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How to Build a Church
with Soul Winning at
Public Events

Up-Dated - Friday, April 04, 2014

Table of Contents
* Using Public Events
* Touch Your Community
* Train Your People
* Coach Your People
* Guide Your People
* Summation

* No Short Cuts
* No Easy Fix
* No Smoke Screen

Just plain, honest explanations
* that make sense
* that are usable
* that cover all the problems
* that WORK in any
    - city
    - county
    - country
    - continent

Using Public Events

This is hands-on work.  Only the most fortunate pastors have someone to whom they can delegate this type of discipleship. 
* Those preachers are already on their way. 
* Their discipleship program is already functioning and vibrant. 
The rest of us have got to get it going.
- It cannot be preached into the membership. 
- It cannot be prayed into the people. 
- It cannot be Sunday Schooled or Wednesday Nighted into the saints.
- It cannot be conferenced into even the willing.

"But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith"  2 Timothy 3:10

Paul was known by what he said and backed it up with what he did.

A good way to start, especially if you are already a few years into your 40 to 50 year ministry, is to use Public Events as a spring board for many areas of evangelism.

* Touch your community
with a verbal and written witness

* Train your people
in how to relate the Gospel from the Bible or Tract

* Coach your people
in how to love your community

* Guide your people
at Public Events to Confidence, Boldness and Courage; so they can witness to their Friends, Family, Neighbors, Workmates and Schoolmates on a casual basis.

Every great church builder says these 5 people-groups are where real church growth is accomplished.

Now, how can Public Events help?

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Touching Your Community
with Tracts and a Witness.
This is the easiest part.  The Word of God is the most powerful way to Touch Your Community.  Accomplish this with a Tract or Witness.

If you have a church of 100 and each one gives someone a tract a week.  This would be 5200 per year.  Most churches would have to struggle to give out 5200 tracts.  Even then, most of them would be left for someone to pickup.  6 members at 2 parades per year could put out another 6000, doubling the total and every tract would be placed in a willing hand.

If the same 6 members worked 2 Festivals per year, they could get out another 5000, more than tripling the church's output.  And each one would be placed in receptive hands.

"Aha!  But how many are going on the ground."

Tracts laying on the ground are not indicative of reception, but of the kind of tract being distributed.

We gave out over 90,000 tracts last year, with less than 1/2 of 1% on the ground.  But we use a tract that people
* Receive
* Read
* Retain
* Redeemed, albeit, very few
(But since we are in the Public and see these people over and over, we are encouraged by this feed back)

Witness to the Lost.  Rent a booth at a festival or expo and many can be witnessed to, a good number will make a profession of faith.

"Aha! You didn't say 'saved'.  So all these people you are talking to are not getting saved."

We say that they made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ because we do not know who is getting saved and who is not.  God does the saving.  We do the telling.  We are certain, with 100% accuracy that everyone we tell, gets told.  Also, everyone you do not tell does not get told by you.

The logical question, at this point, is how can a bunch of folks who know nothing about soul winning get out all these tracts and witnesses?

"Patience."  We will get there.

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Train Your People
2 Parts
* Shift Leader
* Worker

Shift Leader
At any kind of an event you will want to split booth work into 2 or 3 or 4 shifts.  Do not assign shifts which have less than 3 hour duration.  Your members will say they can come for an hour or they will come when they can.  Do not fall for this trap.  Some will say that since the teens are so good at this, let them do it and the adults will support them.  Head off all these these objections ahead of time.  Do not wait until someone brings them up.  Negate them ahead.  Once verbalized, the slacker will defend them and become indignant.  If you head these off before hand, there will be much less adversity.

For each shift, you will need a shift leader.  If you are the only one who can do this, you will have to spend the entire day in the booth.  I have done it many, many times, 10 to 12 days at 12 hours per day. (at this writing, I am in my 60's)  Some folks want to get the Gospel out and some want to work for a while and then take it easy.  Pastors usually say that they did not have time to get their sermon together for Sunday and since Festivals, etc., always occur on Saturday, they will only be able to help for a while, if at all.  Others are more clever.  They will not help because they want their people to get the experience.  Sounds noble.  Maybe God does fall for that stuff?

Since you will likely be the shift leader, you will want to train at least one other.  This will take about 2 hours.  Most of this will be what not to do.  See our "Getting Them Seated" slide show to know what to do.  Contact us for additional questions by eMail at first, then we can give you our cell phone number for discussions.

The shift leader Greets, Meets and Seats prospects.  It looks and sounds like the most difficult part, but is the easiest, by far.  Not just for me, but for every single person who has attempted to learn it.  The whole booth operation hinges on the shift leader Greeting, Meeting and Seating prospects and the "Getting Them Seated" slide show reveals the simplicity of it all.

The shift leader uses 3 Questions to find people who want to see what it takes to be born again, then passes the prospect to the worker, who only shows him or her what the Bible says.

Workers
Most all your teenagers and adults can be trained in relating the Gospel from the Bible or a good tract or a "Cheat Sheet" in a couple of sessions.  This is where most soul winning seminars break down. 

Do not spend time showing your people how to Greet and Meet people for a witness. 
* The Illustrations sound good in class, but seldom work.
* The approaches are never appropriate.
* The warm-up always sounds phony.

Forget all that text book stuff.  Your people will love it in class, but hate it when practiced and will blame failures on you or your method.
"We tried that and it didn't work."

We have a simple list of verses with transitional statements and questions which makes the witness flow in normal progression.  Leading from sin to salvation and assurance ("Did they really get it?").

Since there is nothing to be memorized and it is all a logical presentation, the only part to get past is the initial fear.  Most of the 2 sessions is spent showing how there is something for everybody and relating what-not-to-do.

It will be almost exactly the same in class as in the booth.  This is why this method works for the shift leader and workers, where others fail.

There are 2 parts to soul winning.
1. Conversation which tries to get prospects in front of an open Bible.
2. Relating the Gospel from an open Bible.

Our Method has the Shift Leader do the first part up-front with 3 simple questions.  The workers do the second part at a table from a pre-written script.

It is much easier to train one person in seating prospects than scaring the whole church with the thought of having to do it.  The workers can use the above mentioned Cheat Sheet or Tract to read the Gospel to the prospects.  The larger the crowd the more opportunities they will have and the quicker they learn to do it smoothly, flowing from one point to the other in a logical progression.

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Coach Your People
in how to love the people of the Community

Since you will be at least one of the shift leaders, if not the only one, you will be able to see how your members react to the lost.  Do not let them criticize the unsaved.  They have been blinded by the devil.  How are they supposed to act?

Now you will begin to see the needs of your people.  How they should react.  How they should not react.  It will all become apparent.

Since you are there with them, say something very brief.  Coach, do not give them the graduate course.  Coaching is hands-on, while the players are suited out.  Do not say something to make your members defend what they said or did.  Just say it and leave it.  You also need to stay focused on the prospects going-by to Greet, Meet and Seat them.

Coach your workers in distributing tracts.  How to do it and not do it.  Praise everyone for good work.  Correct individuals, one at a time, quietly and quickly.  We have a simple method where we have 85% to 95% reception.

Coach your workers in closing the witness.  The hardest part for the worker is asking the prospect to pray.  A good "Cheat Sheet" will accomplish this.  Something like ...

"I think you see what I am talking about and I think you understand it."

"Yes."

"I think you know that just seeing or understanding this will not save anyone, you must actually do it.  I am sure you would want to do it, wouldn't you?"

"Yes."

"Let's pray."

I close over 90% of all the prospects I deal with, with these statements.  Sounding confident has a lot to do with it. 
* Practice gives the confidence. 
* Practice is available at Public Events.
* Practice imparts experience, the mother of knowledge, then courage.

Coach workers in booth activity. 
* Do not let sit and talk, even in slow times. 
* Do not let them complain about how many workers are in the booth. 
The more crowded it is the better.

People come up to our booth at almost every event and ask, "What are you doing here?  Why is there so many people here?"

It is like standing on a street corner and looking up at the sky.  After a moment or two, other will stop and begin looking up, too.  They want to see what you are doing.  The more that stop, the more apt that others will stop.

Where else are you going ...
* to talk to so many people
* have your workers witness to so many
* to be able to make corrections immediately
If there is more than 1 shift worker, you can sit and listen to workers witness and as soon as the prospect leaves, correct or praise or both.

You can easily see, how effective Public Event Ministry can ...
* get you in front of many, many people
* get your people to turn out for it
* get much practice time in
* get the Gospel in Witness or Tract to large numbers.
* get many names to follow-up and much practice in Discipleship

To use the vernacular it is a win-win situation.

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Guide Your People
to Confidence, Boldness, Courage

Guidance is accomplished in the booth and out.  Do it outside the booth, by finding an event every month or every other month.  So your workers can get lots of practice.  Doing the same thing over and over destroys fear. 
This is the beginning of ...
* confidence
* boldness
* courage
* knowledge

Not everyone in the church will volunteer at first, but as you come back from each event guide the workers to testify about their experiences.  This will inspire new workers.  But this will be very slow.  This is actually good, because you want the same workers to come again and again to build their confidence, boldness, courage and knowledge.
* Slowly over several years your church will become known as the soul winning church and your people as the ones who know how to tell people to be saved
* Slowly confidence in the use of the Bible will build to where workers feel they can talk to most anyone about Jesus Christ. 
* Slowly their boldness will mount up to where they can approach almost anyone with the Gospel. 
* Slowly their courage will build to where they can take their boldness and confidence anywhere.

This is when all the work begins to pay off.  Your workers will begin to talk to their ...
* Friends
* Family
* Neighbors
* Workmates
* Schoolmates

Very few people witnessed to at the Public Events will come to your church.  But the people your members know and win, are a lot more apt.  Everyone who has ever built a work of any size agrees.

Some object. 
"This is too long and slow of a process." 
Tell us about your better way.

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Summation
1. Train a shift leader to round up prospects
2. Train workers to witness to prospects
3. Use Public Events to get the Gospel to the community and put the training into motion
4. Workers will gain confidence, boldness and courage
5. After much, much witnessing, workers will begin to talk to people they know.

This Article is too short for details, so there will be many questions.  Contact Us by email for answers or ask for a phone number or leave your number to be called back. 

Do no let this sit.
This is a doable ministry.
There is much help.

This type of work has been done without outside help from us.  But in every occasion, they wished they had talked to us first.

Our ministry is a ministry.  We are not trying to make sales.  We do have items which can be bought or you can make or print yourself. 

We are a mission organization, so if you find it helpful to Christendom consider support:
* One time gift
* Monthly
* Prayerfully
* Join in

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Continue to Explore the same Subject
* eBooks
* Fairs & Festivals
* Flea Markets
* Follow-up
* Parades
* Public Events
* Salvation ... How, Testimonies, Assurance, more
   - Soul Winning
   - Public Events
   - Publishing ... Sermons, Illustrations, more

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G. Steven Andres
Psalms 45:17
Missionary Evangelist
Copyright - 1996 to 2010