Sunday School Leader Focus: Evangelism

- Today's topic is Evangelism and when I think of evangelism, I think of the guy that inspired and encouraged me more than anyone in evangelism. And you'll hear me refer to him as my pastor. I'm not a member of First Baptist Gulf Shores, but he is my pastor. And so I am privileged to introduce Dr. Lawrence Phipps. Who is pastor of First Baptist Church Gulf Shores, and the head of It's Life Ministry, where he does a lot of consulting work for churches, and certainly is available for you and for other churches in Alabama and throughout the country. So it is our delight to have brother Lawrence with us this morning. Brother Lawrence take it away please.

- Daniel, it's great to be here and participants I'm glad that you're here and are part of what God's doing today. Welcome to this time of talking about evangelism. Specifically, I'm gonna be looking at evangelism through the Sunday school. Let me tell you something that I've been doing. I've done some minor revisions to the team's book that Daniel and I wrote several years ago, and we just continue to streamline that book. It's getting ready to go into its seventh edition. And one of the things that I think we're gonna do with this edition is we're gonna offer churches the opportunity to purchase the book, download it, or we'll send it to them where they can download it and just reprint the book without having to buy multiple books. But one of the last things that I did, I actually did on Wednesday because what I'm doing this seventh edition is what I call the Special COVID-19 Edition of Growing Sunday School Small Group Teams. And I wrote this introduction and I just wanted to read that introduction to you this morning, and then we're going to have word of prayer. The Southern Baptist Church of 2020 has entered a day of return. There was a time when Sunday school consisted of small groups and we're made to grow and multiply. A new era dawned and larger groups emerged with much emphasis on teaching and a little emphasis on reaching. Groups with last gifted teachers became small groups because they were dying. The next era became the era of deemphasizing small groups all together. The new emphasis was on music and or preaching. The last two areas have spanned about 30 years and resulted in systematic decline in baptisms. Small groups, if they exist at all, appear to often be cliques and churches seem to content as long as the money is still coming into the church. The presence of COVID-19 has shaken the American church to its core. We've been forced to close and then reopen in small groups. That is precisely why I've called this the day of return. We've been forced to return to the small group concept. Unfortunately many do not like what we've been forced to do. They've forgotten Romans 8:28. God works everything together for the good of those who love him and have not given thanks in every circumstance as Paul said to the church at Thessalonica in 5:18, 1st Thessalonians 5:18. It's apparent that the small group mandate that has been driven by social distancing mandate has driven the church to reevaluate small groups. Even our worship time has been limited in size. Churches they were full and had refused to entertain the idea of a second or third worship time have been forced to do what they resisted. Therefore, let's do this again and let's do it correctly this time. Small groups are not made to remain small and stagnant. Small groups are designed to grow large and multiply. We start small, reach out, develop new leaders as we grow and we plan for the day of multiplication. Never use the word divide. We don't split classes. We send leaders who have been discipled in a growing class to multiply and start a new class. As worship grows and it will when small groups grow and multiply, then we multiply worship times. Allow choice and increase the utilization of existing space with very little financial outlay. Be careful not to long for a return to the good old days. The good old days are what brought the church to the place we are. And in most cases it's not good. Jesus tells us and what we call the Great Commission, "As you go, "make disciples of all people groups." Imagine an America that is filled with churches who did not hesitate and wonder who is on the other side of the door when we knock on it. The address where the flower we sin, doesn't make any difference, who it arrives to. And the other end of the phone call we make, does it make any difference who's on the end of that phone call. This is the America COVID-19 has led the church to discover. Father I want you to use this time today to be blessed. Lord, we want you to be honored and we want to be the churches that you've called us to be. We want our staffs, our leadership and our congregations to know that there's a work to be done. And we do not need to hold back any longer. We need to do that work and we need to do it with a vengeance, but we need your help. Lord Jesus, I pray today that I will hide behind the cross of Calvary and that you will be lifted up and father you will be glorified. And I ask Holy spirit that you, the one who does all the teaching will teach through me that I will move out of the way, that I will allow you to do your work and that people today and in the future will listen to what you're saying. And we'll give you glory. And that we together will grow your church in Jesus name I pray, Amen. I was in my priority time this morning. And in that priority time, I was reading Psalm 73. And the Psalm has said, "Who have I in heaven but you, "there is none upon earth "that I desire besides you, "my flesh and my heart fail "but God is the strength of my heart "and my portion forever "or indeed those who are far from you shall perish. "You have destroyed all those "who desert you for harlotry, "but it is good for me to draw near to God. "I've put my trust in the Lord God "that I made declare all your works." You see what our goal is, is to put our trust in the Lord God, so that we will declare all of his works. And I'm telling you, His words are our Legion. God is doing a great work today. And I want him to continue doing that work. And I want him to continue doing it through our small groups through the Sunday school Bible fellowship, Sunday Bible study, whatever a church calls that, doesn't make any difference. So how are we gonna do this? Well, I'm gonna give you six things today. So if you have your pen and paper handy, and I call this a return to the future, based on what I read just a few moments ago, the introduction to the COVID-19 team's book, a return to the future where we go to a place where we were years ago, where the church was growing, the church was multiplying inside and out. Churches weren't closing in great numbers and God was doing a magnificent work. And so I'm gonna ask six questions basically. And the first one is, who are we reaching? Who are we reaching? Because you see one of the things that I'm getting calls and people are saying, "What are you doing to get prospects?" And how are you reaching out to people during this time? Well, actually our, we had our discovery for new members last Sunday. And by the way we are inside. I know some churches aren't yet, we are inside. Plus we have nine by 15 foot LED screen outside where people can drive up and watch worship inside, turn their radio to 89.7 and listen to what's going on inside because there are a lot of people who are highly vulnerable, but they don't want to just sit at home, which they can. It's on our website, we're on Facebook. They can do all those things, but we're trying to do as much as we can to continue to connect to people. And in your church that would look radically different, but guess what? That's okay, because we're not all in the same place. We're not all in same churches and things just work differently where we are, but where we are, we are inside. And we did have our discovery for new members last Sunday. And we did have 11 people who came to be a part of First Baptist Gulf Shores. And the truth is that, that's 11 more than we had last July, because last July, we didn't even have a discovery during the summertime. We had it in June. We had in August, we didn't have any July. We didn't have very many that came in June. We didn't have a lot that came in August, but we had none that came in July. This year, we actually had it in June. We've had it in July. I think we had seven in June. We had 11 in July. So people are still coming. We baptized last Sunday, we baptized last night. It was on a Friday night, we had somebody who came to a saving knowledge of Jesus, emailed us, said, "My home church "and all the churches around us are closed. "And before we go home, "I would like to be baptized." And our student pastor John Yates baptized, and I haven't talked to him this morning. I know I have texted him. I know he baptized. And my guess is he baptized in the Gulf. But which we also do here. I mean, we have baptistries all over this place. We've got largest baptistry in America called the Gulf of Mexico. And we baptize in swimming pools. We have two portable baptistries, and then we have our baptistry in celebration worship center. But we're continuing to baptize and we're continuing to see people come to Christ. We're continuing to see people come to the church, but not without some effort. And we are meeting in small groups. We ask the people who come to our Bible fellowship groups to wear mask. And we're trying to do spread those out. But here's the thing, we opened back up inside on May the 21st and the day we opened up and we had worked on this for months. We started eight new Bible study units. We had eight new classes, we had just built a new facility. We were able to open that up. We had moved the children off the second floor out of the existing facility, and we were ready to start those classes. The leaders had been raised up in their classes and they were ready to start. And we had our teams meeting last Wednesday night. It had an incredible number of people there because they were there to find out how to be teachers, evangelism leaders, administrators, ministry coordinators, and service coordinators in their Bible fellowship groups. So we are reaching, but the question is, who are we reaching? Now, a lot of people are doing something very important and we did this as well, and we continue, we're continuing to do this, but we actually took our time in March and April, where we divided up the entire membership among our staff. And we called every single family. And or that we could get on the phone and we want to know how they were doing. And we did not list them as active or inactive. We just got a printout, a sheet of every single family who is a part of the First Baptist Gulf Shores family. And we called them just to see how they're doing and to find out how we could pray for them. And so we were reaching to two groups. We were reaching to active members and inactive members and it was just to say, you know what? "This is a tough time right now. "We want to know how your family's doing." We found some needs that we can meet during that process. We found some healing that needed to take place. We found some hurts that needed to be healed. And so there were a lot of different things that happened through that. There are a lot of ways to reach in. You can do it through your Bible fellowship groups. You can go beyond your Bible fellowship groups. What we did is we did this almost instead of our Bible fellowship groups, because we knew they were doing work, but we wanted them to know that the member, the ministers and the leadership were interested in them as well, not just their Bible fellowship teacher. So the ones that we are reaching are people who are very active. Now, here's what generally happens. Generally, the most active people are the first ones that get ignored, because what we do is we decide you're active, you're involved, and we don't have to waste our time on you. Well, let me tell you something, most active or most inactive people that I have met and heard about were one time active. And what happened is that during that time of activity, they were often neglected, taken for granted and then ultimately things would happen. They didn't get a response and they just moved out. Well, we have a chance to recover those individuals before they move out. By going to our active people and saying, "How are you doing?" You know he greatest response that I got from the phone, 100 and something phone calls that I made. The greatest response that I received were from active members, from Bible study teachers, from leaders and our worship ministry. And in other areas of the church, that those individuals who happened to be on my list, and I didn't get all the leaders, but the ones that I called were like, "Wow, I cannot remember the last time. "the pastor or a staff member called me "to find out how I was doing." And I thought, "Wow, I knew this, but I forgot it. "But guess what? "I know it again. "I know that we've got to reach the active "and the inactive who are in our church." What great time for Bible study classes to contact people who haven't been here in awhile and say, "How are you doing? "What's going on in your life?" COVID-19 provides one of the greatest reasons that we have had in recent history to call people and find out how they're doing. There was a time a few months ago. I thought, "Well, we've got to really hurry this up "because this thing is gonna come to an end "and this is not gonna be as useful too." But the truth is that the more people that get tested, the more we find out are positive. And so, even though the numbers may not be escalating dramatically, the test results are escalating dramatically. And that still has people in a fear mode. And they're wondering what's going on? And am I gonna get this? And what's gonna happen in my family? And this is a great time to contact active and inactive church family members. So that's who we're reaching out to, but that's not all that we're going out to. We are reaching inside, but we also need to be going outside. When we ask ourselves, who are we reaching? We have to realize that there are people on the outside who were absolutely afraid. The fear factor is enormous in our nation right now. And we're finding that, we're talking to people, we get names, talk to people on the phone, talk to merchants, suppliers that we're communicating with. Just finding out how they're doing. And it's kind of amazing because a lot of people have said, "You know what? "Most people around you are closed, "you're open and I'm searching for answers." It's interesting to me that our assumption is that they are gonna go on Facebook and look for church. And I'm sure there are some that are doing that. And we found some that are doing that. But most of the people that we're talking to, most of the people that we're reaching, and most of the families that are coming into this place are not people who found us by the website or Facebook. They are people who were looking for church and they could put a face and a physical presence to whomever they needed to talk to. The fear factor is enormous. And the church has an awesome opportunity. And what we have to do is say, "How can we creatively reach people?" And I'm gonna ask some really, really important questions in a little bit that I think will help this, move this to a direction where we say, "Okay, it's time to get up "and do something." Now, so the first question is who are we reaching? That's probably the longest answered question that I'm gonna have, but the next question is, not only who are we reaching, but what are we teaching? A lot of churches are not meeting, their Bible study classes may be meeting by Zoom, and a lot of cases they're not having any Bible study. When we were on web only, and we were on Facebook. We had one of our best Bible teachers teaching. And let me tell you what he was not teaching. He was not teaching a book that was written in the last couple of thousand years. He was teaching from the Bible. And guess what? What we discovered, and this is just anecdotally looking around. We discovered that the classes, the people that are in the classes that are just teaching the word of God, whether it be from Bible study material, or whether it be created by the teacher, but it's from, it's just about the word of God. It's not a discipleship course. It's not about how to strengthen your marriage. It's not about the other things that we ought to be doing in discipleship, not in Bible fellowship, because the moment we start a 13 week book where everything builds on itself or a 16 week or six months, whatever it is, the moment we start into a book that builds on itself. We close the class and there were some classes that had been doing that. And I looked around and I saw it kneel, especially when we had drive-in worship, you know the people who were showing up for drive-in worship? Were the people that were in those classes, mostly that were just teaching the word of God. They were there week after week after week. And I remember looking around and I was looking, I looked for this family, of course we weren't having three drive-in worship hours, every single Sunday. And I remember as I was standing there, because there was one exit from the worship lot, we had an arrival lot, and then the police would escort them into the worship lot, and then they would leave. And there was one way that they would go out and they were pleased that we're directing them as they left, but there was only one way to get out. So I would stand on the corner week after week after week. And I would speak to them and wave to people, the ones that would actually roll down their window at that time, a lot of people wouldn't even roll down the window. They would wave and they were nice. And I looked at those individuals and I could name most of the classes they were from. And almost without exception, it was from the ones who are deep into the word of God, the ones who are just trying to find out what is God saying? I think we've gotta ask ourselves the question, what are we teaching? And I believe this is a great time to say to our churches, to say to our Bible fellowship groups, folks we need to get back to the word of God. Get something that systematically takes people through scripture. I know it's kind of a popular thing to do, to grab a book and start studying that book and sit around and talk and talk, talk. There's a book that was recommended some months ago by one of our classes. And I've read the book and it's a great book. But the scripture is so narrow or the focus is so narrow in the scriptures. So are so few, then I'm thinking, "Why would we do this again?" I mean, we've been down this road. We've seen people that just didn't grow up because we wanted to get them in seats instead of growing them up to get them in service. Now, here's the deal I'm supposed to just say, I've always said that the most important thing is not to get people in the seats, but how many people or how many, not to notice how many people were in the seats, but how many people are going in the service? Because I've said that so many times, and the rule is that I learned from Daniel Edmonds when he and I were on the team together at First Baptist Enterprise, I was the pastor, he was the education administrative leader of the church and Daniel had a rule. And I learned that rule well. "The first time you say something, you say "you quote the person. "And the second time you say, "it's been said, "the third time you say, "I've often said in the fourth time, "I've always said, well, "I've always said that it's not "how many people are in the seats, "but how many people are built up "to go into service." Except I'm gonna tell you who actually said that, Daniel Edmonds. And he says that in our team's book as well, but I've heard him say that for years. And so what we were doing is we were trying to get people in the seats. And when the crisis came, those people that we'd gotten in the seats were sitting at home. They were scared. They didn't know how to respond in many cases, they didn't know what to do. In most cases, they were watching us online, but they weren't necessarily engaged. It's kind of interesting because as we started drive-in, there were people saying this is a bad idea. Well, we worked through the Alabama Department of Public Health and we got their blessings and we provided the guidance for how to do drive-in and do it safely. But people were saying, "You ought not to do this. "You ought not to do this. But, who was showing up for drive-in? Some of the most vulnerable people we had in our church when we opened back up May the 21st, some of the most vulnerable people showed up. And yet some of the most, or the least likely to have any serious response to any kind of illness were the ones that sat at home and stayed away. And I started thinking about it and that's when I traced it back to these Bible fellowship groups. I believe we've got to ask ourselves, who are we reaching? But I believe we've got also ask ourselves, what are we teaching? And let me give you just a word, teach the Bible, let people know, and by the way, if you're using Bible study material, I'm gonna quote Daniel Edmonds again, "Do not read the Bible out of the book, "read the Bible, "the scripture out of the Bible "so that people know it's the Bible. "And they understand how important that is." Now, I'm old enough to where I have a real problem with iPad preaching and teaching. And one of the reasons is because when Starbucks was open inside and people would go to Starbucks and everybody's on their iPad, or they're on their computer, I don't know whether they're reading their Bible whether they're doing their work, or whether they're on some nefarious website. I had no idea, but you know what I discovered? When I would walk into Starbucks and I would sit down early in the morning and I would have my priority time and I would have this right here, people would walk up to me and they would start talking to me and then we start asking questions. They didn't walk up to anybody else. They didn't walk up to somebody that had an iPad and say, "What are you reading?" Or, "Are you in the Bible?" I never saw that one single time over. I don't know how many years now, but people walk up to me. I've seen lives change. I've seen people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. I've seen people come into churches and go into churches because they knew what this book was. And so that's why, now, years ago I was talking to some staff members and they were really big into this iPad stuff. And I said, "Well, the reason that I like my Bible "is because I'm underline it, "I can highlight it." And I was going through all of those things. And they looked at, "Oh yeah, you can do that on that iPad." And they started telling me all this kind of stuff. I said, "Oh." And they all had iPads. I said, "Oh, great. Show me where." Not one of them could show me an iPad Bible where they had underlined or highlighted anything. You see, it's not about what you can do. It's about what you are doing. I really love to read out of a Bible that when somebody else sees me reading it, they know what it is. Especially if I'm in public, that's just me. So who we're reaching? What are we teaching? That next question is, when are we reaching? What is your outreach time? When are your Bible fellowship groups getting together and going visiting? And of course the question is, well, we can't go visiting. Sure. You can. I'll tell you how in just a moment, but here's what you have to do. You have to set aside the time. Our time is 3:30 Sunday afternoon. 3:30 Sunday afternoons people are invited to Founder's Hall. It's one of the largest areas in our church where we can actually spread out and sit around tables. Most churches have a fellowship hall. If not, they can come to a worship center and spread out, but you're not gonna be talking about a lot of people. I think the most we've had at of these summer visitation times has been about 20 people. And they're just spread out all over the room, but we have a time. If you don't have a set time, you're not going to do anything. But seeing the next question is, where are we reaching? We know when we're gonna do it, but where, where are we gonna do it? So we have a time, 3:30 Sunday afternoon, and we have a place, Founder's Hall. And then we know that we're gonna go from that place, the rooms all over the facility. And so the next question is, how are we reaching? With our cell phones. We have assignments. Some of those assignments may come from Bible fellowship groups and books. Some of those assignments are people who are visiting because we're having people visit. Look, if you're one of the few churches in an entire area that's open, people are coming in and they're coming in from all denominations. And people are wanting to be inside. And then there are a lot of unchurched people that are coming in. So what we have to do is we have to say, "Okay, when are we gonna do this? "Where are we gonna do this? "And how are we gonna do this?" With their cell phones. Let me tell you what we are discovering. We're pretty much, we're not really offering to go into houses and homes, and that's as much for the protection of our folks as it is for the protection of the people that we're going to. And right now, where people are being asked to wear mask, we don't want, it's hard to talk through a mask and people can't see your lips. It just is. And so we're using our cell phones. Actually, we call this cell reach, C-E-L-L, Contact, Evangelize, Love, and Lift. We're contacting people. If they don't have a relationship with Jesus, we are leading people to Christ on the phone. And then we want to let those people know that we love them whether they're saved or lost. And we want them to feel lifted up when that phone conversation is over. In a lot of cases, people won't answer their cell phones if they don't recognize the number, which is exactly why we in the past, we just showed up on people's doorsteps. Well, for right now in the day that we're in, we're not going to do that, but we're still reaching people. We're still evangelizing. We're still loving folks. In fact, the purpose statement of our church is to love God enough, to go and to guide people, to find faith in Jesus Christ and to teach them to follow him. We wanna love our God so much that we're willing to go to the people he created and to guide them, even if it's on a cell phone to find faith in Jesus Christ and teach them to follow him, that's our purpose. And we have worked as hard as we know how to maintain that purpose. Let me tell you one of the things that we did this summer, and I'm gonna give all the credit, all the glory to God and all the credit to Cindy Chandler, our children pre-school ministry. When everybody was saying, "We're gonna have online VBS." Cindy said, "We're gonna do in-person VBS." And we did. But you know what she had to do? In order to make it safe, and in order to have the leaders that she needed, we had three weeks of Vacation Bible School. Now there, when I told my 96 year old mother about the, she said, "Y'all having VBS." 'Cause her church wasn't. I said, "Yes." I said, "We have three weeks of VBS." And the first thing she said, I knew she was gonna say, she said, "Do you remember when we had VBS for two weeks?" And I said, "Yes, mother, I do remember that." I actually, I pretty much detested it. She said I loved it, but, it was two weeks into the summer before I got to go to the swimming hole. And that was a lake. And once VBS was over, then I could get my stuff done that I need to do around the house in the morning and could head to Pepperell Lake in the afternoon, but Cindy had three weeks, but she didn't have three weeks for all the kids. She had a week, for first and second graders. She had another week for third and fourth graders. And she had another week for fifth and sixth graders. Now, the next two weeks, she was resting up and recovering from three weeks of Vacation Bible School, but she had it and she had a lot. Well, do you know our numbers were less than half of what they'd been. In fact, they probably, I think were about almost maybe a little bit more than a third of where we were last year. We had 89 children, just children in Vacation Bible School between the first, second, third, and fourth, fifth and sixth grades. And for a lot of people, that's not a lot of kids, but out of 89 kids, we had 15 that made a profession of faith. We had five more who were still having conversations with that want to know more about what it means to be a Christian. By the way, most of these are older kids. And we had four more who said "You know what? "We've made a professional thing." But we've never been baptized. We've already scheduled 10 baptisms. And we've already started baptizing out of Vacation Bible School. Now, I don't know whether you added up those numbers, but you realize that almost a third of the children that are in Vacation Bible School, either made a decision, are interested in making a decision and or following Christ and believers baptism. And I can tell you this, last year we didn't have a third of our kids. In fact, we didn't have 10 baptisms out of Vacation Bible School, but this year we already have 10 lined up and we're still working at it. And we're still working with families. And we're having families show up whose children came to Vacation Bible school, and they're unchurched. The families are, but they're coming here, live on Sunday mornings. And you know why they're coming live on Sunday mornings because they've had their kids for months, nobody was touching their kids. Nobody was reaching their kids. Cindy was going around planting yard signs in the yards of children who are a part of our fellowship during the time that we couldn't meet. And also in the yard of prospects and families that she was finding out about. And we had an incredible number of unchurched families brought their kids. It was like, "Wow, there's somewhere I can take my child." I was standing there one day. And I think it was the second week. And I was talking to some of the parents as they were coming in to get their children. And I just told them, and I didn't know most of the parents I saw, I did not know. And I said, "Thank you for giving us "the privilege of having your child "in Vacation Bible School this week." "We're glad that you've allowed your children "to come to this place this week." And in unison about six or seven parents said, "No, thank you for having a place for them to come." Again, it was kinda interesting because I thought that most of the leaders would be young adults and students. And we did have a lot of students who were involved by the way, because they're the least vulnerable. But do you know what? A lot of people showed up who were in highly vulnerable categories, they put on mask, they registered families, they registered children. And in many cases, they taught those children. You know what I saw? I saw people whose desire for seeing children come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ was greater than their fear of dying. But you see those people had been in Bible study and they knew what God's word said. The same thing that I said a couple of weeks ago. I said, "Folks, if something happens "and we're doing everything "we can to be as safe as possible." I mean, right down to wiping the bags of the pews in between the worship services, cleaning the restrooms all over again during Bible fellowship. I mean, wearing masks into worship and out of worship. And if we're behind anybody or close to somebody, we keep mask on. We spent over $29,000 putting our iwave ionizers in every single air conditioning unit and UV lights on every single air conditioning coin. And of course, ionizers are positively charged ions. And they attach to anything is negatively charged, like a bacteria and basically takes it to the floor. None of those things says that you're not gonna get sick, but we're doing everything we can to keep as many people healthy as possible. But one of the decisions that, and I told our congregation that I made, I said, "Look folks, we're gonna be "as safe as we possibly can. "But if something happens, "I pick this up and I die. "Don't have a morning time, "have a celebration time. "I don't care whether you do it by Zoom. "I'm not trying to live forever on this earth. "I want to be as healthy "as I possibly can while I'm here. "But I wanna make sure "that I'm living my life "to touch other people's lives." And so we are gonna reach. Who are we gonna reach? Inactive, active church members. We're gonna reach prospects out in the community. What are we gonna teach those that we reach? The Bible. Where are we gonna reach? We're gonna reach. Or when are we gonna reach? We're gonna reach at 3:30 on Sunday afternoons. And at other times as well, I'm getting calls all the time, people who've talking to all kinds of folks and leading them to Christ all over the country. But where are we gonna do our reaching to keep our people focused on reaching? We meet on 3:30 on Sunday afternoon. It's not the only time we're gonna reach, but it is the time that is set aside. At Founder's Hall. And how are we gonna do it? With our cell phones. Now, the last question is why, why are we doing this? Why are you doing the things that you're doing to continue trying to reach people. When all of this started, and I heard the rumors that they were gonna shut the churches down, I called our church attorney who's a very good friend of mine. And I said, "I've just got to ask you a question. "Has the United States Constitution been suspended?" And he said, "No, but let's be careful how we move forward "because we don't wanna be "a poor witness in our community." And we closed, but we did it about two weeks after everybody else did. And we opened back up one week after the Governor said we could open back up because it took some time to prepare because we continued to have drive-in worship on Saturday afternoons until it was so hot, which actually the last one we had was the last Sunday in June. And then we ordered the LED screen. And now we put that up and that will be available this Sunday, drive-in worship, watching it on the screen, listening to it on the radio. But I asked the question, has the United States constitution been suspended? Well, it has been in a lot of States. It wasn't in our State, but they were asking churches to do what everybody else was doing. But then I came up with this question and I look at churches doing nothing or virtually nothing, especially as it relates to reaching people, people dying and going to hell every single day. So I gotta ask this question, has COVID-19 caused us to suspend the Great Commission? Whooo Jesus did not suspend it. And the enemy wants it suspended. And don't be fooled by all these numbers of all these people that are watching worship that never saw it before. Listen, I've seen thousands of people in worship. And yet the professions of faith were those that we followed up with during the week who visited worship. You see, it didn't matter how many times I shared the gospel in worship or went on the website or online, it didn't make any difference. What made the difference was when individuals were one-on-one talking to people and sharing with them the good news. The last thing I want to give you, and then I'm gonna go to question time is I'm gonna give you something that God gave me about five years ago. And it's just the simple gospel. I shared this at Shockoe Springs last year. And every time I share it, people stop and they say, "Will you give me those G's again?" 'Cause they all start with G. And it describes not five verses out of Romans, not several verses out of Acts, but one verse out of the Gospel of John, "For God so loved the world "that he gave his one and only son "that whoever believes in him would not perish, "but have everlasting life." Four things Jesus says in that verse. First thing is God's grace. God loved the world. You see the word grace means unmerited favor or undeserved love. So he starts off with God's grace. And then he goes to God's gift that he gave his one and only son. The gift of Jesus. His grace is that he loves us. His gift is Jesus. That whoever believes in him, that's his goal. You see God's goal is that we believe in his son. Would not perish but have an everlasting life. There's this guarantee. I told that to a group of children few weeks ago, and five of those children said, "We understand that, "We believe that "and we wanna put our trust in Jesus." God's grace, God's gift, God's goal and God's guarantee. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. Daniel.

- Thank you, brother Lawrence. You may have seen me looking down and entering some information there in the chat room. The question was asked about the teams book that you mentioned how to get a copy. I'm gonna say two things. One, if they want a free copy of the existing, the sixth edition, you can contact me at dedmonds@alsbom, A-L-S-B-O-M.org or go to our state board website and I'll send you a free copy, but otherwise It'slifeministry I believe .com. If I'm correct.

- That's great.

- Is where you would go for that. And now the seventh edition "Real Arts" is probably not gonna be available for a few more weeks, email or copy or.

- The seventh edition, this COVID-19 edition. I'm gonna have it ready to go within two weeks. But I don't even have it on the website yet, but that is the copying edition. And we'll have to figure out how we're gonna do that. But the best way is, and my email address is on It's Life Ministry website, but it's lawrence.phipps@it'slifeministry.com and ministry is singular. So that that's how they would get that.

- Okay. Lawrence.phipps, P-H-I-P-P-S, @it'slifeministry.com. And we appreciate you doing that. Some people will say, "Well, that's a terrible way to make money." But we never made money off this, that wasn't the point before.

- Daniel we did make enough money to print the next book.

- That's right. We made enough money that the church didn't come ask us to pay for it. So.

- That's right

- That's about it. But so I love the idea that they can download it and print on demand what they need of that material. And while we're on the subject, you said very early on that in growing groups and multiplying groups and focusing on reaching others through your groups, as you grow your groups large, you wanna grow them small again.

- Right.

- And you said you disciple the leaders. And a couple of things. One, the teams book we'll talk about some areas of discipling your leaders, really five basic, I mean basic, basic areas, getting people to study the word, just like you said, teach the Bible. They need to be in the word. They need to be spending time with Jesus. They need to know how to share their faith, be a steward of their resource, and then they can serve the Lord with gladness. And so that's in the team's book, but I wanna follow up by saying the very best book you're going to find, In my opinion at its Life Ministry is "More Abundant Life." Then Lawrence came to me years ago, talked about an encounter with an entity. And several pastors said to them, "We need a book we can follow up "with people immediately when they get saved." And began the process of discipling. After a few months he asked me had I heard anything about it being started. And my response was, "That's not gonna happen. "If you want it, write it." And you did write "More Abundant Life" and it was subtitled or the continuation of the title was the "Christians First 100 days." Then we decided to work that through to Sunday school, I asked all of our classes at some point to go through "More Abundant Life." And here's the importance of what you said early on about reaching in. We found a lot of people in those Sunday school classes, as they went through "More Abundant Life" discovered they weren't safe, or teachers discovered they had people sitting in the class that had not yet come to know the Lord. So I believe the book is even talking about, they're more abundant life to restart or start your Christian life. We need to remember. And as Sunday school leaders, we have people on our Sunday school role. We have people that are members of our church, that if we're serious about evangelism, we need to go back and do. And I wrote it down. We got to reach inside. We think the pagan pool is completely outside. We've got a lot of people that somewhere way back when got baptized, didn't have a clue what they were doing other than a friend of theirs got baptized. So they did to or whatever happened, or they're not living the abundant life because they have doubt. They have confusion and they've never been discipled. And so they're not daily in the word and those kinds of things. And so that's kind of a shameless plug. I don't make money off that in the back. My name may not even be anywhere on that anymore, but you got to disciple people. If you want leaders, you make leaders by discipling people. And then God calls leaders. God calls teachers, He's told us he would do that if we'd be faithful disciple, if you wanna see people say, don't forget the disciple-making starts with discipling unto salvation. The Great Commission when it says make disciples. The very next thing it says is baptize them. So what have you done? You discipled under salvation. And so if I could brother Lawrence, I liked for you to talk a few minutes more on that. How to be a little more evangelistic with your group learning to discern maybe who's in the group that's not saved. And maybe even some tips for things that need to go on large group gatherings that may be caused by a Sunday school or small group system. Anytime you get a larger group together with, if you don't mind talk a few minutes about some ideas there.

- Well, the important thing is to make sure that the teachers are leading. So if you're leading teachers in your church, if the teachers aren't doing it, the classes aren't gonna do it. In our teams meeting Daniel that we had last week, the head of our eLeaders, by the way, that's the new part of teams is that the T-E-A-M-S leaders for our church are all teachers. That was a mistake that I made years ago. Daniel didn't make this mistake, I made it, but it was a mistake that I made years ago that I thought the best evangelist ought to be leading the evangelism teams, the best administrator ought to lead the administration folks, the best ministry coordinator ought to lead the care group leaders, the best service coordinator out of all the classes, ought to lead the essence. The only problem is a lot of those weren't teachers. So now I get the teacher who has the greatest passion for teaching to lead the teachers. The teacher who has the greatest passion for evangelism to lead the eLeaders, the teacher who has a greatest passion for administration to lead the a leaders, the teacher who has the greatest passion for ministry to lead the emleaders and the teacher who has the greatest passion for service to lead the s leaders. And now we're being led by teachers. So last Wednesday night, it was the easiest teams meeting I've ever had and the best attended teams meeting I've ever had, by the way. I mean, it was just awesome. How many people were there? And when they went to their groups, those five teachers knew what to do, and they talked their groups. And then they came back together and met his classes and wrote some notes and talked about what they learned. But our eLeader, talked to me on the phone Wednesday night. And he said, "Pastor, I told the efolks that you've got to encourage your teacher if he or she is not involved in outreach to get in. They need to be here on Sunday afternoons. They need to be a part of our life ministry. And of course, I guess the next shameless plug is that I also wrote that. I saw and of course I was the senior class teacher for evangelism explosion. Then I was a lead teacher for faith, but I noticed in 2004 or three actually, that faith was dying. That they were not gonna do what it took to keep it going. And in 2004, I took a month away from my church, came to Gulf Shores Alabama, interestingly enough, how everything just kind of spins back around and sat in a condo on Monday morning, well, Tuesday morning, I arrived on Monday evening. On Tuesday morning, and I had everything set up after I had my priority time. I went and sat down at the table with my computer and in a chair and I said, "God, you've got to teach me "how to disciple people "to share their faith "in a way that I've never learned before. "And I don't want to plagiarize "what I've learned before." And in the next few hours, He gave me the live presentation. And then of course over the next few weeks, I put together all the other pieces on the bone. And so we disciple people to share their faith through the life ministry. But Ray said, "If your teacher's not involved, "you, the eLeaders are gonna have to bring them along." And I remember I'm gonna go back to what I taught the last Eeclinic that was taught at First Baptist Daytona Beach. Bobby Welch was the pastor and Bobby Welch was busier than any pastor I've ever met anywhere. Anyone just speak in other places. I mean, he was going out. So when and everyday, meeting people at lunch, going and talking to folks on the street, he was always involved in that. And Bobby stood up and told those pastors at that Eeclinic, he said, "You have got to lead evangelism explosion "in your church, "or it's going to die." The teachers have to lead evangelism in their classes, or it will not work, period. It just isn't gonna work. I can't tell you a single class that is thriving in reaching people. And all the teacher wants to do is teach on Sunday mornings, can't tell you one. And the reality is teaching the word of God, is critically important. But reaching is more important because if you don't reach, you have nobody to teach. The problem, Daniel, you've heard me say this and to the participants. I want you to hear this, is that most of our teachers inherited their classes. They didn't start their classes. The largest class in our church right now was started by a teacher who went through the team's training when I came here five years ago to help develop the Bible study teachers. And last semester, he was involved in our live training. You can look at this class and say, "Boy, this guy didn't "really need to do anything." But he does. And some of those teachers, and some of those individuals who went to start those classes came out of his class. The teacher has to buy in to reaching the teacher has to buy in, to organizing or it's not gonna happen. Unfortunately, there are a lot of teachers whose attitude is look just brag on me. And so here's how we brag on. We say, "Oh. I love brother John's teaching. "I love a sister Sue's teaching. "And I know I probably "I'll be working with pre-schoolers, "children's, students or start another class, "but I just can't leave brother John or sister Sue." When somebody says that, they haven't complimented the teacher, they've cursed them. Because what they said was it's more important for me to listen to brother John and sister Sue than God. And I can promise you, I'm not interested in having a teacher who thinks that people are listening to him or her more than they do God. Reaching through the Bible fellowship. When we find out about a prospect and it's in a particular class age group generation, we get it to those classes and we make assignments. And then there is information that has to be filled out on the bottom of that sheet. That basically answers the same question I talked about today. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. Who do we contact? When did we do it? Where were they? And where do we contact them? And on and on and on, and hopefully, that sheet has to be turned back to the class. Or we go back because we track it. We say, "Where's that sheet? "Who has it? "Who followed up? "What did they find out?" Because we don't know, we had this prospect we assigned it to your class. And so we get it to people. We give prospects to classes, but we expect accountability. We expect people to follow up with those. The other thing that I've learned, and I learned this years ago from Harvey Stewart is to hand out cards to Bible fellowship groups. And you can also do this in worship by the way, Daniel, because people right now are saying, "Where are we gonna get our prospects from?" We can't go out. We can't talk. I don't know. And so we hand out cards and on the cards, it says, "I know a prospect." And you put their name, you put their phone number, email address, whatever information you can give, where they live. I mean, the city where they live. I mean, we can find out a lot of stuff today. There's so many ways we can find out phone numbers and addresses and everything else. Just tell us who do you know? We've said this before. It's hard to reach those who are real close to us. And that prospect that may be given maybe somebody's son or daughter in your church, maybe somebody's mother, father in your church. Just like I taught a conference in Tuscaloosa about two years ago, I guess. And a pastor came up to me and said, "This is my mother and father." And they live in Gulf Shores and they haven't been in church in an extended period of time. And he gave me their name. He gave me their address. One of our live teams followed up with him, guess what? They're in our church. And they literally send me emails periodically apologizing for not being here right now. And I know that his father is not in really good shape and is in a very vulnerable category. And they want me to know, we haven't dropped out. We're not going anywhere. We're still where we are. We know people shouldn't come over to the house and we're not gonna come there, but we're still alive. And we're still glad that you guys came. That's the kind of people that you're gonna get. Somebody's friend, somebody's co-worker. The hardest people for us to reach are close friends and family members, which by the way, is why I'm not a great fan of relational evangelism. And I've talked about that before. I'm sitting there, we won't talk to a perfect stranger and we've got to make a friend of him. And then we say the hardest person to reach is a close friend or family member. So I'm gonna take a perfect stranger, make him a close friend, and then do what? Nothing. James Kennedy taught me something very important. You've got about 30 minutes it takes about 30 minutes to build a bridge, to share the gospel. If they don't accept Christ, then work on the relationship, but don't wait months or years while you're working on the relationship before you finally share a craft because you probably never will. And some, there are exceptions, there's exceptions everywhere. But boy, going back to that, I know a prospect. And by the way, you can also do that online. I have a thing here that I send out in our church called First Thoughts. And I can do the same thing I can say, "Hey, here's what I want you to do. "Here's how I want you to do it." And I would get a response from our congregation and they would give me names of people that they know, neighbors, friends, or family members and or family members. And we would have a whole new pool of prospects of people to go after. Again, that's been around for a long time. The problem is for whatever reason, we just decided that reaching one, the most important thing. And, that's what I opened with. We moved away from that. We like what we have and bunch of new people coming in to a stagnant class just messes it up. It makes it come alive again. And folks just aren't interested in that in many cases, sorry. You almost answer what you want me to say again,

- Bring out some really good points and a lot of this just basic fundamental type of points. Let me remind everybody. You can enter your question in Q and A, but I remember a conversation with my father in-law. He was like, "Why is the preacher always "beating the drum for evangelism? "Why doesn't somebody else do that?" I said, "If the preacher is not beating "the drum for evangelism, "nobody else is going to"

- Yeah.

- Okay. And the same happens inside your group. If the leader of the group is not beating the drum about reaching people, nobody else is going to beat that drum. It has to come from leadership, but always has Jesus modeled it. You and I talked earlier this week about a quote that we're in the process of stealing. Jesus started the church the way he wants it. Now, he wants the church the way he started it.

- Yap And in He lead out in that church, he did. And He modeled everything for the disciples. And so if you're going to disciple a class, you can't disciple people. You can't grow people up without sending people out. Mark chapter three, "All those he desired to be with him "so he could send them out." So, we've talked about before to relational evangelism. Obviously you've got to know people and spend some time with them to get to know them. But the longer you know 'em and the longer you have the light under the bush, the less likely you are to ever share it. So if you're in the coffee shop with the Bible open, a person comes up, you start building the relationship and you start pointing to Jesus from the get go, never hide the light. 'Cause the longer you wait, the more likely you are never to shine the light. Another interesting thing that, of course, you brought out and, in having a designated time for the church to gather to even if it's through cell phones or whatever, to be involved in outreach, more and more surveys are taken because we are in decline in terms of seeing people saved, in terms of seeing people baptized, in terms of seeing people discipled, and guess what? The vast majority of the churches no longer have a designated time where they're calling members together to share the gospel, to go out, to make contacts, to reach out. And so it's still important. Some people say that's old school. Now, look, we're all four classes, figuring out a plan, developing a mission project, sharing the gospel and everything else. But if the church doesn't lead out in that, if the pastor doesn't lead out in that, if we don't spotlight the need for sharing the gospel, then the light goes out on that. And so teachers you gotta talk about it in your class, Sunday school director, you've got to talk about it before your teachers. And you've got to be a model of it. They're not willing to do what you say. They're gonna do what you do. And Acts 1:1 says, "Those things that Jesus began "both to do and teach. That's how they followed Him. They saw Him do it. And so you've got to lead out in that. It's a simple, fundamental, absolute basic for evangelism is that you lead the way and you shine the light and others will follow in that. And so if you wanna see people sharing their fight, you got to beat the drum for it. And then the final thing is we did start encouraging all of our evangelism teams, all of our Sunday school classes to begin to develop list of people that don't know Christ, list of people that may know Christ, but they're not in a group being discipled lists. You need to know people's names because when you have no names, you have no ministry. You have no target. And we do have where I might share the name of a family member, but I share it with somebody else who will go and reach out to them as well. So working together as a class, that's great. But if you don't shine the light on it, if you don't spotlight it, if you don't have designated opportunities, then you're gonna diminish in your effectiveness. It's just not gonna happen. And so there's some innovative ideas. I have churches right now. One of my favorite has what they call the rescue wall. And the idea of the rescue wall is to constantly you come up, you write down the name of somebody you know with as much information, just like you're talking about brother Lawrence and they pin it to the rescue wall and then that person's going to be assigned. And then when that person gets saved, guess what they do? They pin it on the rescue wall of the date of their baptism and all that. I do believe that what you value is visible and vocal. So if you value the souls of people, then it's gonna be visible. You're gonna write names down somewhere. Your class is going to see the target and it's gonna be vocal. You're gonna be talking about what are we doing to reach journey for Christ. Who's gonna talk to Him this week. Who's gonna see Him? Who's gonna meet Him somewhere? Your values are visible and vocal. And if they're not visible and vocal, they're not valued. And shamefully, we're not even hearing lots of people being prayed for and brother Lawrence I'm going to kinda end with that question because as much as I think about E for evangelism, we know it begins in prayer. So maybe a couple of quick bullets on praying for somebody that's lost.

- Well, obviously the biggest thing that happens when you pray for people who are lost, God often tells us to go. And because prayer is a conversation between you love each other. So you're talking to God and he's talking back to you. And that's why I'm very interested in getting people to pray for lost people, because ultimately they get involved in evangelism because when they start praying, they may start talking. But before it's over with, they wound up listening. That's one of the big things. Another thing is then when we go out and we'll begin live in a few weeks, and some of that will be involved in going out. And some of it will still be in. But when we begin that in a few weeks, we have a group that comes together and prays while we're going, they pray for protection, and we need that now more than ever. They pray for wisdom for us. They pray for travel mercies as we go and as we come and they pray for those individuals that we're going to see and many of those are people we're following up with, who came to our worship time, or came to our Bible study group, and now we're going and meeting them somewhere, or we're bringing them to the church to meet with them. And in many cases, and of course, one of the things that we're transitioning to that we haven't done is that we will be making phone calls. We won't visit with anybody without phone calls. And in many cases, we will be making an implements on one Sunday for somebody to come to the church, to a room, to a fellowship center, to the worship center, wherever we can meet with them and spread out without them feeling vulnerable. And without us giving them anything, then we're gonna meet with them. So now they're praying as our life leaders go to rooms to make phone calls, and they're praying before they make the phone calls, because I can tell you the enemy doesn't want any of this to happen. So what he's gonna do is he's going to say to them, he's going to say to the lost people, "You don't recognize that number. "Don't answer that. "Don't answer that phone." And so what we do is we say, "God, we need your help shut down the enemy." So they will answer the phones. And if we're gonna keep on doing that, we got to get before a Holy God and say, because evangelism is the work of God. It is the Father, Jesus, and the Holy spirit, all moving together to recreate somebody in Christ's image. So it's all about Him. And prayer says we believe that, but if we're not willing to pray, then we're saying, "God, it's our work." It's not your work.

- Wow. Wow. That's a good word to end though. The power of prayer and all this remembering. And we said this to each other before related to Sunday school and everything that we're doing at church. If we think it's important, it's more important to Him. If it's really important, it's more important to God. So who should we spend more time talking to, but the one who knows far better than we, and who should we be praying for but the souls for whom he gave himself. A friend of mine basically talking about worldview, and I teach worldview. He said, "If you're not praying every day "for the redemption of souls, "you don't have a prayer problem. "You have a worldview problem." "You don't even know "who in the world really matters, "who is the most important." And so we need to start seeing our world the way he sees it. And maybe we wouldn't be in fear, but we'd be following in faith. I'm gonna close this out with a word of prayer. Thank you, brother Lawrence. Thank you for all of you that have a participated, attended today. I pray that God will bless you as you continue on in your place of leadership with a focus on reaching people for Christ. And so God bless you very much. Let's pray and we'll be dismissed. Father God, thank you for wonderful time of coming together as brothers and sisters in Christ to focus on what matters most, the redemption of your creation and Father thank you for the reminder. It's not our work. It's your work that you do through those who surrender themselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, that you would include us in such an important work, but help us be mindful that it is your work that you want to do through us. Thank you for brother Lawrence, continued to use him and bless First Baptist Gulf Shores. Bless all of these that have participated today. Use them in their place of leadership, bless them tomorrow as they gather and go as your church for we pray all in the precious Holy name of Jesus. Amen.