[0:00]
all righty we continue to think about Sam what's the key to effective mission in our churches and we've far thought there's two big things healthy church ecosystem which we looked at a couple of days ago and yesterday and today we're particularly thinking about having a mission purpose or a mission dimension which is injecting key things into the ecosystem if you turn up to page four I think it is in your booklets you'll see page five you can see these are the ten

[0:34]
key principles we believe need to be injected into church to have a healthy mission ecosystem flourishing so you can see the four headings there we looked at yesterday and under that ten principles and they all start with a C isn't that awesome and today we're gonna be looking at working with the with outsiders that's their heading we are looking under and the three principles that sit under that now we would have loved to at this conference look at working to reach the world absolutely critical to think

[1:05]
about how we reach Australia and and have partnerships with people in Australia and across the world and it's critical for our churches we just can't do everything so today working with outsiders I was at the team pasturing conference on Tuesday I think it was and I heard her D say something profound that I've heard him say before which is we need to set our vision by the fields and not the barns we need to set our vision by the fields and not the barns which is don't let your vision for the gospel be constrained by those who are

[1:36]
already in the barn by the size of your church by the size of your buildings rather what we need is to let our vision be shaped by looking out at the fields of the lost all around us how many people we are saving each year in our churches whatever that might be is not enough it's not enough we need to save more and more and more and so this session is particularly dedicated to that if you turn with me to page 13 you'll see there's a funnel diagram Sam

[2:07]
briefly introduced it yesterday but I want to spend a little bit more time there because what the funnel diagram does is it pulls together those three key principles of working with outsiders contact multiplication connect to Christians and Christianity and conversion engine development now I think the funnel is a particularly helpful tool for four key reasons the first is it's an evocative image so that was really helpful Sam yesterday talking about when he used to drop the coins in the funnel at charity funnels at the

[2:38]
shops and the coin at spin around and spin around and spin around just before it got to the bottom he'd grab it again and put it in again and non-christians Outsiders do need to circle around Christian things a number of times and come closer and closer to Christians and Christianity and Christian worldview and Christian thoughts and then come to investigate things even more closely in something like an evangelistic course and then they become a Christian and they need to get followed up and established in the faith and established into church life and it actually takes a

[3:09]
long time but people do need to be funneled through those processes sometimes it's faster but usually it takes a fair amount of time second reason I think the funnel is particularly helpful is it identifies that there's actually three distinct sections three separate principles at work as we're seeking to work with outsiders I think what often happens for pastors because mainly we haven't set aside someone who's able to particularly focus on the mission purpose area of church when we think about reaching

[3:39]
outsiders it all becomes a bit muddled together and a bit confused and we're not sure exactly which bits are which what I think the funnel does and the three principles do is help us recognize actually there's three parts to these three pieces that fit together and then it becomes a diagnostic tool what we can actually do is we can work out where are we weak are we weak in contact multiplication are we weak in connecting non-christians to Christians and Christianity or are we weak in

[4:10]
converting people and then establishing them in the faith or are we weak everywhere but at least we can you know have a diagnostic tool and what I'd love to see coming out of reach Australia is for each one of these principles wouldn't it be great if we had a one-page tool for every principle that helped us then do some diagnosis in each of our churches and work out where we weak where can we improve where can we move forward and I'd love to see that for us for our church we need we need to be doing that that sort of thing regularly and so that's the second reason third reason I

[4:41]
think the funnel is particularly helpful is it reminds us that we're trying to move people contact you see the arrows down the side contact Connect conversion as we're working through the processes of the funnel and as we're doing the people work that is in and beside and behind the funnel we're actually trying to move non-christians firstly meeting them contacting them and then helping them to connect to Christians and Christianity and then actually helping to bring them conversion and that into the life of the church which is I think

[5:12]
is the four key strengths of this funnel diagram is that it shows is an end goal the end goal is is glory and the honor of Christ but an end goal the end of the funnel is that people are actually established in the life of the church which means they're part of the church gathering they're coming to church each week they belong this is their family and you can see that represented by the box down the bottom what we really want is after people converted their being

[5:42]
established in the faith through the follow up at some point through there we want them to recognize the importance of being part of the family of God gathered each week and so become part of the church community and gathering with us now sometimes it happens earlier which is why I've got the dotted line it's often that people before they're converted become part of the church community and Kummer each weekend so we wanted to represent that there the other thing it'll mean is once people are converted and established in the faith we want them to come into the life of the church often through a membership

[6:13]
course and into the life of small groups and into the life of ministry and into the life of serving becoming members of the church who are contributing and serving and growing and established Christians and you can see the arrow on the side on mission all on mission together reaching out seeking to save others and the wonderful thing that we find is often new Christians who are filled with passion who are filled with zeal who don't have lots of the bad habits of Christians and who have all these new near works of non-christian friends are some

[6:44]
of the most effective contactors and connectors and inviters and people who give an answer for the hope that they have in Jesus so we want to fuel and foster that so that's the that's the funnel and I'm happy for any feedback we can always keep improving these things but I think it really helps us to see clearly what we're seeking to do now let's look at the first key principle in more detail the very top of the funnel which is contact multiplication in creating a healthy church ecosystem this

[7:15]
is a really key principle and I think it's an overlooked principle either it's limited to churches saying from up the front invite your friends along to this event or it's equated with people's minds with well we're putting on this event of course non-christians are going to turn up we're going to meet a whole bunch of new non-christians because we're putting on an event but that's not actually contacting non-christians it's just expecting them to turn up to something that we're putting on contact multiplication is the very top of the funnel and it's trying to warmly contact

[7:47]
as many people as possible in order to then bring them closer to the things of Christ and to Christian people so it's actually contacting new people building new relationships that we don't already have and cuz it's the very top of the funnel it represents the largest number possible the widest bit we're trying to flood the top of the funnel with as many people as possible because under normal circumstances apart from the extraordinary work of God and and can I say pray for the extraordinary work of God that he would bring revival in our

[8:18]
land but apart from that what we see is that generally things the amount of people you get in the top of the funnel for each step the percentage is to decrease massively so you contact a huge amount of people a small percentage of those people are actually going to come to events where they connect with Christians and Christianity a small amount of those people are actually going to gonna come to your conversion engine to your evangelistic course a small amount of those people are going to come to your follow up course a small

[8:49]
amount of those people are going to actually be converted and established in the life of faith so under normal sir Constance's we've got a flood at the top of the funnel so there's actually enough people coming through that at the bottom of the funnel is enough and large number of people getting converted and coming through now God can do what he wants he's absolutely sovereign but that's under normal circumstances and so if you contact 30 non-christians this year as a church the result you're going to have at the end of the year of converts who

[9:21]
are established in the faith is going to be very very different than you have then if you contacted one thousand nine Christians this year as a church and so we need to flood as much as possible the top of the funnel now four key ways to multiply contacts one personal contact by church members now I think this is the obvious place we go and probably because it is the most important people have contacts make contacts all around them and those tend to be the warmest

[9:52]
context because their context they're made in in the context of real relationship and so our job particularly if we are championing the maturity purpose is to keep helping people be intentional about that and make those new relationships and build those new relationships so those people might be drawn close to the things of Christ three ways that we can help one is help people be intentional people will often say I don't know anyone that I could

[10:23]
invite along to this event I don't know anyone who really doesn't know Jesus and what they mean by that is in the early days of their faith they went around they worked really hard trying to get their family and their close friends to follow Jesus and maybe one of them did and they're so thankful but the rest they've worked hard with and they're not interested anymore and so now they feel like I've got no one but actually they sit next to someone at work and they go to the gym with a bunch of people they know and they play with a sporting team and their kids are in a sporting team

[10:54]
who have parents when they go to school you get it there's all sorts of contexts they have what they mean is I can only really start to move people towards Christian things if I'm a really good mate with them well we need to keep helping people see and remind ourselves is there's people everywhere who need Jesus and we don't need to be the best of friends with them and we actually need to start building new relationships and intentionally making new relationships with people all over the place

[11:25]
now some people are far more gifted this than others and we need to encourage and foster those amongst us whose gift is contact multiplication they just keep making friends and keep making friends if we can help them think to connect their friends to Christians and Christianity it's a powerful thing a second part of that that helps us to be intentional is on prayer so prayer is powerful and effective we need to be praying for non-christians that they might be saved but if we can keep prayer

[11:56]
for specific non-christians on the agenda what it does is it keeps our people intentional so we remind people from the front and in social media and in different places but what we can also do is if we can set up a system that keeps reminding people to pray for non-christian friends is very powerful we do same very simple we call it 3 1 1 we try to encourage everyone to identify 3 non-christian friends or contacts people they know pray for them once a week for 1 minute that's pretty low bar isn't it 3 friends once a week one

[12:28]
minute you might want to go to 2 2 or change it up whatever you want to do but what we then do is in the daily reading notes which is our daily barbary materials which we encourage each Christian to do unless they've got another plan it they're encouraged to write those 3 friends and so every day when they open their bowl to read they've got those 3 friends to pray for or at least once a week if they're doing 3 1 1 the other thing we do is once they're in growth groups we encourage growth groups each should have a mission rep who encourages prayer and makes

[12:59]
prayer happen for our overseas mission partners and and Australian mission partners but who also encourages us to pray for each other's 3-1-1 or contacts our non-christian friends and so we're praying but we're also reminding each other to be intentional build relationships identify who people who we could share the gospel with or invite to things which is a very powerful thing to do we also sometimes even draw up the quadrant thing I think it comes from a mum everyday evangelism

[13:29]
probably from a number of tools just the quadrants of life work uni school leisure sport friends family just write in one person in each quadrant who you know maybe two people maybe three people so they have an intentional I want to think of that person as a contact as someone I can build a relationship with and warmly then seek to move to the next step of the funnel simple things second thing that's helpful to helpful for our

[14:02]
people is to help them see themselves as local missionaries which is just building on the first but you know if you went somewhere as a missionary you're thinking very intentionally you touch down every decision you make is shaped by the mission where we're going to live what sort of house what sort of suburb where our kids go to school whether we join a meeting group or a soccer club or you learn a new activity it's all for the purpose of connecting with new people that they might hear the gospel and be saved it's not just about close friends and family because there

[14:33]
aren't any it's actually about meeting new people and seeking to help them be saved the more we can think like that and it's easy not to isn't it we get into the ran of life and life becomes about doing life and looking after kids and making things happen and not you know drowning and all our people are living that life as well and so the more we can keep conviction forming the more we can keep lifting their vision so they say no now we're hometown missionaries we're local missionaries doing this intentional work third helping our

[15:05]
people to stop thinking of themselves as solo missionaries too often we paint the picture that real evangelism is done when you're on your own out there and often we are on our own out there but the more that we can then work with other Christians and connect our friends to other Christians the more powerful it is no Sam's going to talk about that more but that's a very powerful theme particularly in a society where more and more Christians know to stick their head up is a frightening thing because you're gonna get shot up

[15:36]
if a conversation about God comes up Christians tend to be a bit scared and so the more that we can work as a team we're actually a mission team together the more powerful that is and that's where a lot of our connection sort of stuff comes in together second big way we can multiply contacts so that was the first personal contact by church members and I think we've probably thought about that a fair bit can I say I reckon the next three categories by and large churches have thought about a great deal less second

[16:09]
key category is community awareness I think we have this sense that real authentic and morally superior contact multiplication is always done through grassroots relationships so it's it's number one but if someone comes to church and he's saved because they saw a post on social media or someone comes to church because they're walking down the beach and someone on Summerfest our summer program walked up and gave him a

[16:41]
postcard and they came to church and got saved and someone else got saved because they sat down one-to-one with someone and we walked all the way into the truth of the gospel sort of partially don't care I'm just stoked that those people are all saved whatever we can do that helps people be connected so then they could be moved towards the things of Christ and might be saved as long as it's moral and good and biblically right is fantastic and if you look at the top of the funnel

[17:11]
remember we've got to flood the top of the funnel and I think number one is just actually not going to cut it on its own we're just not going to personally contact enough people through our church members and so we need other things to be doing simultaneously which reach people we wouldn't have otherwise reach touch in contact we wouldn't have otherwise contacted through other means but also as we do those things it actually assists and fuels our church members ability to do the personal

[17:42]
contacts more broadly and more effectively so what's in these number two category this commune awareness well in my mind it's things like marketing social media street signage now you might think marketing that just sounds crass and worldly doesn't it no I don't like the word marketing but if I think of it as we have such an incredible thing to share the gospel to change lives it brings the community of

[18:14]
hope the community of joy don't we want to let people know that there is this thing where they can come and they can hear and they can find it then I'm into marketing if that's what marketing is I want to let people know we have this incredible thing and we want to make it available to others as best as possible now these sort of areas I think are often thinking a little bit outside the box sort of areas and I think as churches we tend to think a bit more traditionally and inside the box now we've always got to bring our

[18:45]
theological minds to bear avoid error and compromise but if the mission purpose the people set aside to think mission are able to draw alongside those who live and work in these worlds then we can bring a great deal of expertise to bear now let me give you a few examples let a box drop old school but pretty cool if you drop all we find when we drop ten thousand leaflets or post because we like postcards because they look pretty nice and sneak when you put up ten thousand postcards what we find

[19:17]
is we will get two new contacts to church on average that's awesome but you know what also happens when you drop 10,000 postcards the whole community knows you exist the whole community has has heard something about you and if the advertising is good and it and it speaks of who you are and the sort of message you have in the sort of community that that's a very powerful thing in people's minds and if you do it reasonably regularly now you don't it's so regularly it's like not only white noise it's like you're spamming me stop doing

[19:48]
it if you if you do it reasonably regularly it's it starts to create a sense of yeah that's the that's the place you go to find those answers a sense of the church's presence and who they are and it's very powerful thing and if you tie with that actually let's get all the the members of church to be the ones have actually delivered the stuff it starts to build in them conviction and a culture of mission amongst us simple powerful social media um I think it's a very underutilized era I think it's saying we as a church need to really

[20:19]
work on but more and more people leaving the world of social media as they live in the real world and young people particularly our digital natives and so I think one of the things that we can increasingly work hard at is letting people experience our church prior to coming here experience our church prior to coming here by experiencing something of it online through social media the power of social media is it creates you in the online space now you can create a fake you who looks much better than the

[20:50]
real you but that's lying so we don't want to do that we want to create a real us as a church and so as people engage with us through social media which they do because it pings off all our people into their stuff realms what happens is they get a sense of who we are the vibrant hope filled community who has such a wonderful and life-changing message now the power is heaps in stories and real-life things and it's

[21:22]
not in smick advertising and really yo quality is it's actually just saying wow that's that's what church looks like look at those people it's funny moments it's not taking ourselves too seriously it's someone sharing the life-changing story its moments filled with emotion it's stuff that you capture on your phone and post regularly and it actually demystifies church for the outsider because they get a glimpse of it before they come but what it also does is says we've got something so incredible here why don't you come and check it out that's not the Silver Bullet but you

[21:54]
just add that as another piece to all the other pieces and it's actually a powerful piece again the mission purpose can start thinking how do we get crew who are in that world who think like that working like that now that's a fair job because you've got to be around all the time getting content you've got to be the sort of person that people want to be filmed by targeted social media media advertising social engine stuff why is it that some things pop up to the top of Google why

[22:25]
is it that when I've been searching stuff different advertisements come up that I was searching before well sometimes actually I was just talking to someone else about it in conversation and Google heard me somehow what's going on there now now people who live in those worlds actually know how to do stuff so that your church can be advertised more effectively to people who are interested in those things people have searched new church Central Coast you can find out who's done that and actually target some helpful

[22:57]
information towards those people so that they can see what's going on whole area to think about and look into blog advertising we had big Carol's event over summer one of the things we did was we thought it'd be good to spend a couple hundred dollars playing a local lady who runs a blog for profit what she does is she writes a blog for young mums who with kids and basically says these are all the great things going on why don't you check some of these out and then she pumps that out through all her

[23:29]
social media outlets says young moms all over the coast who are tapped into this particular lady but what you can do is you can say to her pay her give her a bit of a brief she'll adjust it and put her in her own words and then she'll pump it out through all the social media and so all the young mums on the coast here oh you know what's going on this weekend Evie community Carroll's gonna be awesome I'm going along a whole bunch of young mums previously uncontacted turn up to our event fantastic we've never done this gifts to new people in

[24:01]
the area tell me if you've done it but imagine there'd be a way wouldn't there to find about all the new people have turned up to your area and a way to systematize it so you've got a team who goes around and drops a gift over their house once they've been there for three months and it has a little card in from your church with your website on and a little personalized note on the back something like that a whole bunch of new context very warm Street signage you're online a whole bunch of things to maximise the way that we build aniss of our church in drip drip drip

[24:31]
ways now you hear this and you think man that that costs a lot of money that it costs a lot of time that I don't know how we do you don't need to do all that but it's worth having in mind because there may be one thing you can do there may be something you can start small and then add a little bit and yes some of these things do take some money and it is worth putting some money into it while recognizing there's all sorts of other things we need to put money into and so you've got a portion well third contact events Sam spoke about this

[25:04]
yesterday he's gonna speak about connecting events particularly next but sometimes you want to set up events that are actually designed to contact new people to have totally people who've never been connected contacted by the church before to turn up to these events and so thinking into what could we run that would be really attractive to the non-christian outsider that they'd come along and become connected contacted by the church for the first time and then we can work at connecting them in meetings Christians and often the same event that's a contact event either connect event as well so you can run one

[25:35]
event that does two things but it does take a little bit of clear thinking two examples one carols lots of churches run carols and so what we find is still the non-christian world is interesting in coming to carols and will come along and there's great opportunities to contact people we would have not ever otherwise contacted but you need to advertise in a good way and when they come along it's it's important to them try to work out well how do we either move them to the next step in your calendar flow or

[26:06]
actually meet them so that we can help them personally to the next step church is another big one Church continues to be a place where week by week non-christians just turn up now it it grows is that it grows as a front door the more there is awareness of your church and the larger the church is but it is a reality some people just turn up because and they need some help they're hungry that sort of thing and we want to help but other people turn up because they think I need I'm missing something

[26:37]
I need something spiritual and I think church must be the place and they turn up now that's that's a wonderful new way to make new contacts and so again thinking about how we run Church that's some effective accessible to outsiders forth community presence and reputation now this one may be number two just in a disguised form I haven't worked out whether it should only be three categories but there is something about as your people are personally contacting

[27:09]
people and they're in the community and they're part of the netball clubs and they're part of the social fabric of community and awareness is growing because you've got an online presence and a social media and there's letterbox drops going on on this and and as there's contact events that get advertised and people – every time people are coming in contact with church in some sort of way whether it's online or face-to-face or meeting Christians or there's a a presence and reputation being built a name being built in the community and over time you want it to be a name that speaks of truth and of

[27:42]
solidity and of hope and it whatever it might be a name that speaks with the wonder of the gospel and people think yeah if I've had five questions that's where I'm going I know at that place is a brand if you like now a couple of thoughts here and we chat about door-knocking a couple of days ago what we've found regular positive door-knocking is a powerful thing in building reputation and relationship with the church we don't do it heaps often but in summer we do one big batch of it over four days with a

[28:14]
whole bunch of people and what happens is we contact a whole bunch of a massive area of our church community and what happens is we try to do it in a way that's positive that's warm but that's keen to go deeper if people want to go deeper and if they don't we're happy to leave now you do that year after year and what it creates is a reputation and a relationship even if it's not the same person who goes back year after year it creates a relationship with the church a trust of the church and knowledge that that's the

[28:44]
place that where I would go if I want to find out and pursue these things further I might stop there but as you can see there's a number of why it's where we can multiply our contacts one two three four let me hand over the same Thank You Ann so some of the stuff that I'll be talking about today will also overlap with something some of the

[29:14]
things Graham's already begin began to talk about and also with workshops so if you came over to the mission workshops bare with us there's a little bit of repetition here today I want us to start up thinking about why is worth allocating time to the next step in that funnel okay connecting Christians connecting people with Christians and with Christianity historically I don't think we've put a lot of time into this and we often talk about living in a

[29:45]
post-christian culture and the fact that many of our people in society don't know one Christian let alone many Christians but I'm not sure we've actually started to act on this yeah why haven't we acted on well maybe there's a couple of reasons maybe we're not quite sure yet whether it's worth our time and our resources because well we're word people we want to be teaching people the Bible and so wherever possible we want to have a full

[30:16]
expositional talk that explains the entirety of the gospel maybe that's it or maybe we believe that this should kind of happen naturally or organically so people if they're mature in Christ and if they're talking to people about the things of God then of course they're going to invite that person over to the house with a barbeque and introduce them to some other people around their church of course that's what you do right but the reality is most people in our church

[30:47]
are not natural evangelists and we need to keep helping them as Graham was talking about to think intentionally about the connections they have so why think into connecting people to Christians in Christianity we need to teach people as grain was saying to be intentional our people have hundreds of unchurched contacts hundreds of them friends and neighbors parents of their kids friends workmates sporting clubs

[31:18]
the whole whole bit but here's the thing I think that most people run their lives in a series of little silos and you see this at a wedding you know when you got all wedding whenever you go to a wedding you get seated at your table there's the Christian table and then there's the work friend's table and then there's the family table and then there's the odd friend's table that don't really fit anywhere and if you if you do finger food right my wife and I did this we thought I'll be great to get people mingling but if you do finger food they just kind of naturally

[31:49]
gravitate in those directions anyway and form their own little groups and tables and the reason for that is and people don't get up at that point and go and talk to other people around around the room and the reason for that is is because they've never met outside of that context because we don't do a great job of mixing our worlds we don't do a great job of letting our non-christian friends know who our Christian friends are and so if people need to be taught

[32:20]
to be intentional with the connections that they have and begin to mix their worlds second thing is plausibility people in Australia don't think it's reasonable or rational to believe in a virgin birth that's a crazy thing to believe a crucified Savior a resurrection the Ascension of Jesus into heaven and the active living lordship of Jesus today those are some pretty far-out things too believer and so when we go and talk about these things with people alarm bells start to ring in

[32:52]
their head and it sounds like that we're talking about fairy godmothers and unicorns it's simply implausible to them and so if you have a really keen evangelist who goes out and they join the soccer team and they've joined that team in order to meet believe I'm unbelievers and to the gospel with them then that is really hard work on your own if you're the only one in the room who believes these weird ideas it's very easy for people to kind of just write you off but as people meet

[33:26]
more and more Christians who all believe the same thing and hopefully begin to enjoy spending time with those people as well then under God the gospel has the potential to move from something that is completely implausible to be something that the outsider might consider thinking about some more the third reason we want to do it is we want to make space for loads and loads of conversations these events that we're that I'll talk about in a moment or two need to make space for these

[33:58]
conversations to take place think about your own conversion for a moment how many conversations about Jesus did it take for you to get over the line so to speak for me I tried Christianity on and off on and off I think probably maybe 10 12 15 times during my high school years until eventually the year after high school I worked out the lordship of Jesus people need loads and loads of conversations and connections in order

[34:29]
for them to talk through and work through and to think through what the gospel might look like in their life to put it into action and to see how it applies in other people's lives and in order for that to happen they need that time and space and so just as we need places where people can explore the gospel in great detail and invite them to commit their lives to Jesus I think we also need events that create space for relationships and conversations to

[35:02]
develop naturally so what we want to do is to build into our mission plan opportunities for people to make easy invitations to events that are specifically designed to help them to connect with other Christians and begin to connect with the Christian worldview as you can see on the diagram I think if we can go back to the funnel diagram for a moment we've got a bit of a sliding scale they're happening so we've got the one across the bottom and the one up and

[35:33]
down and so there's a sliding scale there of things that you could call that you can consider in that connect to Christians and Christianity space there's a non-relational to relational scale and there's light gospel content to a hide gospel content so an example of an on relational task might be something like door-knocking for example or walk-up it's really great to hear the story of cars last night about UNSW and all the street talk that they're doing

[36:04]
at the moment if you're looking to engage with strangers about the gospel then it's hi gospel content but normal ational but it is still a way of connecting people with Christians and with Christianity I want to say door-knocking doesn't or door knocking or walk-up doesn't always have to be heid gospel content during our kids mission program like the Summerfest program they run here at evey as well we we start the week fairly light gospel

[36:37]
content when we go out and do door knocking and walk up and really it's just an invitation we start the week mostly because people are pretty nervous about the idea of walk up and and door knocking and so we want to train them in that throughout the week they start pretty nervous and so we say just make an invitation we just want you to go out and invite people along to the wave kids club find out if they've got kids and whether they'd like to come to that or they themselves might come along and join us for a coffee that morning so it's non-relational but like gospel content and then towards the end of the week

[37:08]
we're actually looking for them to have opportunities to explain the gospel further and deeper a relational task would be putting on a fairly social event that people can invite their contacts along to and they will vary in terms of the gospel content that you include so for us I think we're a slide of movers and groovers there we go so moves and grooves is kind of like our little music group that some

[37:40]
of that the mums at our church run they they make lots and lots of contacts and it's very light gospel content they're really only the only gospel content they have is are at Easter and at at Christmastime but there are mums they're constantly working intentionally to get to know people and invite them along to the next thing and that next thing is then advertised at various times throughout the year at the movies and groovers event so things like Easter

[38:11]
Church or Mother's Day church or carols and Christmas church and our wave kids club program in January as well another event that we run we've just started running this one not the next one next slide please yep our sourdough master class okay so we we teach people the art of making sourdough I don't know anything about this but there's some people in church and know how to do this and the guy who runs it kind of talks tongue-in-cheek about being a really authentic person

[38:41]
and talks about the authenticity of Jesus it's not high gospel content it's still pretty like gospel content but he talks about the Christian worldview in that process while he's making bread and while he's explaining how to do all this thing with with yeast and whatnot and then there's an invitation that's made to the live series and we see quite a lot of people come along to that and then make that next step into our life series another event that's actually

[39:12]
happening this Saturday night is a live music event with food and fire pits people bring their mates they get to meet a whole bunch of Christians there's live music put on by people around church and they sing songs that they've written about God and so what'll to them throughout the night we'll just explain the meaning behind the song that they've written and why they think that's important and that's really as much gospel content as we have in those events but it's a great time just to connect with various people who are interested in live music and interested

[39:45]
in coming along to that at the wave kids club in January we have a Coffee tent as well as the kids program and that for us is a connection event as well but it's a place where we fairly explicitly talk about the Christian worldview and we speak about the gospel throughout the course of the week and loads and loads of conversations about Jesus at the tables we have our little evangelism team that goes into the coffee tent and they're their role there is to engage people in conversations

[40:17]
about Jesus but again at all of these events there is lots and lots of space for people to do that connection with Christians to have deep conversations about life and the things of Jesus but the event is not the goal in and of itself the goal is to move people the next step along to move people to a place where they might be willing to consider the things of Christ more some key things to remember if you're going

[40:48]
to put on some of these events whenever you run one of these events you really have to make sure you nail it every time you pull off of bad event as Adrienne was talking about yesterday you damaged your ability to drag people into the next event that you run so you really have to do it well it needs to be so what I would say to that is do it less and do it well don't do lots and do them badly do it less and do it well it needs to be accessible and attractive to your people okay I'm not interested in sourdough

[41:19]
making but there are people within our church who are interested in sourdough making so if that's their thing then they should run that thing that they think they'll be able to bring their friends along too it's not about what I like doing but it's what the people and our contacts enjoy doing it needs to be something that facilitates conversation and mixing of people one of the big names of these of inset is to give exposure to community to Christian community and so you need to factor that

[41:49]
into your planning so if you're going to put on something like maybe you want to watch the State of Origin together then you want to think carefully about how you're going to manufacture the environment so that conversation can take place but and at halftime and after after the event as well rather than everybody sitting down watching TV and then up and go and leave that's not community at that point and you want to avoid the old bait-and-switch the quickest way to lose

[42:20]
trust in your event he's put on the Christmas wreath making night and then tack on the end of 15-minute gospel talk that you didn't say was going to be in it when you advertise the event it's really tempting to kind of do that because you want to make the most of the opportunity there's all these people here but you'll actually end up doing more harm than good at that point and the last thing to say is these can't stand alone these are not standalone

[42:50]
activities they're not really worth running without good structures and follow-up in place and so these events are not the first thing to put into your calendar you need to first consider your core conversion engine that Graham's going to talk about in a moment you need to get that up and humming first because if that's not up and humming then all these people that you make these connections with have nowhere to go as their next step I'm going to hand back to Graham

[43:25]
um what you can't do is just run all this so you gotta work out what are we gonna do you got to think intentionally about what what contact stuff will be gonna run what connections stuff are we gonna run what's gonna be most effective and what are we running in isn't effective and doesn't have a real goal that we either need to reshape or kill so that we can start new stuff now what that takes change management it's not easy the other thing to pay into attention to is you can design a funnel for all of church but you may actually be seeking

[43:55]
to reach more than one group so you may actually need to design a few a couple of funnels that then stick together on top of each other but again you can't just do everything because you've only got so much time energy relational time with with all your people our last area conversion engine development is pretty clean critical and we see there's been made up of two pieces which is your evangelistic course and your follow-up no heaps of churches have these and that's some fantastic and

[44:26]
we think you need both so even though they're two pieces they're really two parts of the one whole particularly because these days people have so little familiarity with Christian things it generally takes a long time for people to get converted to investigate that now people can be converted instantly the Lord is powerful but generally to investigate the truths of Christianity to come to a sense the Bible is reliable to see that with the worldview makes sense to consider what it means to follow Jesus in the cost of that and then to make that decision follow him come to repentance and faith

[44:58]
and then be established in the faith tends to be a long process and we tend to see you know we run a six-week course we tend to see some people get converted in those six weeks but many don't they're keen to kick on into the follow-up and we roll in follow-up firstly a six-week follow-up followed by another six and another six and another six and another six we roll it on for a good six months and it's often in those six months that the people are converted not in those first six weeks of the evangelistic course and so I think that

[45:29]
just shows at least in our context that it takes a considerable amount of time for people to be converted firmly and then after that once they are takes a considerable amount of time for them to be established in the face that they have assurance of faith understand the key truths of Scripture and and the basics of what it means to live the Christian life so they can be part of the church community you know in a really helpful and healthy way and continue to grow and so we really do try to move people through this funnel as

[46:00]
people get converted in church under the preaching of the word people get converted as an ankh as a Christian shares the gospel with a non-christian one to one we still would encourage those people to come to our evangelistic course and to do the follow-up you've got to be flexible people are people but we do that because we still want to make sure that they are clear on the gospel there's pieces they won't have and I need to lock those in place and we want to see them firmly established in the faith and we believe it actually takes a long period of time and so we do

[46:31]
intentionally funnel people through our conversion engine now engine that can sound like pretty yeah I don't know not the sort of language you generally use for these sort of things but engines do heavy lifting engines make things drive things forward and that's what we want to see and have seen our conversion engine doing it does the heavy lifting of evangelism it does the driving forward in seeing more people converted than we would have otherwise seen people

[47:03]
convert let me give you four reasons one conversion engines are specifically designed for the purpose of evangelizing non-christians and establishing them in the faith you can design something that is totally accessible and culturally able for people to come to as much as is possible and you can design something that's specifically designed to give them everything they need theologically biblically so they can investigate the truths of Jesus in the Bible and come to the faith so it's it's purpose-built

[47:33]
second because it allows non-christians and new Christians the time they need Sam was saying it we need a lot of time around conversations we also need a lot of time in this phase where people are investigating the truths of Jesus and as I've said before you can create something that's a long process and actually gives them the time they need to consider these things fully and implications for their life 3 because it uses the gifts of God's people which brings different areas of expertise so rather than a one-size-fits-all let's

[48:04]
just train our people tell them to evangelize send them out and you do it all out there drawing it together actually harnesses the gifts of all God's people so we can build something bigger but with also different areas of expertise the person who's great at speaking can speak at the event if you run that sort of model an emcee can emcee really well the persons who's good at just chatting and making people feel welcome sound person can do that food people can do that vibe the person who can run follow up in a smaller everyone

[48:36]
can bring their gifts to bear and you can have scores of people across church involved in this one thing all harness together being effective in making Christians bringing people of conversion this approach we feel is far more effective and over time what happens is each of those people who takes a piece and use their gifts a team can form around and under them and and then you get time scale you can actually slowly build the size of it and reach more people forth because of the momentum you

[49:08]
get when all of churches onboard when all of church is mobilized to support your conversion engine you get synergies you otherwise wouldn't have had people know it's on people are inviting to it people are serving at it people are praying for it and over time this just creates an energy around it where people think man if I had any friend who wasn't a Christian I want to get him to that because it's because it's awesome and it rocks and I've been to it I've seen in action so it's that confidence building function and and so over time people do

[49:39]
invite their non-christian friends and and the critical mass slowly creeps up slowly creeps up slowly creeps up so you're less and less worried about there not being enough people there and not enough non-christians there and it just slowly over time can gain momentum prayerfully asking the Lord overtime game momentum especially if over time we intentionally work to let's just try to scale it up let's just try to a little bit a little bit be over time and reach more people with it now how do you develop a conversion

[50:11]
engine and it's more than running an evangelistic course I think it's thinking about all the components from when it's going to be on planning for it how you're going to inform people and advertise and talk to them about it invite and help our friends to invite their people to invite their friends how it feels when they get there and how it's going to be led and how the people are fired up afterwards and all those sort of things now what are you going to run again understand your context our contexts are all different how long is

[50:42]
it gonna be 10 to 12 weeks I think in most contexts in Australia was a big ask but man you can get through a lot of great stuff in ten to twelve weeks but four to six weeks as the start is a we think a bit of a sweet spot at least in our context where we are and especially if you can invite someone to just come and check it out the first night and if you love it kick on it runs for six weeks and then at the end of the six weeks and by the way we've got follow-up and that runs for six weeks and actually it runs forever you'll never get out you know at six and then when you look at the

[51:14]
material you need to consider what are we gonna use we're gonna use something that someone else to put together there's a one a number of wonderful fantastic courses introducing god Christian explored Christian explain investigating Jesus a whole bunch of wonderful things that can be used and you might choose to use one of those or take one of those and adjust pieces of it or write your own but you got to keep thinking what's my context and how could we reach the people there because you're in a context where everyone believes in

[51:45]
God but they actually all believe in different gods it's gonna be quite a different context there in other places where actually most people who don't believe in God or there's actually a real mix of apathy and I sort of believe in God but not the personal transcendent and how are you gonna start often it's good to start we've found at least in our context with something that connects to people and the cries of their heart and it tends to be a general human cry everywhere of what am I here for what really make me happy what will satisfy those sort of things starting where

[52:17]
people are at but moving quickly to show them actually there is real truth and hope and beauty in the Lord Jesus and the gospel and we found following that with something about the reliability and historical nature of the Bible is very powerful not necessarily because it's a real blockage to the gospel and people but people just don't have the confidence that the Bible is actually reliable they think either it's just a made-up book of fairytales or it's a doctored version of history so helping to reshape that worldview early

[52:48]
is a very powerful thing and then you'll need to make decisions about your course material according to context but also according to the gospel you just want to make sure that all the key gospel truths are clearly explained particularly if you're going to call people to response they want to know what they're responding to and have all the facts and so you'll be dealing with things like creation and God's rule and our sin and rebellion the judgment to come Jesus death to deal with sin and wrath his resurrection from the dead what it will

[53:19]
be like to repent and turn your life over to Jesus what does it mean that he's the Lord of everything and so if these things aren't clearly spelt out they'll become a stumbling block for people later on and towards the end of the course I think it's highly appropriate to call for some sort of response or some sort of feedback we've found second last week a great week to ask people how do we do it in your written forehead you find the course give us some feedback where are you at with these things where are you at with Jesus so find that system and do you

[53:51]
want to kick on just do a bit of follow-up and gives us a bit of time to get organized for that but then how are you going to run the course if it's going to be a course what size is it gonna be is it gonna be small in a lounge room sitting around is it going to be slightly larger a couple of tables cafe style is it can we do something bigger and what sort of sizes are going to be and therefore what sort of venue and what sort of style is it going to be and how do we make it accessible and attractive for a non-christian to come

[54:23]
in a non-threatening environment and investigate the truths of Christianity and then how are we going to advertise it how are we going to put together stuff that makes it for the non-christian reasonably attractive thing yeah I'd come to that but also for the Christian to feel confident I could invite I could give that postcard and I could say these words and my friend just might come along with me and then we start to think about well what happens if known non-christians turn up because we

[54:53]
actually can't control that and non-christians won't tell you whether they're actually going to turn up to the last minute and actually people cancel at the last minute so what are we going to do well I'm probably going to need some Christians there as well as non-christians what's what's the good ratio what's the good mix we've found 5050 to be pretty good particularly on the first night and then non-christians drops us off a bit but again you're trying to work out size-wise what sort of event we're going to do so that we have a critical mass of people it doesn't feel weird in the space and the

[55:23]
set up whether we've designed but also what's the ratio of christian to non-christian we're going to want but also how many times a year are we going to run it so that we have a critical mass at each event and a good ratio at each event but also so that there's momentum through the year because if you run it regularly it feels like yeah we've got our conversion engine always cranky always a place to invite non-christians – always people being followed up it builds a momentum and a confidence and excitement around those things but you've got those three things

[55:57]
working together so that you have to juggle to decide how often how large what sort of makeup now what are some other things to consider when running evangelistic course I've said that how many times a year what size secondly what things are you going to do to make the event warm and accessible to Inquirer's now we've chatted a bit about this in the culture shaping section for church but you can even go harder in this context biscuits it's specifically

[56:28]
for non-christians now what are you going to do food wise food warms things up when you're getting together you want to do that these sort of events is a dessert is a dinner is it morning tea food is a great context for relationships a full dinner Wow big wins in there Wow hard to pull off like oh they can do that background music helps heaps in those sort of context fills the awkward silences we found tables are really good when you're sitting around at a table it

[57:00]
forms relationships it's good for discussion it's a good context for this sort of thing the setting is really important can you make it a familiar style place maybe you actually go off-site you go somewhere where it's comfortable for the non-christian to be because that's going to be most accessible maybe you come on site there's wings in that having non-christians come here and for this to be becoming familiar familiar but if you do that you want to set it up in a way that's not too weird but it's more comfortable we find a cafe style is

[57:32]
particularly helpful and then you think it's a music food do we have coffee do we have tables Stewie how do we set up the tables up what does the emcee say what is lighting all those sort of things table leaders so once you get behind a small group you might have two little mini groups of four or four groups of four or whatever it might be you realize we need more than just the leader I need a couple of leaders how are we gonna train them what are

[58:04]
they going to do what's going to be their function what we don't want is for them to swamp the non-christian and say so much stuff that's it's not helpful for a non-christian rather what we've found is particularly helpful is to be the person who makes their experience warm and accessible and helps them navigate their way at the event and get all their questions answered they're also the people these table leaders who shut down the dumb things that Christians do so Christians turn up to

[58:35]
these events and do all sorts of weird and crazy stuff they put their hand up and ask about predestination they speak with weird jug and they're just weird those do weird stuff and they get so excited there's a non-christian here they've never seen one of those that they're like man yes that we've got to convert them so just stuff starts coming out of their mouths trying it's so intense that on Christians feeling like and so the table is are playing interference you're trying to try to make things feel as non-weird as possible and help this person navigate getting your questions

[59:07]
answered and your thoughts clarified and hear what's what's going on now the leader can do that in a smaller context a question time again you've got to work it how are you going to manage that is most helpful for people interviews we found interviews be extremely helpful if you can get someone who has converted two years prior in that evangelistic course or in the follow-up afterwards and you get them up and I can share in a really real way how it felt coming along what it was like going through the

[59:38]
course what they had to think through what it started to mean for their relationships the cost it was to follow Jesus and actually how wonderful it is in the life change it's brought man that's that's a powerful thing for people to see that could be me two years down the track very very helpful very powerful and behind all this conversion engine and behind in fact the whole funnel it's good to remember this people work going on we're not just running

[1:00:08]
events we're not just sticking things on there's actual relationships and conversations and so if there's a way where you've set aside a mission person or a mission team volunteer or paid and they're thinking and working with your people so that how do we keep track of non-christians in our church how do we keep making sure there are conversations with those non-christians talking to them about Jesus inviting them to the

[1:00:39]
evangelism course inviting them at along to the follow-up course organizing they can sit down and have coffee with someone and get their questions answered or who brought friends to the Christianity the the course the evangelistic course but then they stopped coming week three who's gonna ring the Christian and chat to them about how to continue the conversation with their non-christian friend and coach them through how they can keep their non-christian friend interested and maybe get them to a future course or

[1:01:09]
maybe direct them to read a book or maybe who's going to do that and when one says I want to do follow-up who's gonna follow them up to make sure they get in flop and when they're in flop who's going to make sure they continue along coming to follow-up and it's all relational it's all people it's all woven in and through everything and we need to pay careful attention to that I want to show you now a brief video five minutes it's some Sam and Toby Neil from vine two different contexts Sam hunter Bible Church larger context toby vine

[1:01:41]
surrey hills smaller than hunter here's two guys chatting about how they set up evangelistic courses so have a look at this okay we're going to spend some time talking about evangelistic courses we've got toby Neal with us from vine Church in Surrey Hills and we've got Sam Hilton with us from Hunter Bible Church gentlemen we start off Toby what

[1:02:11]
material do you use as you run of interesting courses at vine Church I say Christian explored seven week course which many people find you know really long and they're like I can get someone to seven weeks but we find if they come for first week we simply say if you enjoy it come back if you don't know pressure we find that eighty percent of the people who start finish and those who don't usually don't come back week two or three so we don't have an issue with seven weeks and Christian exploits its run by Rico theis it's a series of

[1:02:44]
videos he's very warm clear on the gospel that friendly goes through the Gospel of Mark so we're using Mark's Gospel to evangelize people we find it really helpful yep see me use something different yeah we use the life series that we've adapted to a five week series we kind of start a little bit further back then perhaps Christian explore does we start with the existential question how can I be happy and then the goal from that is really

[1:03:15]
that's that's the big hook for the series and that's that's the week where we want to say come back and find out what the purpose and meaning of really is from from there we roll into a night that's on the Bible or liability and and then we just explained different aspects of the gospel so sin the cross resurrection but we actually use Christian explored as a follow-up series okay so we want to take people from the

[1:03:45]
life series into Christianity zaborg where they get the gospel again but in a very different format hmm now we've been thinking about going to that and I think the reason we haven't yet is it's al it's a little bit more resource heirloom resources Guardian with some talks and that kind of thing but we'd love to get into there yeah can you talks about how your night runs what do you do when you get there and what do you have you structure it yeah so 7:00 till 9:15 for us we start with

[1:04:16]
dinner and then move to the questions that they've had as they're reading the Bible at home so Christian explored we challenge people make your own mind up about who Jesus look at the earliest biography of Jesus so they go home and are reading sections of that and I say bring any question and so we start with dinner then go to the questions and that's usually the best time of the night do they do they do that reading beforehand about 60 70 % of people would do it they get so much more out of it if

[1:04:50]
they do do it and then we usually do depending on what the topic is so on the night we're talking about sin I bring in some quotes one from Francis Spofford another from Martin Luther King and just trying to get them thinking about the topic of sin before we then go the Bible so the course material has kind of a small Bible study and and so we do the small Bible study break for dessert tea and coffee and then watch the video and

[1:05:20]
then finish up with some questions reflection questions wherever they really want to go okay yeah same yeah so we start with Maidan great time we get to coffee we have people coming around and taking people's orders for coffee and things like that then and about so that starts at 7:30 about quarter to 8:00 we kind of assure people to their seats and from there they're given an introduction question and that gets them talking about the topic for the evening and then after

[1:05:50]
that I get up and usually give a 20 to 30 minute talk depending on the night and where are up to in the series and after that they're given a couple more discussion questions which they they're free not to use so the tables often by that point there's enough questions and objections that conversation goes in very different directions different tables who's directing that conversation of the tables we have what we call life table leaders and their job is really just to ask questions and not have all

[1:06:22]
the answers we don't put a lot of pressure on them to to know all the answers or know exactly how they answer all the defeated beliefs but the helpful thing about the way we set up the course is they can then push those questions to question time which is the last part of the evening em so I get up again and answer questions that people might have people stick their hand up from the audience and say we used to do that but we found that it was actually quite intimidating for visitors to do that and so now we we have the our emcee go

[1:06:52]
around and she'll actually take people's questions down and by going just from table to table yep so yours is a slightly smaller group there's not multiple tables so in that small group people feel a bit more comfortable to ask questions you know yeah definitely we've been having dinner we've been laughing together and yeah they do and one of the things we do is we make sure that there's only one person on the table who is answering the questions one of the challenges we've had is when Christians come and join us

[1:07:23]
either they brought a friend or they're helping out sometimes they can feel responsible for defending Christianity yeah and that sometimes you know we've got three or four people on a table of eight and as soon as the non-believer feels like there's all these Christians trying to gang up on them really bad so we say you're not allowed answer any quick you can ask questions but there's only one defending and you know seven people asking questions yeah we find that's really really important yep yeah

[1:07:56]
so a bit of a flavor for that there that's Sam from the church in the box machine course I do that earlier in the year it's fantastic it's worth jumping on and doing that now that's that's the final principle and we think these principles are particularly helpful scalable so you work at your church size but you can see how drawing all those principles together the ten principles and we're thinking how does the mission purpose shape and influence and fuel and champion mission across all of church absolutely critical but only if it's

[1:08:26]
working in a whole church ecosystem that's running in a particularly healthy manner so we need to pay attention to all the parts now as we come to the end of that you might feel like what conferences you think oh I came really thirsty and then I just turned the fire hose on it you know just so much so much information it's worth going away and digesting and just thinking about what will this mean for us what is one or two steps forward or am I mean overall I'm looking forward to going away and do that myself going particularly through

[1:08:58]
the principles and work diagnosing where are we weak where could we improve when do we need to step forward but also thing I'm really excited about is continue to work together on this continue to help each other continuing to develop together so that together we might reach Australia and so I'm really looking forward to getting into things like um yeah some of the resources that reach has online training group training consultations and next year's conference so so that's for me the next steps forward and I think

[1:09:30]
Scott's gonna jump up now and share thinking about what is next step for us can can we give Graham a massive clap he's been graeme and a bunch of others have been thinking into this for us over the last six months and he's done an incredible amount of work for us over the last few days as well with Sam an Adrienne great Grahams right there's there's a lot to take in and so I do want us to sort of land this section I want you to keep

[1:10:02]
those booklets out and have that funnel diagram out and with your teams with each other just want you to do one thing what we do in the console process is we do a thing called a gap analysis and we think into each of those stages and we work out where you know where are we needing more resource where we were needing more effort what are we doing you know really well in some places what aren't we doing so I want you to do that in a moment but I also want to give you a little bit of a plan for you know heading back away from the conference we often come out of

[1:10:33]
these conferences we want to wanting to do lots can I encourage you to to think about what you might do just in this next year so here's a helpful diagram that that we use as well what can you do to go away and start creating mission heat in your church how can you get a culture and huge yesterday to be to be doing in the church how can we start building that mission heat through our preaching start forming that coalition there were lots of calendars with lots of colors and lots of busyness HBC's a

[1:11:07]
large church they've built momentum over the last 10 years they've they've slowly done that they haven't just done it overnight so in the second year what's maybe one thing you can add you know to your calendar or start doing and just do the one thing you know less is often best do it well evaluate maybe think about doing it again and then in the third year start to build that pipeline and review we're not going to we're not going to reach Australia in the next two weeks it's

[1:11:38]
gonna be ten years and it's gonna be deep work so that's something just to help you as you go away but for now we reflect on the funnel what are your key gaps we'll come back in a moment