Organic Outreach for Churches

Kevin G. Harney

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780310566083
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

Nearly all churches and ministries consider themselves dedicated to evangelism, and many explicitly include outreach in their mission statements. But few are actually bearing fruit.

Kevin Harney diagnoses this problem and offers guidance for multiplying the outreach impact of churches.

Organic Outreach for Churches provides direction for local congregations to weave evangelism into the fabric of the church. Commitment to the Great Commission is not simply about sending money and prayers to missions or holding occasional events to reach out (although these things are good). Organic outreach happens when evangelistic vision and action become the domain of every ministry and the commitment of every person in the congregation. This will not happen accidentally. There is huge spiritual and practical resistance to such changes. But the only way evangelism will become an organic part of a church is when every leader and each member is gripped by a commitment to proclaiming the gospel.

This book is a roadmap for pastors and leaders who wish to infuse evangelistic passion into every aspect of their church's life.

Part One

THE HEART OF YOUR CONGREGATION

Chapter One

Loving God
Without This, Nothing Else Matters

Love for God is the foundation of organic outreach. If we fail to love God, he will not draw people to our church. When we love God passionately, he will entrust people to our congregation so we can lavish them with his grace.

A person is lying on a surgical table. It’s the moment of crisis. Doctors and nurses are working frantically to save a life. But it’s clear they are losing their patient. Next to the operating table, the EKG shows the patient’s heartbeat.

It is erratic.

It is fading.

It is gone.

A loud, high-pitched drone sounds, and a flat line appears on the monitor.

The heart has stopped.

Instead of giving up, the medical team increases its activity. The head doctor calls for a crash cart. Paddles are amped up with electrical current and pressed against the patient’s chest. The doctor calls, “Clear!” and shocks the patient’s heart.

All eyes again turn toward the monitor with anticipation, fear, and hope.

Nothing.

Still, the doctor is not ready to give up.

“Clear!”

Again, current is sent through the heart. All eyes turn toward the monitor. A flat line is all they see, and the high-pitched drone is still all they can hear.

Then, after what seems an eternity, a single beep. Suddenly, there is an upward line on the monitor. Then another, and another. The heart is beating once again.

Blood is flowing.

A life has been saved.

WHEN GOD LOOKS AT YOUR HEART

When God looks at his bride, the church, he longs for her to have a healthy heartbeat. He wants our hearts to beat with his love for the lost, and he longs for evangelistic passion to flow through our veins. The Maker of heaven and earth wants to see each and every church alive with love for the lost and engaged in reaching out with the message and grace of Jesus in natural, organic ways.

God wants to draw people into our fellowship with the assurance that they will be embraced by grace and introduced to the Savior, Jesus. But this can happen only when the people in our church are deeply in love with God.

When we are, our heartbeat is strong.

When we do not love God, it is difficult for us to love others.

As God looks at the spiritual monitor that registers the evangelistic heartbeat of a church, he sees one of several different patterns. What do you think God sees when he looks at your church?

FLAT LINE

Some churches have a loud, high drone and a flat line on their heart monitor. There is no love for God, nor is there a relentless love for the lost. These churches are closed off to visitors, their community, and the world. They don’t reach out or train their members to share Jesus’ love. Prayer for their community is nonexistent. There was a heartbeat at some time in the distant past, but today the church is flatlining.

If this describes your church, don’t lose hope! We believe in a God who can raise the dead. Heaven is watching your church’s heart monitor, and the Spirit of God is always ready to send a pulse of heavenly energy into your congregation’s heart to bring it back to life. There are tools God can press against your heart to bring a new season of evangelistic life to your church. God is ready to return your church to her first love, Jesus Christ.¹ And the Holy Spirit is ready to move your church from apathy to passion.²

WEAK PULSE

Sometimes when a doctor checks for a pulse, he’ll say, “I have a pulse, but it’s weak.” There is still life in the body, but action needs to be taken quickly to sustain it.

Many churches have a pulse and there is life, but it’s faint. There is love for God and for people, but it is waning.

If this is a picture of your church, be honest and admit it. You might have a map on a wall somewhere with several pins showing where you send money to support missionaries. You might do an event or two each year that “spiritual seekers” are welcome to attend. You might even try to be friendly if a guest or visitor happens to wander into your church on a Sunday morning.

But honestly, your passion for outreach is gone.

Your church lacks a desperate love for God that will drive you into the world with his good news. You are nice to people who visit your church, but you don’t go out of your way to reach those who are far from God. You send money overseas, but you don’t engage the mission field right next door.

If this describes your congregation, you too need to fall in love with God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — all over again. Yes, you still care. You love God, and you love people. But it is time to rehabilitate your congregation’s heart.

Some key exercises can fortify your heart and make it beat strongly again. The heart is a muscle, and if you exercise it, it becomes stronger. There are ways you can strengthen your church’s heart, practical things you can do to increase your love for God and for the world. At the end of each chapter of this book, you will find some activities designed for that purpose.

RAPID HEARTBEAT

Sometimes a heart races wildly. This can be very dangerous, because if a person’s heart pumps too fast for too long, it can lead to cardiac arrest and eventually death.

Some churches’ monitor shows that their heart is beating two or three times faster than a healthy heart. Because these churches love God and want to be faithful to his love for lost people, they launch outreach program after outreach program and initiative after initiative. Church members grow tired and exhausted, as the congregation jumps into the latest evangelistic fads.

Outreach is not organic in a church like this. Instead, it feels fabricated and inauthentic. While the motives are right, the practice of outreach is so forced that it fails to bear much fruit. Churches like this often experience frustration when they try lots of programs but never find something that works. They invest lots of money and time, and they genuinely love God, but lost people rarely come to know and embrace Jesus.

Some years ago, my brother-in-law ended up in the hospital because his heart started racing. It wouldn’t stop, and the doctors found that it was beating far too rapidly. Eventually, a medical team had to shock his heart to slow it down to a healthy rhythm. When the medical team pressed the paddles to his chest and sent an electrical current through his body, his heart slowed and once again beat at a normal pace.

Some churches need to love God enough to slow down. If they want to establish an organic culture of outreach, they need to do less to accomplish more. Better yet, they need to channel their energy, time, and resources into a sustainable approach to churchwide evangelism. Whatever the condition of your church’s heart, know that God is ready to increase your love quotient. Evangelism is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s not a fad; it’s the fabric of a healthy church. It is not a system or a program; it’s the natural fruit of a church that loves God.

GETTING BACK TO YOUR FIRST LOVE

The first and most critical step a church needs to take to move toward healthy outreach is to develop a growing love for God. In the book of Revelation, Jesus says to the church of Ephesus, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.”³ Whenever our love for God ceases to be first place in our hearts, our vision for reaching out wanes.

Jesus made this clear when he taught his disciples that the first and most important of all the commandments is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”⁴ This is not just our calling as individual followers of Christ; it is also our calling as a church. If we forget our first love, our collective heart will grow cold, and nothing that we do will have the impact we desire.

Loving God does not begin with our own efforts. It is based on the awareness that God was passionately seeking us long before we ever sought him. In the letter of First John, we find a powerful tutorial on the love of God. We learn, first and foremost, that God is love. Because of his love for us, we can become children of God. The depth of the Father’s love was revealed when he sent his only Son to this earth to die in our place, on the cross, for our sins. As we are grounded in God’s love for us and as we learn to walk in this love, we will continue to grow in our love for people and for God.⁵

If your church is struggling to invest in reaching your community and the world, ask yourself this question: are we a church that is on fire with a passion for God? If reaching out to others has been pushed to the back burner (or off the stove entirely), it probably won’t help to add some spice to the meal. You need to start by turning up the heat.

Maybe your church has lost its first love.

Remember, God so loved the world that he gave. ⁶ Love gives. And when a congregation’s heart pounds hard for God, we give of ourselves — our time, our resources, our lives — to love others.

Heart healthiness begins as we examine our love for God, both as individuals and as a church. And as we rediscover our first love — our passion for God — we repent and begin to do the things we used to do. We begin to love the world again and find our hearts stirred with longing for people to meet the great Savior who has changed our lives.⁷ Reaching out to the lost with love is the organic overflowing of a heart that is intimate with God.

ORGANIC GARDENING

PREPARING THE SOIL

Gather a group of your church’s leaders and influencers to do a heart check. This group can include board members, Sunday school teachers, youth volunteers, staff, and anyone who helps give direction to the church. Read this chapter together and have an honest conversation about the heartbeat of the church. Focus on your church’s love for God and how this impacts your love for those who are not yet part of God’s family.

Identify whether your church’s heartbeat is flatlining, weak, rapid, or healthy.

• If your heart...