Michael Hope, Havre Adventist Church pastor, and his wife, Sarah, recently held their second evangelistic series at their church. This series involves two 30-minute presentations with a 10-minute break for beverages and snacks in between. It's short and perfect, lasting only eight nights.
Ken Norton, Montana Conference president, created this evangelistic series and made it free to use and completely customizable. Norton and his wife, Julie, explained that anyone could do this series because it was like telling bedtime stories to children. “People are glued to the screen and the focus is not on the presenter,” she said.
With this calming information, the Hopes held a trial run without any advertising, only having their church members hand out flyers and invite friends. The small church had an average nightly attendance of 11 with four visitors. The visitors are still attending, three of whom are doing Bible studies.
The second evangelistic series had an average attendance of 17 per night with six visitors. This time, flyers were mailed out and banners were made, yet it was the personal touch of church members like Michael Marks, Ron and Patty Harmon, Lisa Taplin and Gretchen Heinz that brought the people in. The major responses came from friends of church members with personal invites. Now they have three more who want to join the church and are doing Bible studies.
One of the advantages of having a local ministry team hold evangelistic series such as these is that the excitement doesn’t end when the evangelist leaves. Instead, people form attachments to the ministry team and church members.
There is also an advantage to holding the meetings at the church because the local people are already used to going there and new people become acquainted with the church environment.
The series is short, lasting only eight days — including one day off. Any dedicated church member could do this. The total cost was well below $4,000 — including advertising.
You can do this too. Why not do a trial run and invite your friends and community to hear wonderful bedtime stories of salvation?
We’re so excited about the potential the series has for reaching communities. We can’t wait to start sharing it with our other churches and nearby towns that don’t have a church.
