Like young David, the disciples and many others throughout history, God sometimes uses ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary tasks. And at times, the events they set in motion lead to major Christian movements, which see great numbers of people come to Christ.
But can this kind of progress be made with today’s believers?
The North American Mission Board (NAMB) says it’s just a matter of obedience and paying attention.
“We are reaching less than one-fourth of 1 percent of people in North America, and I wonder if it is because the world as we know it has changed,” John M. Bailey, team leader of NAMB’s resource development and delivery team, told leaders assembled for church-planting training at Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega earlier this year. “We have people blindness. We need to see the harvest. … It requires us stopping and seeing if they believe in God and asking what god? A few more verses won’t work (for some).”
Instead of doing church as usual, Bailey and Kenny Rains, NAMB consultant for the field services team, encouraged Alabama Baptist leaders to live like missionaries in their communities using a new evangelism approach called Epoch.
According to NAMB, an epoch is “an extended period of time ushered in by the brokenness and faithful praying of God’s people, which results in the sending of everyday Christ followers into the harvest to make disciples and establish relationship-based faith communities that result in lost people coming to know Christ.”
But seeing another “epoch of spiritual awakening” does not require a new strategy or resource.
“We must spend time with our Creator,” NAMB’s Epoch implementation guide posits. “We must express our brokenness and sorrow over the spiritual condition of our nation. We must repent and turn from our wicked ways and acknowledge our helplessness. Then — only then — will God break into human history, restore His church and heal His land.”
Similar to the international evangelism and church-planting strategies, NAMB suggests believers implement the following eight components to “make disciples and establish relationship-based faith communities.”
– Form a small team with a shared passion for disciple-making.
– Identify a particular place or people group that needs the gospel.
– Find receptive people and try to understand their culture, beliefs, values and perceptions of Christians and Christianity.
– Live a Christlike life while using the skills and approaches of a missionary to reach people with the gospel.
Rains said he looks for ways he can integrate his personal story of what Christ has done for him. “This is a systematic approach, not a hook-line-and-sinker approach.”
– Create environments that connect people and build community.
– Make disciples who multiply themselves.
– Gather people and form relationship-based faith communities for God’s worship and glory. Be aware that these gatherings may look different in every faith community.
– Multiply disciples, leaders, ministers and churches.
Bailey said an epoch requires “a lifestyle driven by the Holy Spirit.”
“We’ve turned Christianity into a lesson to be learned instead of a life to be lived,” he said. “We have overorganized and removed the Holy Spirit. … We need to assess our communities and make adjustments.
When we begin to ask each other, ‘Where are you spiritually?,’ and let that be the barometer, our churches will change.”
Bailey advised church leaders not to define success by numbers.
“We need to redefine success,” he said. “It doesn’t matter about numbers. What matters is that lives are changed.”
For more information on Epoch, call 770-410-6223 or visit www.churchplantingvillage.net/epoch.
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