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The essential things we are trying to teach people are: how to get into the gospel and to find out where a person is spiritually, how to present the gospel, and how to bring the person to commit himself to Jesus Christ at the conclusion.

In teaching trainees how to present the gospel, we first have them learn the outline of the gospel, which might be considered the skeleton. Second, we have them learn Scripture verses that give muscle, so to speak, to the outline. Third, we have them learn illustrations that flesh out and make clear and understandable the outline of the gospel

We do not have them memorize the entire presentation but rather learn the outline and then gradually build on it. First we have them add just enough so that the bones of the outline don't rattle. Then we have them give a three-minute presentation of the gospel. Next we enlarge it to five minutes and then to eight. We continue to have them enlarge their presentation until they are able to present the gospel in any period from a minute to an hour.

The follow-up procedure includes several return visits in which the new convert is established in the Scripture and assured of his salvation. We use a variety of materials and recommend highly the Navigator follow-up materials. After several personal visits we then try to get the new believer into a small Bible-study group that will consist of several more mature Christians plus four or five newer Christians.

After the convert has been taught to study God's Word, to pray, to live the, Christian life, and to walk with Christ, he is encouraged to come into the evangelism program to learn how to win others to Christ. Yet at this point the follow-up is still not complete, for he must be taught not only how to reproduce but also how to disciple a new convert until the convert has matured to the place where he too is able to bring someone else to Christ. This emphasis on spiritual multiplication, looking past the first generation to the second, third, and fourth, is the secret of an expanding evangelistic ministry.

I do not believe that it must necessarily take hundreds of years for the gospel to spread around the world. The process of spiritual multiplication can proceed with the rapidity of the population explosion.

We feel that our responsibility extends beyond Coral Ridge or Fort Lauderdale, or even Florida, or the United States. In addition to training an increasing number of people in our church (in our last class we had 298), we have also trained a good many in other churches in our area. Also, we have an annual clinic where almost a hundred ministers meet for five days of intensive training. Here they receive both classroom instruction and on-the-job training with our trained laymen.

This program has jumped the boundaries of the United States into a number of other countries. It is currently being introduced in Japan. Our goal is to see churches in every nation catch the vision of training their laymen and then bringing in other ministers and teaching them to train their people, until the world is confronted by a vast army of tens of millions of Christian lay evangelists.

This article originally appeared in two parts in the July 28, 1972 and the August 25, 1972 issues of Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Kennedy died September 5. A roundup of links about Kennedy's death and the press release from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church are available from CT Liveblog.

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September (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51