BLESS: A 5-Step Path to Relational Evangelism

“For the formerly unchurched, relationships played a part in 57 percent of the decisions to return to the church.”

The church is losing influence in our larger culture. Our evangelism challenge is growing rapidly. One indicator is that, today, many people who in the past identified with Christianity no longer do. Last year, Pew released figures that tell us that in the past seven years, the number of people in the U.S. who consider themselves Christians has gone down from about 78 percent to about 71 percent.

What’s more, the people who say they identify with no religion (the “nones”) have gone up in the last seven years from about 16 percent to nearly 22 percent. And for emerging adults ages 19 to 35, the change has been from 25 percent to 35 percent. Our mission field is getting bigger.

With this in mind, how do we best reach the unchurched? At the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, we are pursuing research to help us find answers to that question. But we do have earlier research from Thom Rainer that tells us what was working in 2000, when his survey was conducted. These findings came from interviews of the formerly unchurched and demonstrate the impact relational evangelism can have on formerly unchurched people. Read More

Also See:
3 Critical Components of Leading Others Toward Spiritual Renewal
BLESS Missional Practices as a Sideways Step into Evangelism
BLESS
The B.L.E.S.S. Evangelism Model -- Scroll down the page.
The BLESS Strategy in Evangelism - Dr. Rick Richardson [Video]
Invest and Invite: Evangelism is Spelled BLESS: Rick Richardson[Video]
How to Create a Church Culture that Sees Evangelism as Critical - Dave Ferguson [Video]

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