The Coral Ridge Strategy: Second of Two Parts

In envisioning an evangelism program, a pastor typically begins by preaching on the subject and then inviting everyone who is willing to take part to come on some specified night to begin. This is the way we tried at first to motivate and recruit people. It was not very successful. The basic motivation will no doubt begin from the pulpit with sermons on the responsibility, privilege, and necessity of witnessing for Christ. However, our experience showed us that the actual recruiting should be done on a person-to-person basis.

When Christ called his apostles, he first prayed all night and then called them specifically by name. An “apostle” was one sent forth with a commission. In its broader sense the word refers to every Christian who has been sent forth by Christ with a Great Commission. I recommend that after much prayer the minister select several people whom he would like to take with him to learn how to evangelize.

I did not want to begin a program in this small way with only one or two persons; I wanted to train a whole class of evangelists at one time. The result was that I ended up with none. If you begin with a few, it doesn’t take very long for them to grow into a large body of witnesses. Say you start with four. At the end of the training program each of these four trained persons would recruit two more workers, and the minister would recruit four more. Now there would be the original four plus their eight, making twelve, plus the minister’s new four, making sixteen, plus the minister, for a total of seventeen. After the next class the sixteen laymen would get thirty-two more, making forty-eight, plus the minister’s four, which makes fifty-two, plus the minister, making fifty-three. Soon it can grow to a hundred, two hundred, and so on.

New workers are recruited by personal visits. A trained worker explains the program and then invites the prospective worker to a dinner. Here there is a greater explanation of the goals and principles of the program, plus testimonies of what has been accomplished. Then the potential workers are asked to commit themselves to the entire four-and-a-half-month training program or else not to start.

We give three types of training:

1. Class instruction. On the day the people come to the church for visitation, they meet together for half an hour of instruction before going out into the field. There is a brief lecture on the topic of the week, and study assignments for the following week are given. Then class members divide into pairs to practice what they learned during the previous week.

2. Homework assignments. We prepared a detailed notebook with instructions on how to present the Gospel logically and interestingly. Assignments are given each week, consisting of portions of the Gospel to be learned. These are recited and checked each week at the class.

3. On-the-job training. Each trainee goes out with a trained worker and listens as this person endeavors to lead someone to Christ. This is the vital element of training.

Wednesday morning from nine to noon and Thursday evening from 7:15 to 10:30 are our visitation times. After each we have a report-back meeting. These help reduce drop-outs; discouraged workers can have their spirits lifted as they hear reports from others whom God has blessed that day.

Our witnessing approach is to give a simple, positive statement of the Good News of the Gospel. We have found that most Christians do not know how to present the Gospel in an intelligible, forceful, and interesting way. We include a presentation of the Gospel in the training materials and encourage the people to learn it and use it as a guide. Having something to start with is a big help to most people.

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.—D. JAMES KENNEDY, senior minister, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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