Ready to Witness

80% of Southern Baptists are willing to share their faith, but only 25% are intentional about doing so. Research shows being trained to witness gives people more incentive to share with others.

Help members of your church learn the necessary skills to present the basics of the gospel. Visit www.NAMB.net/evangelism for resources to assist you in equipping others to tell His story.

Talked with an unsaved person about becoming a Christian  

I feel at ease talking about my faith and seek opportunities to do so 

Led a person to make a commitment to Christ 
 

7 Ways to Improve This Week’s Message

By Greg Penna, Strategic Resourcing Associate, NAMB

Focus on Pace
“Start low, go slow, and end with a bang!” A sermon should build. Starting low and slow grabs attention and allows the preacher to set a sustainable pace for the message. Running out of breath, running out of voice, running out of energy, are all pace problems. Pace the message so that the fastest pace and highest pitch are at the most important point.
 
Deliver Your Message
A sermon should be delivered with confidence. The pastor should stand with good posture, make good eye contact, and patiently deliver God’s word on a weekly basis. The congregation will never be more excited about the message than what is communicated through body language; effectively using your entire body is good delivery.

Limit Your Dependence on Notes
Memory is one of the most important tools for the preacher—develop it. Notes should be used to guide specific points, for quotations and as an occasional help. Excessive use of notes distracts the congregation. Extemporaneous-type speaking is the most effective in today’s culture.

Make Sure That the Body Language Matches the Message
People will believe body language over what is spoken every time. Preachers sometimes fall into the trap of sending mixed messages. They may tell a sad story with a smile. Most of the time, when the message is mixed, the listener thinks the person is lying. This causes preachers much grief. It’s the source of questions about authenticity. A sad story needs a sad face.

Use Picture Words
The average speaker can speak about 110 words per minute (wpm). The average person can process about 300 wpm. This fact causes “audience fade.” Try to find ways to use the extra brainpower not being used while listening. Appealing to the imagination, having the listener picture things, helps make up for the gap.

Prepare a Smooth Landing
Preachers spend five times the amount of effort on their introduction than they do their conclusion. Chasing rabbits lately? It’s because you haven’t prepared the ending. Everything, until the ending, has been going smoothly. Now the congregation desperately wants a crash landing so the sermon will end. Avoid this by planning an effective ending to the message.

Keep it Simple
Creativity should not equal complication. The main goal of preaching is to effectively deliver God’s word on a weekly basis. Master this before trying to add layers of creativity. Creative things like humor should emphasize a simple message, not detract from it. When a message becomes overly complicated because a pastor is trying to use something like alliteration, the message will be rejected.

Where are the men?

by David Murrow

Ever wondered why it’s so hard to get men involved at church? Why only about 40% of the adults in most worship services are male? Why most of your volunteers wear lipstick and pantyhose?

Men. They’re just less religious than women, right? Wrong! Other religions have little trouble attracting males. Jesus was a magnet to men. But today, few men are living for Christ, even as many are dying for Allah. Why do rival faiths inspire male allegiance, while ours breeds male indifference?

A business guru once said, “Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you’re getting.” Christianity’s primary delivery system, the local church, is perfectly designed to reach women and older folks. That’s why our pews are filled with them. But this church system fails to stir men’s hearts, so men (especially masculine ones) stay away.

What do I mean? Most churches offer a safe, nurturing community, an oasis of stability and predictability. Studies show that women and seniors are the groups most likely to seek these things. Our comforting congregations provide women and the elderly with what they long for, so naturally they show up in large numbers. But our standard line up of socializing, singing, ceremony and sermon fails to pierce the adventurous hearts of men (particularly young men).

I once interviewed a man who lived in a house with a badly sloped floor. I asked him, “Does the tilt bother you?” He answered, “What tilt?” So it is with our churches. Those of us who’ve grown up Christian don’t notice how we’ve subtly tilted our language, symbols, rituals and methods toward the feminine. But unchurched men notice—and vote with their feet.
Why should you care? Simple: when a church loses its men, it declines. The denominations slipping into heresy and irrelevance lost their men decades ago.

So how do you attract men? How do you engage them? The answer is not necessarily a program. It’s not necessarily men’s ministry. There’s plenty you can do at 11 o’clock Sunday morning:

• Cultivate a healthy masculine spirit in your church. A man must sense, from the moment he walks in, that church is not just for Grandma, it’s something for him. It can’t feel like a ladies’ club. Ditch the quilted banners, fresh flowers and holding hands with your neighbor. Park a Harley in the vestibule and see what happens.
• Present Christ’s masculine side. Pastors often focus on Jesus’ tenderness and empathy. This is a good thing, but presenting soft Jesus week after week runs the risk of turning men off. Even more bewildering are today’s praise songs—which I call “Jesus is my boyfriend” music.
• Avoid feminine terminology. Today’s most popular metaphor for discipleship is a personal relationship with Jesus. Christ’s bold, masculine command, “Follow Me!” is now, “Have a personal relationship with Me.” We’ve recast Jesus’ offer in feminine terms.
• Encourage men to participate. Women keep the ministry machine going, so many pastors focus on keeping females happy and volunteering. Encourage men in your church to volunteer on Sunday mornings. Ask them to teach Sunday school, direct traffic in the paking lot, greet guests, etc.

Dream for a moment. Imagine your church filled with men who are coming alive in Christ. Men who are there not just to please their wives or to fulfill religious tradition, but men laying their lives down for God. Imagine what your congregation could accomplish for the kingdom!

The church was like this once; it can be so again. For more ideas on how to reach men, visit www.churchformen.com.

David Murrow is director of Church for Men, an organization dedicated to restoring a healthy, life-giving masculine spirit in the local church. He is author of the book Why Men Hate Going to Church. He lives in Chugiak, Alaska, with his wife and three children.

Survey reveals significant growth in born again population

The proportion of “born again Christians” is at its highest, according to a recent study by The Barna Group, which has tracked these numbers for the last 25 years.

The new research found that 45% of all adults meet the criteria The Barna Group uses to classify people as “born again.” That number is up from 31% in 1983.

The increase is largely attributed to a 16-point rise among Baby Boomers since the beginning of the 1990s. With 53% of Boomers currently meeting the born again criteria, that generation has now surpassed the percentage of born again adults within the preceding two generations. Slightly more than one-third of the younger generations—the Baby Busters and Mosaics—fit the criteria.

Other demographic comparisons: women are 16% more likely than men to be born again; African-Americans are the ethnic group most likely to be born again (59%); Hispanics the least likely (32%). The South is 57% born again, while the West (33%) and Northeast (37%) have fewer born again Christians.

Source: The Barna Update

Culture Watch

In 2000, most of the nation’s organized religious activity took place at or through local churches. In his book Revolutionaries George Barna points out that this action is shifting to newer forms of corporate religious commitment. In a typical week, 9% of all adults participate in a house church. An even greater proportion (22%) engages in spiritual encounters that take place in the marketplace (e.g., with groups of people while they are at their place of work or play, or in other typical daily contexts).

The Internet serves as the foundation for interactive faith experiences for more than one out of every ten adults, although most of them currently use it in tandem with another form of corporate religious experience. In Revolutionaries, Barna predicts what he sees as a major shift in the primary means of spiritual experience and expression.

illustration by Dale Glasgow

Tithing disconnect between pulpit and pew

Two new studies reveal that pastors and those attending their churches often disagree when it comes to tithing. 56% of all clergy (76% among Southern Baptists) say Christians are under a biblical mandate to tithe 10% of their income to the local church. Another 12% believe Christians are under the 10% mandate, but not necessarily to the local church.

The people in the pew have a slightly different opinion. Among those attending Protestant churches, only 36% believe there’s a biblical mandate to tithe 10% to their church—and another 23%, while agreeing with the 10% mandate, feel that giving doesn’t have to be to the local church. Many people believe a Christian’s giving shouldn’t be limited to religious groups or causes.

The study uncovered another disconnect. While slightly over a third of Protestants believe they should be tithing to their local church, the local church has less than 10% who are actually doing so.

And the age-old question—should the 10% tithe be based on an individual’s gross or net income—remains an ongoing debate. Churchgoers are pretty evenly split on the issue—48% on net, 52% on gross—but clergy heavily favor (72% to 28%) tithing based on gross income.

The two studies, conducted by Ellison Research, examined Protestant pastors nationwide and people who attend Protestant churches at least once a month.

Source: AgapePress 2006 and Crosswalk.com

Is faith a priority in America?

Americans are largely committed to family—more than half (51%) listed that as their top priority, according to a recent study—but commitment to faith falls to well under half the population (16%) who listed it as the most important priority in their life.

Among the different people groups measured, evangelicals were twice as likely as non-evangelical born again adults and almost five times more likely than notional Christians to place faith at the top of the list. Further in the study, however, the small percentage who placed faith as their highest life priority were among Americans who largely think of themselves as being highly spiritual. According to the survey, 59% of adults described themselves as a “full-time servant of God,” but only 25% listed faith as their most important priority. And only one out of every four who consider themselves “deeply spiritual,” ranked faith first.

It seems that while spirituality is in vogue in our culture today, the meaning of being spiritual is in question.

Source: Crosswalk.com, March 17, 2006