Local Evangelism Interviews

Josh Chen (Left; CRU staff) and Kirk Petersen (Right; Alpha staff) are members of the Portland Evangelism Team. They interviewed local pastor, Daniel Fusco, (Middle) about evangelism in his church—Crossroads Community Church.

One of the most simple and helpful steps the Portland E-Team has taken to learn the state of evangelism in the city has been to conduct listening interviews with 50 Portland-area pastors on the topic of evangelism.

The motivation behind this process was for (1) building relationships between local pastors and the E-Team, (2) creating space for pastors to reflect on the health evangelism in their church, and (3) informing the E-Team how to support local churches, (4) discovering ‘homegrown’ evangelism resources and strategies that could be shared with churches across the city.

We have been encouraged by pastors’ responses to these interviews. One even commented: “This is the first focused conversation I have ever had about evangelism in my church.”

A mere conversation with pastors about evangelism begins shaping a culture of evangelism.

Don’t have time for 50 interviews? Start with three! We guarantee these face-to-face interviews change the way evangelism is perceived in cities. Feel free to use the interview questions we have created below.

1. In 2 minutes, how did you come to faith?

2. How are you equipping people to have spiritual conversations with people who do not follow Jesus (note: are you using new strategies during this COVID-19 pandemic)?

3. Can you describe your church’s strategy for identifying up-and-coming leaders in your community? Do you have a similar strategy to identify evangelistically passionate leaders in your church? If so, what does this process look like?

4. What is working in evangelism in your church? (i.e. What is most helping people share their faith? What is seeing the most people come to faith in Jesus?) (note: are different strategies working best during this COVID-19 pandemic)?

5. How do you as church celebrate people coming to faith and sharing faith? (note: what does celebration look like during COVID-19 pandemic)?

6. Please describe the correlation you see in your church between community service and gospel conversations. Do you find that as community service increases so do gospel conversations?

7. What are the obstacles you are facing in mobilizing people for evangelism? (And how are you helping your people in overcoming these obstacles?) (note: unique obstacles with COVID-19 pandemic)?

8. Through these conversations, we hear fear is a predominant obstacle in the way of evangelism. How would you train your people to overcome this fear?

9. What would help you better equip your church in evangelism? And how do you envision the Portland Evangelism Team being helpful to you?

10. If you were to dream, what would your church look like in the area of evangelism in 3 years?

11. What is currently getting you excited about evangelism (e.g. a current testimony, effective resource, something new you’ve tried recently, etc.)?

12. Do you have any remaining questions for me?

If you have more questions, please reach out to info@citygospelmovements.org