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Summary

In this conversation, Don Garner discusses the growth and dynamics of the Forest Park Church, emphasizing the importance of evangelism and leadership within the church community. He highlights the need for a supportive and united eldership, the empowerment of future leaders, and the church’s role in nurturing its members and reaching out to the community. Garner draws on biblical principles and personal experiences to illustrate the challenges and responsibilities of church leadership in fostering a vibrant and evangelistic church environment.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Eldership and Evangelism
00:03 The Role of Elders in Church Growth
03:25 Creating a Culture of Evangelism
06:25 Leadership and Communication in the Church
09:10 Empowering Members for Evangelism
12:08 The Importance of Community and Care
15:12 Challenges and Opportunities in Evangelism
18:12 The Heart of Evangelism: A Call to Action
21:18 The Future of Church Leadership
23:59 The Apostle Paul’s Example in Evangelism

Transcript *This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.*

Don Garner (00:03)
One of the things at Forest Park where I serve, and our attendance is running somewhere around 377, 360 now. We’ve had an in-pouring of visitors. I mean, it’s rare for us not to have five or 10 families visiting every week. And so,

What a blessing. What a blessing. And it is a great opportunity for the church at Forest Park to be the church that the Lord has designed by purpose to be evangelistic. And one of the things that…

has been a common statement among the elders for quite a while is we want to be a large congregation but with a small congregation mentality. And those of you who part of a small congregation, which I’ve been a part of, I grew up in a medium-sized congregation, but my stepfather married my mom when I was 16, and so I was there for, and I was very, very small congregation.

Everybody knew each other. mean, and you depend on the few people that you can depend on. You have to have those people participating in what’s going on for the church to function. And there are some people ⁓ will not get involved, okay, until somebody dies or a bunch of people leave, okay? And that will motivate them, which is the wrong motivation. I know, I mean,

Scriptural motivation is rather plain as far as why we are to be evangelistic.

One word I want you to challenge. Challenge. The eldership needs to challenge itself to lead.

the way the Lord designed the church to be lit.

We’re not to get the good housekeeping seal. We are to be progressive in our evangelistic thrust. And if we go to the scriptures, we will see the church of the Lord.

permeate the body with love and kindness and the truth of God’s Word and the relationships that He designed for the church. it just… the church will glow. The church will be a sea of love.

You can’t hide it under a bushel.

When you visit a church that has that kind of atmosphere, people see it. People feel it.

And it comes from so many directions, they know it permeates the body there. And this is what the Lord designed the church to be.

If one elder dies, if one deacon dies, it’s the next man up. We should never skip a beat. The elders should be thinking in terms of who they will be replaced with before they die or before they resign or before they just can’t serve any longer.

The Word is challenge. When the church stops challenging the church to be what it needs to be, it will cease to be because it will cease to be evangelistic.

It does not rest on one person, but truly the eldership has to take the leadership of this whole process of being evangelistic. An eldership has to be supportive of the evangelist. The eldership has to be in support of the team that…

They have working with them, and I say working with them, not working under them. They are overseeing, but they’re working with, they’re working together. They are a team. They are in complete fellowship in this work of evangelism.

The elders need to be united in this work. They need to love each other. They need to respect each other. They need to be on the same page. And they all know that page their own.

and we strive and we prosper together as a body. And amen to what Ty said about the body. The body functions as a body. 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, where we have the church edifying itself and being knit together in love.

and working together, and we challenge each other, and we respect being challenged.

when I was asked to come to speak.

I said to myself, reluctancy. Very reluctant. This is not my cup of tea. I feel very comfortable in a Bible class. I like to fill my heart with what I’m going to teach, and I like to just pour it out.

about what I’m doing right now.

But I needed to come.

because I needed to be challenged. I think they selected this subject because the church needs to be challenged. And it begins with the eldership.

something that we’ve recently done at Forest Park.

We have a history of elders not wanting to speak up because we don’t want to have a chief elder, you know, I mean, that’s not, that’s not scriptural. And at the same time, we realize the elders need to communicate to the church what to be leaders. And so we decided not too long ago,

We decided that once a month, we’ll rotate elders speaking to the congregation. And we’ll talk about things that are vital, that are imperative, that we practice as elders in our communication to the body. And how we are trying to give direction in how we are leading the church and they know where we are in leading the church.

One of the things that we started, after we had a leadership class about, I don’t know, three or four or five years ago, I’ve been dying to have a leadership class. this goes back 15 years, 20 years, but we have a leadership class and we had all the men in the congregation who were going to attend the leadership class. We had it on Sunday and Wednesday night.

And ⁓ we’ve got an education committee and we had two or three very good deacons on that committee that was gonna be teaching. We had two or three elders that were gonna be teaching. And every man was admonished, encouraged to be in the leadership class. And let me say this because we believe that the Lord wants everyone to be a leader.

Okay, if we are evangelizing, we are leading people to Christ. We are leading people to a life that is reflective of who we are as disciples of Christ. And so in this class, we challenged every man to step up to be a leader

in the church, in their home, in their circle of influence, wherever, but to be a leader in the church. We desperately need leaders in the church.

That’s what happens when you don’t write it all down. But that’s okay. ⁓

What we have done, we had the leadership class, and I will be the first to say that the elders have incorporated more of the principles that we had in the leadership class than anybody else. Okay? We used to have elders deacons meetings. We changed that. We started having elders meeting with different deacons that were over different ministries.

So we would actually have conversations regarding what they were doing and what impact they were having on the church and evangelism and impact and growth of the church. So it was instead of an at-large meeting, it was a roundtable meeting with just that committee, with just those deacons, with just those people involved. It changed the whole dynamic of our meetings with our deacons.

and the other leaders. When we had our impact teams, when we started our impact teams, notice I said impact teams, because our mission statement is a statement that because we are a people of faith in God, in Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God, and in each other, which…

We challenged every member to have a positive impact on the growth of the church at Forest Park and the world. Because we’re involved in Latin American missions too. Okay? And the world to please God and to glorify Him. That’s our mission statement. All right? I know it because I know that’s what we are, we should be about. And we should be about, we should challenge every member in this

this arena.

That mission statement is a statement of evangelism. It does not quote Matthew 28, 18, 19, and 20. I know that. One of the elders said that. Well, it doesn’t include that. It does include that, doesn’t it? When we’re impacting growth of the church, okay, numerically and spiritually, we will have evangelism going on in that body.

at that congregation.

You can’t hide it under a bushel. You can’t hide it under a bushel. That’s the way the Lord designed the church. We’re a people of faith. We’re a people of faith. We’re a people of the Word of God. God’s whole desire is to save mankind. He sent Jesus to die on the cross to save mankind, including myself and you and everyone in this fellowship.

because we are a people of faith.

young, old, it just doesn’t matter. We’re all challenged to be evangelistic minded and be supportive. I once taught a class, ⁓ guy called me up when it was late, and he called me up to teach a class that was on evangelism. The outline was sketchy, and it was kind of the last minute, but I already kind of had an idea what I wanted to say, but.

The whole premise of the class that day was to tell people how they can be involved in evangelism.

I’ve already said, our whole purpose, the love that we share, the worship that we’re involved in, who we are as Christians.

tell a visitor when they walk in the back door who we are and what we’re about.

Last Sunday we had a new convert, past addict ⁓ recovered.

but he became a member of the church, single, searching.

for the Lord.

one of the biggest compliments that could be made about the church at Forest Park.

was how caring we were and how open we were and how instructive we were. And he knew he had found the church that he wanted to be a part of because what he found on the surface, you just couldn’t hide it under a bushel. You just can’t hide it. And in our society, our society today,

Where else are you gonna find it?

Where? There is no other place but the Lord’s church. And when you look at the characteristics that we see that we all love so much and we find the love and the encouragement and everything that we need that we find that we need and that we find the love and compassion that we really need out of the people around us.

that we thrive on, that our families thrive on.

you see hearts that are tender.

Where do you find it?

We had a gospel meeting last week. It’s not about the numbers. And it’s not about the preacher, but we had 41 responses.

We had more than that.

because the church is a place where the Word of God will prick hearts and will convict men. It is God’s Word. It is His will.

and they want to please God.

where you find 41 people.

sit on the front pew and confess sin and pour out their hearts to their brethren.

That’s the church I want to be at.

because we’re all challenged.

There’s not one person that was at that gospel meeting that was not challenged to do better.

when I get this lesson that I’ve got to do and I’m an elder in the church and we’re heavily involved in Latin American missions. We have a Bible School of the Americas in Panama City and we’ve got all the things that’s going on with that. We’ve got…

three, four, 500 preachers who are graduates of the Bible School of America and who are preaching and who have a lot of needs and some of them are monetary and obviously we have limitations on our money.

But these are our brethren.

and the elders have.

have ever sold in the congregation at Forest Park to oversee.

I’m going tell you something. It would be impossible without the body of Christ being who they need to be.

in evangelism. Because evangelism not only involves teach and baptize, but to teach and to nurture, to edify the local body, to care, to be part of impact teams that are pouring their hearts out to other people and really caring for the members within the body at Forest Park.

That kind of responsibility has to involve every member of the church.

It hadn’t been too long ago, I looked over the church building at Forest Park and if you’ve ever been there, know Ty, you’ve been there, I know some others have been there, it’s a big church building isn’t it? And I look at it and I’m an elder and I say…

Why did we build this big building? I mean, really? Why did we build this big building? And the obvious answer is what?

So we can put people in there, okay? And then I realized, but we can’t do it. We can’t do it with just a preacher. We can’t do it with just four or five people within the congregation doing their work in evangelism. And I’m talking about nurturing the church and building the church up and being the light, to be in the example where Christ is their life, where…

They’re putting others first and they’re sacrificing like Paul in the whole book of Philippians, by the way. And that was where I was gonna go. If I was gonna go biblically, I’d just go to the book of Philippians and I’ll talk about how Paul was talking about evangelism and the fellowship and being together and united and unity. Man, every chapter he’s just saying, man, the church gotta be united, united, united. And yes, the church has to be united if it’s gonna be evangelistic.

We have to be on the same page. The elders have to be on the same page. The elders need to be on the same page with the preacher and the youth minister, et cetera. It has to permeate the church. We’re all working for the Lord.

and we love each other.

We love the Lord and that’s why we thrive together.

How time do got now?

Seven minutes, 48.

I want to challenge you to a couple of passages when you think about you and what you’re doing as far as evangelism goes. Now, I’m an elder. I know the subject was how to elders. Let me tell you something. When we think of Latin American missions, there are times when we’re talking about stuff in Latin America and the Bible School of Americas and

And I bet Florida School of Preaching the elders is much the same. mean, the burden gets heavy. mean, there are things, you’re spending more time on it than you really want to because there are things in the church you really want to spend more time on. Am I right, elders? Okay. We’re no different. And we really work at trying to get some of that ironed out to where we don’t have to spend that time.

pass that on to men that can do that work and that we can say, hey, it’s in good hands and they’ll take care of it and we can be more focused on this and they’ll take care of that. Okay.

But invariably, comes back to things just come up.

We depend on the local congregation and we have to challenge men.

be there to do that. just met with all our impact team leaders. And we’ve got six impact teams. We’ve got 12 leaders. Some of them are deacons, some of them are not. Some of them will be deacons soon. But we met with them and we want to pat them on the back. We want to encourage them, tell them how important it is and how important it is for us.

We wanna be integrated into those teams, but we realize we have some limitations there and we’ve given them that job because they can focus on that part of the work and it’s also training them to be the future leaders of the church at Forest Park. I’m 75, got one elder, 78. don’t have to, you can do the math, okay? I don’t know how many more years I’ve got left, but I’m saying, hey,

It won’t be as long as it has been.

But we’re already meeting with men. We’re already meeting with men. And some of the men that we’re seeing where they have issues or we have issues with them, we’re already addressing some of those things. We’re talking about it. We’re challenging them in areas of their life that they need to take control of and be part of the leadership and be part of the eldership.

We’re meeting with future deacons right now. We’re meeting with them so they can be challenged. But it doesn’t stop there. These deacons have to meet with other members of the church and challenge them to be what they need to be in the confines of the church at Forest Park for it to ever grow. I’ve made a statement and it’s quite…

Quite an old statement, and it’s been said in a lot of classes. Church will never grow beyond its leaders. Y’all have heard that, haven’t you? Okay. But I will say this. We have to have more leaders. When we cap off the leadership in a church to five or six men elders, or ten deacons, you can’t…

You can’t thrive with a 600 member congregation where people have needs and we’re not meeting those needs and we’re not nurturing the body and we’re not being what we need to be.

I’m gonna challenge you with some verses here as I close. they’re not even in my notes, but they really mean a lot to me when it comes to evangelism. One of the greatest passages that I find in the Bible regarding evangelism is when I look into the heart of the apostle Paul.

and I ask him, what made him tick? What made him the evangelist, the minister that he was? And I really love three chapters, 2 Corinthians 3, chapter 4, and chapter 5. But I’m just going to read the first part of chapter 4 as I leave you with you.

challenging yourself with all the lectures you’ve heard with what I’ve said about the need for the church, for the growth of the church. I want you to take these words of the Apostle Paul and I want you to take them home with you. And 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read these.

Therefore, since we have this ministry, would that be applicable to us? Since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in the craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bond servants for Jesus’ sake.”

For it is the God, it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. Thank you.