[0:02]
LifeWay Leadership Podcast Network. G'day, I'm Scott Sanders. And I'm Peter Blanche. Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid practical tip for gospel-centered ministry every week. We've just had a wonderful lunch, Pete. We have. We've had a whole bunch of sharing about parenting. And you've just shared a very interesting fact.

[0:33]
Which is? Your kids did not have a mobile phone. That's right. Fantastic. I love it. Yeah, for the listeners, it's worth, so year nine, year 11. The year 11 one's just got a phone just recently. Year nine kid, they had a question at school. Hands up if you've got a mobile phone. He was, every hand went up. Or hands up if you don't, he was only one of two kids that didn't put his hand up. Yeah, we are not going to go down that rabbit war enough. But it's just, you know, every day, just learning different facts and hearing different things.

[1:03]
Worthwhile, good discussions. I reckon that's an episode. Yep. Mobile phone use and your kids at some point in time. Now, the one thing is brought to you with thanks to Reach Australia. We want to see thousands of healthy evangelistic multiplying churches. And today's episode is focusing on the evangelistic part of our vision. We want to see healthy churches. We want to see particularly evangelistic churches and multiplying churches. But in terms of evangelistic, we want to see churches that are actually seeing first-time conversions. They're actually seeing people making decisions to follow Christ for the first time.

[1:37]
Generally, in our assessment consultation process, we want to see churches aiming for that sort of desired outcome of 5% of your average service attendance. So think a church of 200, you want to see 10 people each year coming to Christ. That's what you want to be praying for, working towards, thinking through how can we see 10 people make that first-time decision. But for now, you've pressed play on another episode of The One Thing. Reignite your conversion engine.

[2:09]
Reignite your conversion engine. Now, why are we talking about this, Pete? Well, I think it's worth just articulating what do we mean by conversion engine in the first place, Scott. Conversion engine is kind of a common way or a way of talking about an evangelistic course. Of course, we want to see people engage in personal evangelism. We want to see that happen enormously, left, right and centre. But it's interesting when you look at the NCLS data research that churches, in churches across our country, in Protestant churches, when the question is asked, are you feeling able, ready, prepared to talk to people about Jesus?

[2:47]
I think it's the last time I looked at it for this one, it was 19% of the average church family. And that's what they're ticking. I'm confident. Whether they're doing it or not, I reckon it's probably more like 10% or less. Which means there's huge amounts of church families who are not seriously engaging regularly in personal evangelism. We want to energize them for mission and having a course that they could invite people to. Gee, that's really going to leverage the 80, 70, 80, 90% of your church family to be actively engaged in mission in a way that they can actually pull off.

[3:24]
And a conversion engine, a course, that is critical to run to help. Yeah, so it's helpful. If I don't have a course, do I not have a conversion engine? You know, I guess that's kind of a question. When we do a pathway analysis, often, you know, we're helping people see someone walks into church and you need some way of sort of triaging them so they've got a next step. If they're a Christian or already Christian, you want to move them into your sort of integration engine, see them work out what does it mean to be part of this church family.

[3:55]
You want to help integrate them into the life of church. You know, that happens, can happen ad hoc. It can happen poorly. It can happen really in a functioning, structured way. But recognizing that every church has some sort of integration engine at a various stage of health. Likewise, if perhaps I don't have a course, I've still probably got a conversion engine there. It's just probably lying dormant. It's not functioning well. You know, people aren't, you know, able to move through it. So generally, if you're in a consult, if you're working with a church, what are kind of the building blocks or some of the key things you want to see in a conversion engine?

[4:32]
Yeah, yeah. This is often a question that gets asked because many churches, not every church, but many churches. Some churches are making great grounds in this area. You know, some churches, they haven't seen a first-time confession of faith for the last, I don't know, three, four, maybe five years. They're desperately keen to see that happen. Sometimes it feels to them like a bit of a chicken and a egg. They go, well, if I run a course and we haven't got anyone to come to it, what am I running it for? Therefore, I won't run it. But if they don't run it, then they can't get it off the ground. And it's that kind of, well, where do I start? Do I start with finding people to come to it?

[5:03]
Or do I start with putting the course on? One of the things we want to say is if you're running, it's hard to build it unless you actually get momentum in it, unless you have it going in the first place. So one of the things we say to people is get it off, actually reignite it, plan for it, set a date, set a time, build energy, build mission, heat around inviting people to it. But set a date and plan what you're going to do. Lock it into the calendar. You're not going to get any momentum in your conversion engine if you haven't got that first thing locked in.

[5:35]
Yeah. Now, that's helpful to see. Again, a lot of people might hear this and think, oh, it's just a course. What would we recommend your conversion in? Is your conversion in just one course? Yeah, of course, Scott. You've got the moment where the course runs and people come to Christ, or hopefully are going to come to Christ for the first time confession of faith. But I can't stop there, can I? You've actually got to ground someone solidly in the faith. It'd be a poor response to think, we're going to reignite our conversion engine and pay all this attention to the course we'll run or the how we'll run it,

[6:12]
but then pay no attention to all the follow-up work that needs to happen afterwards. And a conversion, well, reignite your conversion engine doesn't just mean find a course and run it. It does mean having helpfully good course running, which has appropriate long-term follow-up to ground people in the faith. So some people might be listening to this and might have a few objections. Let me give you the first one. You know, what you're talking about sounds really mechanical, and what I've seen, you know, the process of me coming to faith was actually quite, you know, organic.

[6:48]
And I went along to this. In fact, I just opened up my Bible, and there was a crisis moment. And I remembered and went to the Scriptures and made a decision to follow, you know, follow Jesus. Some cultures I had a dream, you know, and that pointed to Jesus, and then I went to church, and that's where I heard the gospel and made a decision to follow Jesus. You know, it sounds very mechanical, very process-like. So rather than being a mechanical thing, just run a course and it spits out first-time believers at the other end of it, it's actually trying to think through your church family.

[7:22]
We want to see as many people in our region converted. Some of that's going to happen through the personal evangelism. That's fantastic. If we've got 20% of our church family doing that, we're knocking that for six. But if we can also, not mechanically, but personally love the 80% of our church family and all their friends and family as well, and they now can engage deeply in mission with us because of the system we've set up. Then that's personally loving all their family and contacts and friends. It's not mechanical.

[7:52]
It's personal. Let me give you the second one. You can't just isolate one thing. You guys are always telling me I've got to think about the whole ecosystem and not just one aspect of it. It sounds like you're just asking me to commit to the one thing here. If I just get that one thing right, the whole thing will work. Scott, the whole ecosystem of church clearly really matters. It's like having a body, isn't it? If one part of your body is really strong but the rest of it's falling over, you still don't reach the finish line, right? You've got to have a whole church. That whole ecosystem going well actually feeds and grows the whole mission area.

[8:25]
Now, the last one. Our church just isn't big enough to have a conversion engine. Yeah, this is the context question. Don't hear this language and think this is big church only. No, no. Every church will have potentially 80% of its people or more who need a conversion engine in order for them to invite their friends and family to. If you're in a church of 30, that means probably 20 to 24 people in your church aren't going out there and personally evangelizing all their friends.

[8:56]
If you want to see their friends come to Jesus, having a course is something that you ought to consider. It's not just a big church thing. Of course, then you'll have to contextualize it. Where do we run it? How do we run it? How often do we run it? These questions are contextual. You want to be driven again by quality, reliability, consistency. Because you might need to only run it once or twice a year to have those things in place. And the reason I say those three words, quality, reliability, consistency, is because when you have those things in place in your church,

[9:28]
you know, if you're a conversion engine, the whole church family grows in the confidence to bring their friends and family to it. Because we don't just want it to be a one-off thing. We want this to be repeated a number of times every year to see a steady stream of conversions happening. Okay, so Pete, what are some simple steps just to reignite your conversion engine in 2023? Yeah, one of the simple steps is going to be the ecosystem. What I mean by that is you've got to pay close attention to the whole of church, not just to just one mission thing.

[10:05]
You've got to realize that one of the biggest connection events that you can have at church is your Sunday gathering. And if your Sunday gathering is something that your church family is very embarrassed to bring their friends and family to, then the idea that they're going to have confidence to then bring them to a conversion engine, that's in some ways a bigger jump. If you pay attention to just the gathering experience at your church and making it as friendly as possible for outsiders to be there, and as an enjoyable experience of hearing about Jesus in that context,

[10:37]
then the likelihood that they're going to come to a conversion engine where they're hearing, it's far more likely. Again, so paying attention to the community aspect of your church life, paying attention to the Sunday service, the gathering experience, this can all generate significant heat to see more people at your conversion engine. Yeah, great. So that's a good fact. Pay attention to the ecosystem. Pay attention to elements of church life that actually build mission heat. What's another thing to reignite? Well, another thing I think is to concentrate on the quality of your conversion engine before you concentrate,

[11:16]
say, on the quality of your contact events. So some churches will have a funnel approach. And I go, we need a big, wide funnel. We need to have all these contact events. They put a lot of effort and time into something like a gingerbread house event, or they put a lot of effort and time into a carols event. And they're looking to maximize their contacts, which is a good thing, and they ought to do. But if you spend all your time increasing the quality of your contact events, whereas the quality and enjoyment of and clarity of your conversion engine is just left by itself,

[11:49]
there's no point in having great contacts and not having a high-quality conversion engine. I would actually want to say concentrate a lot of your effort on making sure that your conversion engine is reliable, is predictable, and is of good enough quality that people come and love being there. Focus on getting that right first before you focus on your connection events. That's really helpful. One of the exercises we regularly challenge and ask churches to do is to sort of put together a calendar of kind of what's happening already.

[12:19]
Generally, we find there's actually lots of stuff happening in the community. There's also lots of stuff just happening in the regular church life that you can already jump on, give a bit of energy to, rather than necessarily starting more new things to keep complicating. What else? I was also going to say, one of the things when I talk about that quality and predictability and reliability, that's contextually driven. I don't want anyone in listening to this podcast to think, oh, well, what we're talking about is a big church that has a big conversion engine

[12:50]
and they've got a steady stream of unbelievers coming to it, and they can just roll that out every five weeks because there's so much interest and away they go. Now, you've got to think of your context. If you're in a big church and that's your context, by all means, definitely do that. But you've got to think of your context. Some of the people listening out here will be in churches of less than 100. There might only be 50 people at church. And the idea that you could run your conversion every five weeks and have enough people at it, that's just going to happen. But you've got to think, do I run this? What's my context?

[13:20]
Is the quality, reliability, predictability, do we maximize that in someone's house? Because that's really a nice place to go to. Or do we hire the local cafe and run it in a local cafe? Or what venue do we have? Think about those things. It's predictable. It's reliable. Our church family has confidence in it. It's a great experience. How can I produce that in my context? I think that's another thing to focus in. Don't think, we've got this course. It's got to be bigger than Ben Hur. Going, no, no. Let's select a date. Let's do it. Let's do it like this.

[13:51]
And you may also find that it takes a while to get momentum. That's why I'm talking about this reliability, predictability, and quality. It's because a church family that hasn't seen many converts and hasn't had their conversion engine going for a number of years, you've got to realize it will take a while to build momentum. You run it like this regularly enough and the church family gets more and more confidence in it. You may even have things about, you know, bring, maybe this growth group comes along to it and they encourage you to bring their friends in order to give enough people at it.

[14:23]
But you run it regularly enough, it'll take a bit of time to get momentum. So that's really helpful in terms of running it regularly, but also potentially what it might mean in those first stages in order to get quality is actually to run it less and actually decide not to do a cycle of it because you actually can't pull it off in terms of getting a good level of comms, inviting people, building that heat and that energy to get a good number of people. And there's an error that also can so easily be made, even in a small church like this,

[14:54]
is you can tend to think, oh, this is just one person's responsibility. I think a very key step in order to reignite a conversion engine is to think teams. You've got to build a team of people and a team of people will come with all sorts of ideas around how to do things together. So I want to kind of unpack that a little bit more. Sort of, you need a team. Well, that's a lot of work, Pete. You've already wanted me to do a quality system. Now you're saying I'll get a whole bunch of other people. It'll be so much easier. Look, I know how to run the course.

[15:25]
I'm actually pretty good up front. I've run it before. I've run it in a previous church. Isn't it just far easier for me just to put it on, invite people around in my house? I know it's going to be good. My wife's a great cook. And we can get it done pretty easily without affecting too many people. But you're saying now you want to involve a whole bunch of people? Absolutely. You want to involve a whole bunch of people. Because it's the personal evangelists who are doing this kind of work without even thinking about they're not running a course at this point. But they're the ones. I can speak about this. I can host an event. I can do this.

[15:56]
And people do that and they see conversions. The whole language of a conversion engine is trying to get that 80% of church members involved. You build a team. Not only do you iron sharpen iron, you'll get better ideas about what do we want to see? What does a good night look like? What would my friends actually come to? You get all that good input there. But you also get them excited. You also get them energized. They will energize other parts of the church family. It's a way of not just building mission heat, but also a way of seeing this work be able

[16:30]
to be scaled and multiplied. If you only do it yourself, you'll only have so much energy to pour into this over a little bit of time. You want to scale it so that in time, it gains more momentum. We can roll it out more times. Yeah, it's great. And I love how your first inclination in that was actually to get the team involved in actually the planning and the thinking. You know, there's so much better planning happens, I think, when you're not doing it by yourself. Planning happens better when it's done with a team. You can hear me, Scott, there doing the 20% to 80% things.

[17:02]
But have you got a story for us around personal evangelism being that conversion engine? Yeah, I just don't want to lock us into a method because at the moment, courses are working really well. And the small group environment, you know, pulling together a group of people as opposed to doing the one-on-one, you know, is great. But there will be, as you say, a number of people in church who they're great personal evangelists. They're great at inviting. But also, they've got the confidence also just to sit and read the Bible. You know, there's a member of my staff team who I regularly see in a cafe just sitting down and reading the Bible with, you know, a new person kind of every three to six months.

[17:34]
Now, that's not everybody, but that is some people. And so I don't want people to hear that the only, you know, the only way to do this is necessarily in courses. And I don't want the evangelist, you know, who's gifted and, you know, sees a passion also has an opportunity as well to do this. And of course, it's kind of stopped, you know. In a bygone era, not a bygone era, but in an era not that long ago, the conversion engine was the big event. Maybe some of our listeners can remember the Billy Graham crusades, maybe if my mum's listening. But of course, here was a conversion engine that actually saw thousands of people converted.

[18:07]
This is where we are constantly in the missionary and do need to be thinking carefully, culturally, what is actually seeing people and bearing fruit conversions? Is it the events? Is it the course? Is it the person? And the Billy Graham is a great example because what people don't know is actually the success of the Billy Graham was, again, God and the Holy Spirit working through a really powerful, you know, powerfully gifted man. But the key to a lot of the Billy Graham crusades, where they were crusades, there's a whole bunch of pre-work where they actually fired the church up to be prayerful and building systems

[18:39]
and processes. And then had a whole bunch of follow-up systems and processes that happened in the local church. So I got to, you know, like, again, we kind of see the pulpit and the crowd at the MCG and the crowd at the SCG and the crowd at Round of Grace Course. What was sitting behind that was actually a whole bunch of churches working together, which is a beautiful thing. I mean, because again, I want to say, man, how good would that be if we could have that, you know, again? If I had some sort of mass communication device that would allow you to communicate to lots and lots of people. And wouldn't it be, but what you see in that, Scott, again, no matter where God,

[19:11]
God is kind of bringing people to be converted where there is, well, it seems to be where people are ready for those conversions, where they've actually, they're intentional, they've actually thought about it. They've got a great thing that can bring people to Christ in the first place, but then follow them up carefully. You see that God has great joy in bringing people to those who are ready, no matter what engine they've got. Okay, so Pete, so what's the one thing you want to say about reigniting your conversion engine? Get to it. Get on to it. Now's the time, as you listen to this podcast, you have that heart for the lost people in

[19:44]
your community. Have your heart also for your church family, the ones who are saved, who actually would love to see their friends and family come to Jesus. But for some reason, for them at the moment, the bar of personal evangelism is potentially just a bit too high for them. You can love them and love their friends by reigniting it. Get on with it. Get down to it. Awesome. Well, let me just jump into the toolbox really quickly. We've just released a new season of the Reach Australia podcast, and it's all about this

[20:15]
topic, all about mission. You can hear from Joe Clark, Dave Robinson, who are both at Hunter Bible Church just in Newcastle, north of Sydney, and Dave Jensen, who's a mission pastor at EV Church on the central coast. Again, just a little bit less north of Sydney. Also, there's a written companion to the podcast season, just a simple e-book to go alongside that'll help you think into this topic with a little bit more clarity as well. Anyway, it's been great pushing into this episode. My prayer and hope out of this is that we will see churches intentionally think into their

[20:50]
conversion engine. Again, the fruit of this is God willing that we might see people make first-time decisions for Jesus. Such an exciting thing when someone makes that first-time decision to follow Jesus. I'm Scott Sanders. I'm Peter Blanche. Chat soon. I'm Peter Blanche. I'm Peter Blanche. I'm Peter Blanche.

[21:22]
I'm Peter Blanche. I'm Peter Blanche. I'm Peter Blanche. I'm Peter Blanche. I'm Peter Blanche. Thank you.