Editor’s Note: This is another installment in an interview with Gerry Charlotte Phelps (click her name to see the other articles in this series).
ReformationUCC: You have extensive experience in revitalizing mainline congregations. What can your average smaller mainline church do to “get back in the game” instead of continuing to decline? What “worked” for you?
GCP: What worked for me was learned in four parts.
One: making myself start evangelizing, in prison, simply because it was a scriptural commandment. It was hard at first, but the first time was the hardest. The second time a little easier, and finally I evangelized at every opportunity, everywhere I could. I recorded each convert in my Bible, name and date, which I still have. There were 19 of them in prison. I continued evangelizing “targets of opportunity” after paroling, and in seminary - where I found there were at least some unsaved people.
Second: being trained in a more effective way to evangelize, one-on-one, the Evangelism Explosion way. Using that, I was able to lead as many people to Christ in the next two years as I had in the previous six years.
Third: learning to EVANGELIZE CHURCH MEMBERS. That was the real key. Lillian Jordan taught me that. She was a 72-year-old retired nurse and life-long Methodist who transferred into my first church. As a discipling tool, I insisted all new members go through a short membership course with me before they could join the church. Our source book was an Evangelism
Explosion-type booklet designed as the first discipling tool for brand new Christians.
The class was around the dining table in my parsonage, with Lillian on my right. We simply went around the table, with each one reading a paragraph out loud. When it was Lillian’s turn, it was something about the necessity of accepting Christ as Lord and Savior to become a Christian.
When Lillian finished reading it aloud, I had begun reading the next paragraph when Lillian interrupted, pounding on the table. “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” she insisted loudly. “I’ve been in the Methodist Church my entire life, and nobody ever told me that before!”
“Yeah? Well.” I said, and just continued reading the next paragraph aloud. (I’m not very sensitive.) She interrupted, pounding the table again. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Shouldn’t we stop right now and let me do that?” So she made her pastor stop droning on and lead her to Christ. We prayed together as she accepted Christ. And then I picked up reading aloud again where I left off. Like I said, I’m not very sensitive.
In a few seconds, I realized Lillian was crying. I said “Lillian, what’s the matter?” “I don’t know,” she said. “I just feel so happy!” So she got her pastor to stop and rejoice with her because she found Christ. That was at age 72, after a lifetime in the Methodist church!
That really made me think. Were there any more like her? How many? Who?
Somehow I knew not just to stand up in church and ask them to identify themselves. They couldn’t anyhow, if they were like Lillian. Like her, they might not even know. Besides, most of them would be mortified to have others in church know.
So here’s what I did. I went quietly to each church family, in their homes, and presented the gospel to them, preferably the whole family at once. The beauty of the EE method of evangelism is that it is so diagnostic, making it relatively simple to tell if they ever converted or not, and making that clear to them, a step at a time. It was rare that they did not want to accept Christ right then. It was really beautiful seeing how many of them changed after that, growing in their Christian walk and character.
I never told anyone, at any church, that I was evangelizing church members. Some might have considered it a breach of their privacy. And I didn’t want the others on their guard and expecting me!
Fortunately, if approached considerately and in private, unconverted church members are the easiest converts ever. Like Cornelius in the book of Acts, they already love God. Like him, they just need someone to show them “what they must do to be saved.” And then to disciple them.
After going through as many of the church members as possible, I learned that only 12% were converted before I got there. (It was 12% in my next church, also in California, and 17% in my third church, in Texas.) It was about 56% when I left. Later I read that George Barna, the Christian pollster, found that even in the most evangelistic churches, not more than 50% of the people in the pews were actually converted. In the mainline churches I pastored, it was much, much less than that.
So I learned not to make assumptions about church members. We assume they are saved, and that they are well-taught. Most are not saved, and most - even after a lifetime of Methodist Sunday School classes, workshops and conferences - are not well taught. They are like college students in advanced classes who never had the basic courses first.
Fourth: I learned to disciple them! But by going back to basics, basics, basics. We started with a good, simple survey course on the Bible, before focusing in on parts of it, using Henrietta C. Mears “What the Bible is All About.” We did the whole Bible in a year, at breakneck speed. I would teach the same lesson three times a week, so that they could find time to attend at least on of those times. I planned sermon topics a year in advance, on just the basics. I hounded them into reading their Bibles through once a year. We learned to pray regularly alone, and also together in small groups.
What happened? After about my fourth month at each church, each moved from hand-to-mouth finances to running a financial surplus, which grew steadily throughout my time there. That was even though I never asked them to give. (I did preach on tithing twice a year, but just so they would receive the blessings of tithing. I even told them once we really didn’t need the money, that I just wanted them to be blessed.)
They also got compulsive about asking people to church; I did not have to ask them. The next thing that happened was that many people started noticeably changing. And the next thing was that the church began to grow.
In each of my three churches, they grew at a pretty steady 12% a year. Not spectacular, true, but it just kept adding up. And that was without changing the music, the parking lot, the signage, or adopting most of the excellent church-growth techniques available. If we had done that too, who knows?
At my last church, I began holding workshops, seminars and teaching at Pastor’s School at the request of some District Superintendents, to teach these methods to other pastors, including some in other states. I also consult on these methods.
