Is that what is happening in your congregation?

Or maybe some have been baptized during the last 12 months where you worship, but now they're gone. You didn't keep them. You lost them back to the world or to their old church, And you are concerned.

How do you win and keep new souls? Maybe you and your local brethren have been asking that question. Well, let me tell you a way we did it. Maybe it will work for you.

In recent months we focused our teens on evangelism. We tried at least three ingredients in a formula to help encourage our teens to win and keep new souls here at the White's Ferry Road congregation in West Monroe, Louisiana. Their success among their own peers ended up feeding even our adults in the congregation here; that is, ... while we were already winning souls ourselves, seeing our teens reaching their friends prompted our own urgency to win even more souls. Maybe you, too, would want to try this method.

SETTING A GOAL

The first ingredient in our formula was that of SETTING A GOAL. Success in any realm depends on having a goal. You've got to know what you want in order to get it; if you're not sure what it is you want, you'll probably get something else. And that's exactly what most churches end up with -- something else! It must be a specific goal, as well defined as possible.

To help give them that goal, we invited one of our adults in the congregation to come into the teenage class and teach them three Sundays in a row. Now, this adult is not just a "come-to-the meetin' house"-type brother, or just a "three-times-a-weeker." This man was and still is a soul winner. He believes the Lord was serious when He told His people to tell the world the Gospel saves. In fact, this man and his family have won literally scores of new souls to Christ during the last few years. They confront lost people simply as their way of life. We hear of someone they have converted to Christ almost weekly. Our teens know this. And in the class that made a difference.

You see, there are at least three kinds of "best teachers," and we wanted to use all three. There's (1) the teacher of experience, (2) the teacher of enthusiasm, and (3) the teacher of repetition, repetition, repetition. We worked these "teachers" like a golden thread into our three-fold formula.

How did we use them? Well, by using this brother, we knew we were using a man full of experience, soul-winning experience.

And that is precisely why he was a good teacher. He was not an English teacher who couldn't spell; he was not a European guide who had never been out of the United States; he was not a mechanic who had never crawled under a car. He is a soul winner. And he was there to teach soul winning.

He is also an enthusiastic soul winner. He is himself sold on the product he was trying to "sell" to that class. He absolutely loves telling the Gospel and winning the lost, and that allowed us to use that second "best teacher," the one called enthusiasm! So, in him we had TWO of the "best teachers" for the class. Supplemental to both his experience and his enthusiasm were even his two teenage sons sitting in the class, who also are soul winners, enthusiastic soul winners! So, you see, we had the necessary tools to make our points effective to the class.

What did he say? What was his general message? Basically, it was, "Are you Christians? Then, you have a message to tell. And you can tell it! It's easy to win~souls!"

After three weeks of positive input from the word of God, our youth director then stepped back in and suggested making a goal, which was our first ingredient in this formula. They worked on it both individually and collectively. They decided they could win 50 before the year was out. (They actually won 65.)

TRAINING

All right, how were they to get it done? Well, they needed training. "How do we approach our friends?" "How do we confront them in a non-threatening way?" "What do we say in teaching them the Gospel?" Those were their questions. This is where the second ingredient in our formula came in to play, the one called TRAINING.

On Wednesday evenings, they were taken into a training environment, an enthusiastic one, at our church building. We started with showing them how to initiate dialogue, how to sit down with lost persons and ask them about the Lord in their lives. They were shown how to find out about lost people's religious backgrounds and upbringings, whether or not they believed they were already saved, when it was, where, and all the pertinent details. Then they were shown how to tell their friends that they themselves had learned the Gospel. They were shown how to tell them how they then obeyed it. To effectively accomplish their learning how to reach their friends, we incorporated the third "best teacher," the teacher of repetition, repetition, repetition. That is, we would then go all the way through the teaching process. Once through, we would start over. Through again, we would start over again. We would go over it again, again and again. You see repetition breeds familiarity; familiarity produces confidence; confidence gives birth to action. And, using different men in the congregation, all Soul winners, ENTHUSIASTIC soul winners, we would repeat it over and over and over. This went on several months. And one of the serendipity events that happened was, several adults invaded the class, wanting to polish their own soul-winning swords.

CORPORATE ENCOURAGEMENT

While training them, we used the third ingredient in our formula, that of GIVING THEM A CORPORATE ATMOSPHERE TO PERFORM THEIR TRAINING. By corporate, we mean they were together in the same arena, encouraging one another when they would see each other act actually teaching the Gospel to their friends. Where was it that this occurred? Well, you see, for years they had been going to someone's home here for a devotional on Sunday nights after services. So, they decided, the teens did, that they would begin inviting their lost friends, their peers, to go with them to those devotionals. Well, during the refreshment time, instead of just playing basketball on the outside driveway or just giggling and laughing about trivial experiences, they began CONFRONTING their friends. "How are you and the Lord doing?" "Are you a Christian?" "Do you know the Gospel?" Bible studies sprang up everywhere. On the front porch, in the living room, in a corner of the game room, teens were teaching the Gospel to their friends. And Christian teens seeing other Christian teens doing it encouraged them to do it as well.

"Let's do this again tomorrow night," came the cry. Was it any wonder? The atmosphere was electric. So, several would gather at our youth director's house on Monday evenings and would do the same thing. Even on Tuesday nights, while adults were already conducting studies in several homes, our teens began bringing their friends to those studies as well, and they confronted them there, too. On Wednesday evenings, then, back into the training class they went, taking now some of their own new experiences with them. Going through the Gospel presentation again and again, they sharpened their swords even more.

After a few Wednesday evenings had passed, we began asking, "Do we have any new Christians here tonight?" Up would go some hands. "Who taught you?" we would ask, and invariably it was the ones sitting next to them. It was a positive, exciting, soul-winning atmosphere, prompting others to want, to genuinely go out and do the same. It truly was, as they had heard, "easy to win souls." No, they didn't win all they taught, but it was far easier to win people to Christ than they had previously thought.

We adults incorporated some safeguards into this venture. We cannot underscore these enough. We were careful not to purposefully intimidate anyone or allow it to happen among others.

It is often difficult to motivate and not intimidate. We didn't want to lord soul winning over anyone. We didn't want to coerce anyone, whether he be a prospect or a Christian now trying to be a soul winner. We knew of other churches having fallen into that trap; so, we were extra sensitive about not doing it ourselves. We were careful also to make sure our teens were teaching correctly the word of God. And we were (and still are) careful to give right counsel to the lost teenage prospect in respect to his own home situation.

The result is that the atmosphere reminds us of what surely the first century church was like, where God's people having that fire burning within themselves, wanted to go and tell in the temple and in every house the story of the Gospel (Acts 5:42). To date, our teens have won more than 125 of their peers to Christ, and they are still doing it. Just last Sunday, one 16-year-old boy baptized two more. We now have teens who have won other teens who have won still other teens.

You may want to try these three ingredients in your congregation. You must also have these three "best teachers" for it to be effective. Also, be careful, so very careful, to tune in to the safe-guards mentioned. Violation of any one of them can seriously harm the church.

To get our approach, if you want it, come to a We Care seminar or have one in your own congregation. For more information on a seminar, write World Radio We Care Ministries, White's Ferry Road Church of Christ, P.O. Box 2000, West Monroe, LA 71294 or call 318-396-6000.