Date

5-22-2024

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Chair

Phil Stevens

Keywords

Equipping, Evangelism, Gospel Conversation, Church Mission

Disciplines

Christianity | Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

The God of the Whole Earth Ministry (GWEM) Church study investigated how church members can gain confidence to share their faith when properly equipped. Sharing the gospel with others can be a problem for some people. Generally, the lack of skills and knowledge is the biggest problem for some people to share their faith. GWEM Church members were not equipped to share their faith. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to equip participants to share their faith. Skills were taught to help participants develop and use those skills to start meaningful and practical conversations to open up a dialogue with people. The study was conducted for ten weeks. Forty-six church members participated in the study. Although the reason for lack of confidence varied among the participants, the most common reason was the lack of skills and knowledge to engage in meaningful outreach conversations. Out of forty-six participants, 84.8% said lack of skills to begin significant outreach was the main problem. The remaining 15.2 % attributed their problem to other reasons. Participants applied skills learned before the end of the study and were given questionnaires to report changes in their confidence. After the community outreach, participants were asked if they felt the same way as before the teaching intervention. Out of the forty-six participants, 58.7 said they no longer felt uncomfortable sharing the gospel with others. The results show that by equipping participants with how to start outreach conversations can help participants overcome their lack of confidence to share the gospel.

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