Confessional Lutheran Evangelism

[JM]

What are some of the barriers to evangelism? How are you reaching out to the community to help grow your congregation and bring folks into the fold?

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[LizaMarie]

Well, our church(WELS) used to advertise our Vacation Bible school and our preschool, when we had one. The preschool would sometimes bring in the parents. ALso, we used to have a booth at our local fair and a float in the yearly town parade handing out literature. We are in a small town and I think we should also be doing more, but I'm not as good at sharing the gospel as I should be.
We closed the preschool but that was a good outreach, IMO, often it got the parents to attend our services.
We are also encouraged to invite people to church.

 

[Shane R]

About half of the members of St. Matthew's are not Lutherans. They joined the church after marriage or because it has the most traditional service in town. They therefore don't really have a grasp of the teachings of the synod. I would guess most of them that consume religious materials are reading the garbage that is sold near supermarket checkouts or on morning cable television.

There is very little brand loyalty or pride. Americans, particularly in more rural areas, have been so indoctrinated with the spirit of independence that they don't want to make themselves accountable to a church. Any little disagreement will send some people down the road. I did finally break the guy who runs the church Facebook page of telling people to go to whatever church they want. But most have the attitude that one church is about as good as another.

On the preschool: they seldom make money and most church leadership groups are averse to consistently losing money. They will throw away money on radio time and yellow pages ads that probably aren't half as effective as the school but they don't see the loss in those projects. The school, on the other hand, has reliable data on things like enrollment, budget, expenditure per pupil, staff salaries etc. Lots of numbers to add up and subtract from the coffers. I am disgusted by the number of churches sitting on 400 or 500 thousand dollars in the bank that are absolutely set against going in the red a few dollars on the programs people actually use.

 

[Shane R]

I sent both of my daughters to LCMS preschools for the Pre-K3 year (age 3-4). They did not go to the same school because we moved. Both were good and the curriculum was significantly better than the public school program for the comparable level. However, I keep in touch with the pastor at the church the younger one was enrolled at and he told me the school sometimes breaks even but it never makes money. And the leadership committee is frustrated that they can't turn a profit on running the school. But they tolerate it as a community service because there are only 3 or 4 private preschools in the whole county. It's an underserved area of need.

 

[JM]

I'm in a situation where my congregation is small and shrinking. We need new converts to fill the pews and cannot rely on children of believers filling the pews because the average age of the members has to be in the late 50's and early 60's.

 

[LizaMarie]

I'm in a situation where my congregation is small and shrinking. We need new converts to fill the pews and cannot rely on children of believers filling the pews because the average age of the members has to be in the late 50's and early 60's.

Our church is the same. We have very few children and Sunday School is shinking.

 

[Shane R]

One of my regulars asked me a question that I found fairly interesting. This chap is in his 80s and was raised in one of the several Brethren churches (ie. classical Anabaptists) that are ubiquitous in Southern Ohio. He was speaking about a time when he was much younger and you could set up a tent on the outskirts of town and have preaching every night for a week or 2. He asked, "Pastor, why can't we do that now?"

Too many 'confessional' Lutherans would pop up to say: "That's revivalism; we don't do that." But I'm not opposed. If he and the mayor (who is also a congregant) want to pitch a tent or set me up in the park for a week, I'll work up an order of prayer, Scripture readings, and sermon for every night. A tent meeting is not antithetical to Lutheranism. It's just that they were generally poorly executed by American Evangelicals and took on a certain stigma.

 

[JM]

One of my regulars asked me a question that I found fairly interesting. This chap is in his 80s and was raised in one of the several Brethren churches (ie. classical Anabaptists) that are ubiquitous in Southern Ohio. He was speaking about a time when he was much younger and you could set up a tent on the outskirts of town and have preaching every night for a week or 2. He asked, "Pastor, why can't we do that now?"

Too many 'confessional' Lutherans would pop up to say: "That's revivalism; we don't do that." But I'm not opposed. If he and the mayor (who is also a congregant) want to pitch a tent or set me up in the park for a week, I'll work up an order of prayer, Scripture readings, and sermon for every night. A tent meeting is not antithetical to Lutheranism. It's just that they were generally poorly executed by American Evangelicals and took on a certain stigma.

Yeah, that's essentially the response I get. I want to go door to door and hand deliver invites, on my own time and dime. I was told to trust God, trust the Holy Spirit. I do trust God but God uses means. I have friends that left Protestant churches and become RC or EO only because they didn't know about Lutheranism, didn't consider it because they didn't know about it.

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

it's weird, even in Orthodoxy there is a tradition of staretz or holy fools who act like Ezekiel and do outside evangelism, I think its similar to why the sermon style differs from the Reformed--- teaching of doctrine should only be inside the church building, and anti- monk/ staretz theology; see here I think there is a place for monks today to set up huts for people to visit, who are well trained to guide people like Optina elders
"Missionary Monks An Introduction to the History and Theology of Missionary Monasticism"