and Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church
. Both are down-to-earth and full of helpful information for pastors and leaders of any size church.Many of the resources we find for church leaders provide little assistance to those who lead smaller churches, but Searcy shares ideas that will work in any church. For instance, in Ignite he discusses developing a church calendar around the days when you want to have a big day. He suggests Easter, a Sunday in February, and about month after school resumes in the fall. On that day Searcy recommends that a sermon series begin that would appeal to the people your church is wanting to reach. It doesn't matter what size church you have, your church can do this. The same kind of helpful information is found in Fusion as well. In fact, I led a half-day workshop for one of my associations on the importance of hospitality towards first-time guests and got a lot of material for that workshop from that book. Every church in that association is led by a bivocational pastor. In case you are wondering, I did not take credit for much of that workshop. I frequently shared where the information was coming from and I even think I showed them a copy of my book and recommended they purchase a copy.
Our son bought me my first I-Pod for Christmas, and I have downloaded several podcasts of various speakers I enjoy listening to when I'm at the gym. I have subscribed to Searcy's podcasts and have listened to several of them already. They cost nothing to download and contain a lot of good ideas.
Let me quickly say that Nelson Searcy doesn't know me from the man in the moon. I have attended a workshop he led in Evansville last summer, but we never met. I'm not puffing up a friend of mine; I'm just letting you know that here are some inexpensive resources that I think would be a benefit to almost any pastor or church leader regardless of the size church you serve
2 comments:
Started to read computer copy sample of "Fusion" and am having wonders about comment by author about visitors having to make several visits before making decision. In Acts, thousands made decision for G-D, and there were NO drama presentation,NO bands, NO praise team, just the speaker and G-d working, Is this not the same G-d that we still serve today ? And is He still able to do what He did thousand of years ago?
There is no question that a person CAN make a decision for Christ the first time he or she hears the gospel, but I doubt that often happens. In my pastorate every person I led to Christ made their decision after hearing the gospel many times and in many different ways. In my own experience I had attended church services for years as a child, a young teenager, and as an adult. I had many people personally share the gospel with me at various times. Finally, alone in my living room I knelt beside my chair and asked Jesus Christ into my life. Although there was no one there but God and me, I doubt that I would have made that decision without having heard the gospel presented to me hundreds of times throughout my life.
The second part of your comment regards the ability of God to draw people to Himself without drama presentations, bands, praise teams, etc. Certainly, God CAN bring people to a relationship with Him without any of those things, but He also can bring people to Him through any of those things. Not only is He able to do what He did thousands of years ago, He is able to do a new thing today. The issue should never be in how God draws people into a relationship with Him. The only important thing is that people are drawn to Him and that they enter into a personal relationship with Him.
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