Effectively communicating vision is one of the most important functions of leadership. Just making a vision believable, however, is not enough—it must be understood as necessary. When a vision is truly God given, there are several key components that come with it.

1. It will create a strong sense of urgency and purpose. Urgency is the true igniter behind purpose, and all progressive planning and action. Urgency motivates people to be willing to make changes, moving out of their comfort zone.

2. It will be bigger than your present ability and resources. Just ask the twelve apostles when Jesus told them to feed five thousand men, plus women and children, with two small fish and five loaves of bread. (Matthew 14:16)

3. It will require risk that will challenge the leader’s faith to its limits. Where there is no risk, there is no faith!

In the church, leadership is not just a right, but a responsibility that carries with it eternal consequences. Because of this, every leader must be sure that evangelism is the primary function of the church they are leading.

Leaders must also be sure that the various methods and processes being used by their local assembly, to both reach and to assimilating new people into the body of Christ, are current and relevant to the generation it is serving. Simply doing something because it worked in the past will not be sufficient for this present day.

~ Asking the Difficult Questions ~

In his best selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins devoted an entire chapter on what he called… Confronting the Brutal Facts. His research team logged over five years and fifteen thousand hours examining one-thousand four hundred and thirty five different companies. By the time the final cut was made, only eleven qualified for making the leap to what Collins called a Good to Great company

Their primary research was to see if similar key components existed, causing some companies to excel in the market place, while their competitors stayed mediocre at best. Though each of the eleven qualifying companies were very different in product and service, research clearly showed that each of them had leaders that were not afraid to look reality in the face and ask the difficult questions.

It is necessary for doctors to ask questions they would rather not ask when trying to determine the diagnosis of a sick patient. Thank God the airlines are willing to open the dreaded black box to find answers every time a plane crashes to ensure the safety of the next flight. These two examples alone represent millions of lives that have been saved from illness and tragedy simply because accepting failure was not an option. Being willing to ask the most difficult questions, then confronting the evident truth, without losing faith, has always been a major part of any thing that is progressive and successful.

No forward thinking man or woman of God should ever be afraid of questions. Neither should we be afraid of the answer, regardless of what it may require of us. Never forget how the one we call LORD responded after asking a very difficult question that HE really knew the answer to before He asked. HIS response was… not my will but THINE be done! (Luke 22:42)

Since there is no greater tragedy than for souls to go into eternity without being born again, I would like to offer a few questions for your prayerful consideration.

· Do you really want the will of God regardless of what that may cost you?

· Are you willing to make whatever adjustments are necessary (church or personal) to effectively fulfill your God given purpose?

· Does your local community even know your church exists?

· Does your current service times and format give you the best opportunity possible to reach the unchurched people of your community?

· Does your current church or personal calendar give room for evangelism?

~ It’s not Rocket Science ~

While there are exceptions, the growth (the addition of new babies being born into the church) of our church is usually a pretty good indicator as to just how effective we are being. If new people are not being added to the church, then as Collins so clearly points out, we must be willing to face the brutal facts of our present situation and realize something needs to change.

Evangelism is not rocket science. Neither is it some deep theological mystery. We just need to be willing to face the facts! Most of us are far too busy doing stuff that has little to no eternal value or importance. Our plates are full with so much religious activity that robs our time and energy from doing what really matters. This is true from the highest level of our fellowship, right down to our own individual schedule. As stated in our last article, I believe it is one of the greatest challenges we face in the Twenty First Century.

Whenever something new is added to our schedules, regardless of what it is, something else has to go or what we are supposed to do will greatly suffer. This is exactly why knowing what matters most to God, and having the discipline to make the adjustments necessary, is one of the most important responsibilities of leadership.

~ Prayer and Evangelism ~

So… let us get specific. What does really matter most to God? Jesus clearly gave us the answer.

Mark 12:28-34 (TEV)

Which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus replied… Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength… Love your neighbor as you love yourself… There is no other commandment more important than these!

* Love God… Prayer is the act of worship that reveals our Love for God.

* Love People… Evangelism is the act of service that reveals our Love for People.

As simplistic as that may seem, Jesus said they are the two most important commandments of all. Love, regardless of if it is towards God or people, is not just emotion, however, it is shown by what we do… and doing requires time!

The Twenty First Century Church must have the time needed to do the things that are most important. Leaders at all levels of the church must, by example, be willing to remove any non-essentials from theirs, and the church’s, schedule to make time for evangelism! If the church does not, it will remain busy doing religious things, but her spiritual womb will be barren. Barren wombs only produce empty altars, empty baptisteries and empty pews in the kingdom of God , consequently enlarging hell! Evangelism must be on purpose!

~ The NEED for Urgency ~

John P. Kotter in his book Leading Change said that establishing a sense of urgency is one of the most important aspects to effectively influencing people toward change. It is impossible to study the teaching of Jesus without recognizing that is exactly what HE did to prepare the apostles for a new paradigm called world evangelism. That thought was totally foreign to the Jewish mindset. We could easily list numbers of scripture references that prove this. Jesus knew that people would never be willing to give their all for a cause, regardless of how noble, unless they felt a strong sense of urgency and purpose.

The presence of apathy, which is the opposite of urgent, is a sure sign there is an absence of purpose. Like vision, purpose must not only be communicated as possible, but necessary. The urgency to obey God is the faith that produces the miracle needed. The absence of urgency is one of the primary hindrances to effective evangelism. Whenever there is an absence of urgency to connect people to Jesus, there is, without question, an absence of purpose.

~ Function or Purpose ~

We should never minimize what that young church of new converts accomplished in the first century. Without any type of modern technology they evangelized their entire world, and did so under some of the most difficult adversities. Without the use of any type of telecommunications, the apostles effectively communicated to their young congregations that the power they had been given, when they received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, carried with it a greater purpose than its personal blessing. Their love for God ignited their love for people. Because of this, personal evangelism was their passion. Somehow, they understood that evangelism was not simply a program or function of the church… it was, and still is, the very purpose the church exists.

~ A Fresh Calling ~

Everything we do must point us back to that same fervent passion for evangelism. The entire church worldwide is being called to a fresh enlistment for active duty. Rising out of the grass roots of the church is a new army of young men and women who are willing to give everything, if necessary, to fulfill God’s purpose on the earth today. They are answering a fresh calling from God to this generation to become an aggressively active, and mobilized army unified around one central vision and purpose. The field remains the world, but the world to you and I start in our own communities. Where ever there are people, the church is called to go there!

~ Motto or Mission ~
The Whole Gospel to the Whole World is more than an organizational motto printed on church signs, letterhead, and brochures. It is the Mission Statement of the Apostolic Church ! The days of passive, non-assertive Christianity must die and be given a permanent burial. It is time for the leadership of every local church to aggressively mobilize its constituency and reestablish the purpose for their existence. The urgency of the hour is screaming out of the darkness. The light of the gospel of Jesus Christ is its only hope and the very purpose the church exists! Next Issue… Evangelism in Three Phases.