Andrew King of Highbury Baptist Church takes us through his thinking that led to a new venture
What? To whom? And how?
Since I began serving as a pastor at Highbury Baptist Church I have had to think more carefully about how we in our local church are to fulfil our part in the Great Commission.
What?
Jesus’s words are clear: we are to make disciples, baptise them and then teach them the whole counsel of God. The commission is not just about making converts, it’s about making disciples. That part is surely clear from the text. But, even if someone did repent and believe on the first hearing of the gospel, it’s unlikely that a filled baptistry would be ready at hand. And learning the whole counsel of God? Well, exactly.
The logic of the commission implies the need for developing relationships over the long term with seekers who become converts who become baptised disciples. And so that is surely why the Lord has designed local churches to be the principle agencies for fulfilling his Great Commission.
To whom?
As I pondered this, the blindingly obvious struck me: we as a local church need to deliberately focus on reaching local people in order that we can practically keep meeting them all the way through this process of discipleship. After all, it’s hard to meet up regularly with the man on the moon! Whilst the Great Commission is a worldwide venture, the Lord has put our church in a particular location so that we can labour there.
Is the world our parish? Well, yes, we are to be praying and giving and helping in the work elsewhere. But never by ignoring the work needed in our home neighbourhood.
And how?
What is the best way to focus on contacting local people? Friendship evangelism is great, but can be limiting if only a few members (and still fewer local friends) are willing to engage. Open-air work can reach local people in some areas, but in urban areas like Highbury the folks on the streets and in the parks quite literally come from all over the place. We know this because we have surveyed and logged addresses on many occasions . Door to door for us is actually buzzer to buzzer and so yields very few positive responses.
Letterboxes
We concluded that, for us at least, the best way to focus on initial contact with local people was via their letterboxes. If we had a short, punchy message that we could deliver to many houses we could pray that the Lord would work in some of these local people to read, consider and respond to our message. And, being local, we would then have the best opportunity to meet and befriend them over the following weeks and months and so evangelise towards their conversion, baptism, future discipleship and Christian service. What’s more, it also enables some members who fear face-to-face evangelism to be involved.
The development
But what to deliver? Gone are the days when we can assume that many of our neighbours have a basic Bible knowledge or world view. And gone also are the days when many people will engage with an uninvited lengthy written article. What we needed were short and punchy messages that start with topics that connect with our typical unbelieving neighbours. They needed to be clear, attractive and of good quality in order to avoid going straight in the recycling box and, obviously, they needed to encourage folk to get in touch with us.
So, a few years ago, we designed some bright postcards with simple, punchy messages on topics such as money, work, death, science and atheism. We went out in teams and distributed them street by street in our area. We did this month after month and then received a fair number of clicks to our website and a few visitors to our services. It certainly raised awareness about us, as occasionally folk still mention receiving one of the postcards. But, best of all, one local couple got in touch and, after six months of Bible studies, the Lord saved them both and they are now baptised members. The initial spark was a postcard about the idolatry of work. Yet the Lord used that to draw them to us and to himself.
The launch
Since distributing these postcards we have had them on display in our church building so that visitors can take them and members can still use them. A number of Christian visitors asked whether they could use them themselves. We were more than happy, but realised that it would be even better if other churches could edit electronic copies rather than have to redesign them from scratch.
All this has led to the launch of the fasttract.org website to display and sell on our designs. Fasttract is fully overseen by the leaders of Highbury Baptist Church and all the major decisions and financial accounts will be presented to our church members’ meetings. However, we are drawing in help from outside our membership as well. In order to improve the visual appeal and effectiveness of our designs, we are working with Steve Devane, a Christian graphic designer. In order to broaden our venture we are also assembling a small group of creative writers to develop a number of new series for a range of new topics.
And … for a small charge via PayPal (we merely want to recoup our costs to fund new designs) we will sell each design as a down-loadable file. You simply need to type in your own church contact details and resave the file ready to upload or email off to your chosen printer. If you want help with all that then you can arrange this for a small fee with Steve Devane. We are well aware that postcard designs are like Marmite: you either love them or hate them! However, over time, we hope we will learn how to develop designs that appeal to a wider number of churches whilst not dropping in quality or losing their gospel potential. We don’t expect this to appeal to all (and we certainly aren’t knocking other outreach methods that work better in other locations), but we do hope fasttract.org will help some churches and be used by the Lord to draw souls to himself. Some people have been shocked that we don’t always quote scripture and ‘tell the Calvary message’. But we aren’t aiming to explain the whole gospel in one go: we rest in God’s sovereignty to use these tracts to draw some local people to think and respond. The tracts are aimed for outreach with the evangelism done later, person to person over the longer haul.
Fast and punchy
One new series is about modern idols and entitled The trouble with… Another is about real struggles and entitled The pain of…. The idols tracts play on a 1950s style greeting card design but the struggles design are softer and more abstract. The writing in the idols series will be fast and punchy whilst in the struggles series it will be slower and more gentle.
The venture has launched with eight designs, and we have others in the pipeline. If churches do run with this then we may have the funds to develop ‘breaking news’ designs to respond quickly to significant events (like the Ashley Madison saga). We would also love to be able to produce video or infographic materials to complement the postcards.
Do please take a look and maybe join the email list so we can tell you when new designs come out. Above all, please pray that the Lord would use all this for his glory.
