The Zeisberger Lectures in Evangelism presented an opportunity for Martha Grace Reese, author of Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism, to share the results of a recently conducted four-year Lilly Endowment-funded study of American churches. On April 10, Reese engaged participants in an interactive experience. Dr. Stephen Simmons, director of Continuing Education at the Seminary, offered a synopsis of the 2008 lectures:  

There’s an old bumper sticker (you know it) that says “Christianity isn’t taught. It’s caught.” Well, it’s true, it’s remarkably painless, though it requires effort and a serious sense of purpose, and we have considerable evidence that bears it out.  So says Martha Grace Reese, pastor, author, and founder of GraceNet, a consulting firm helping congregations develop effective evangelism programs.

In examining the statistics on 30,000 mainline Protestant churches as part of a four-year study funded by the Lilly Endowment, Reese was able to identify only 137 that had had five or more adult baptisms during the previous year. However, based on more than 1,000 interviews with leaders with expanding congregations, mainline churches are increasingly “getting it,” as more become contagious about sharing it with those who have had little or no exposure to the Gospel. Included are churches of various theological stripes, historic (i.e., old) congregations, new start-ups, big and little ones.

What these churches have in common is the kind of faith that just can’t keep to themselves. “They are churches in which the people have a relationship with Christ and it’s real and it’s vibrant and they talk about it.”  Reaching out to others is a top priority and they steep themselves in prayer (often putting other activities of the church on hold for this) and encourage members to talk openly, in a non-coercive but intentional way, about what their faith means to them.

Believing that there’s no time like the present to change ideas and habits, Reese broke the audience into triads, to talk with one another about when they vividly sensed the presence of God in their lives, to share prayer concerns, and to pray for one another by name. These and other exercises will be employed as she and her colleagues plan to train 1,000 congregations across the country to discern and develop their own potential for faith sharing — a gradual process, but one that will energize the existing membership as it welcomes new people into the church. “They start learning to say, ‘I love my church. I love what God’s doing with us,’” she said. “It’s a movement of the Spirit in these churches... they get very brave and learn to talk about their faith and the churches help them do it in lots of different ways.”