Should a mission be focused primarily on sharing the gospel with the surrounding community, or training church members to do their own evangelism?

Youth mission expert Jodie McNeill says mission teams should pray with the church, help the church to lead scripture in schools, work alongside the church to raise its profile in the community, and give the church helpful feedback as ‘outsiders’.

Above all, he says missions should focus on training churches to do their own evangelism, as the effects will be more lasting.

“If the mission team does the fishing for you, then your church will only have new fish for a week,” he says. “But if the mission team teaches your church to fish, then you will have fish for a lifetime!”

Archie says Moore College says training and evangelism are both essential in running effective missions.

“The goal for mission is to train and excite the congregation members, to make contact with people that haven’t had much contact with the church in a while, and to make contact with people who have never had contact before,” he says. “The second two factors depend on the first.”

In the weeks leading up to the mission, small group leaders at Sylvania were trained in running Introducing God. During mission week, some of the students trained church members in evangelism and giving their testimonies.

“The team did some of this alongside of our people and also trained them in doing it,” Paul says.

Sylvania is already in its second week of Introducing God...

Sylvania is already in its second week of Introducing God, with five women who had come to mission activities now doing the course. A jazz night is also planned in the coming weeks.

“This is another event to keep outreach in people’s minds,” Rev Paul Sampson says. “It’s having activities that have a tail at the back of mission week, so that when the guys pack up on Sunday night, our mission doesn’t end.”

Paul says training congregation members is important, because they can combine evangelism with the relationships they have with people in the community.

“The difficulty with Moore College students is that they aren’t the people with the relationships,” he says.

“People who don’t know us might walk up and have a nice chat, but in terms of seeing people come to church… if you invite the woman next door to come to the women’s breakfast, then to church, that’ll work.”

Originally published on SydneyAnglicans.net