Breaking the Huddle: How Your Community Can Grow Its Witness

• 15th Annual Outreach Magazine Resource of the Year - Evangelism

Most Christians are stuck in the huddle.Even though we believe in outreach, most communities tend to focus on our own needs. That turns us into insular groups without many relationships with outsiders. So evangelism is occasional and conversions are rare. How do we change?In their groundbreaking book I Once Was Lost, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp identified five thresholds that individuals cross when they shift from being skeptics to followers. Now they and Val Gordon show how huddled communities can become witnessing communities and then conversion communities, where evangelistic growth becomes the new normal. The authors have studied the growth of congregations, what enhances and limits them, and have gathered best practices for transformation. Our churches and fellowships can become places where evangelism is not done by a just few people, but where the whole community itself becomes a winsome, thriving witness to those around it.Break out of the huddle. Find out how.

Doug Schaupp is associate director of evangelism for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He is based in Los Angeles and is the coauthor of Being White and I Once Was Lost.

Val Gordon is a consultant with the Learning Talent department of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. She is also the owner of Gearshift Consulting, a firm specializing in helping mission-driven organizations overcome obstacles to growth. Val and her family live in Connecticut.

Don Everts is minister of outreach at Bonhomme Presbyterian Church in Chesterfield, Missouri. He previously served as an area director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Boulder, Colorado. His books include Jesus with Dirty Feet and Go and Do.