have Lori. We just pray that you would bless our endeavors. That everything that we do here would bring you honor and glory Lord. I don't want this to be overwhelming, we don't have to do every single thing that I have mentioned each. And every week we can start slowly with one or two things. But Lord, we just want you to know that we want to get out. And we want to reach this community for Christ door. We want men and women, boys and girls to be saved. And we ask that you would do a great work here at new Grace in Christ's name, I pray. Amen. O'Reilly.