What began as a pastor’s hunch about the lack of conversion growth in the local church, turned into a full-blown 24 hour Consultation on Evangelism in late 2015.
Evangelists and leaders partnered with Lansdowne Church Bournemouth to organise an event which brought together local, regional and national leaders of churches, theological colleges and Christian agencies.
Culturally relevant
They met for 24 hours in a hotel overlooking Poole Harbour as people from different church backgrounds and ages committed to asking tough questions about the place of word based, creative, culturally relevant evangelism on the agenda and budget of the local church.
The national Christian context is increasingly one of honest debate, that for all our noise as evangelicals, much of our numerical increase has to do with transfer, biological or diasporal growth and little of it to do with people being converted. As one of the atten-dees commented, ‘people are just moving from one sheep pen to another’! Many feel more comfortable painting the neighbour’s fence than sharing the gospel. Social action is the acceptable face of mission and in danger of becoming the only expression of it.
Interactive sessions discussed the role of the evangelist in the local church, how to get Word-based mission into the DNA of our congregations and what a joined up local and national strategy might look like.
