Tips for Running a Great Evangelism Workshop
MyLife Workshop is simply a tool to equip Christians in sharing the gospel. It runs in churches, homes, coffee shops, and bars around the globe.
If you’re preparing to lead MyLife Workshop’s evangelism course, here are some tips to make it empowering and exciting.
1. Find the Right Location
People who are not connected to a church might be more willing to try out a course that’s in a neutral location. To effectively reach non-believers, we don’t want MyLife Workshop to be synonymous with going to church.
Start looking for a location away from a church where guests can feel more engaged. The venue should be in a public place, but with some privacy, as personal and painful information is shared by participants.
Some of our favorite options are coffee shops, parks, universities, schools, and homes.
2. Recruit and Train Your Team
As you prepare for your workshop, surround yourself with other passionate Christians to help with prayer, administration and organization.
Proverbs 15:22 says without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors, they succeed.
After you’ve got your team, it’s crucial you take the time to prepare your hearts and minds for this course. Training will give each team member the confidence to host a dynamic, fun and engaging small group.
Great teams don’t just train once, they train before every MyLife Workshop to refresh their memory, get to know others on the team and pray together. MyLife Workshop offers a full training video that teaches you and your team to create the best experience for your guests.
Run through the course with leaders and other Christians to test-run it if you’ve never done it before. This will tease out any issues before you start.
3. Share Your Event
It can be really easy to be so caught up in planning MyLife Workshop that you forget to tell others about it. Spread the word in your own community and build excitement about your MyLife Workshop. Personal invitations from a friend are always the best.
Ask for the backing of the person who leads your church. They can help promote MyLife Workshop from the front and encourage people to get involved.
The announcement can be quick. It could sound like this:
If you’re a visitor or a guest here today—or perhaps you’ve been coming for a while but you’re not sure about Jesus or your relationship with God, we’d love to invite you to our upcoming MyLife Workshop. It starts on Tuesday, April 14, and runs for six Tuesdays. Come along, have some snacks, and ask any questions you want or just come and listen. If you’d like to find out more, head to the information desk.
Tip: don’t tell people to “speak to pastor X” or “chat to Rev W”, because if they’re guests they don’t know who that is!
4. Pray for MyLife Workshop guests
When we pray, God hears us – we’re starting a conversation with the creator of the universe. When you run MyLife Workshop, pray for boldness, compassion, and support. As we pray over our evangelism efforts, we know that God will answer in his perfect way and in his perfect timing.
Both hosts and team members who facilitate the group discussions should pray regularly for the guests in their group. As a team, you can pray for your group daily and before each session.
5. Follow-up
Regardless of the response of the guests, having a follow-up structure in place is imperative. Many guests would have heard enough to be interested but not committed yet, while some may indeed have come to the Lord.
The most effective mode of follow-up I’ve witnessed is the after-course Bible study group. This is a group specifically tailored and designed for new and non-Christians. This group will meet at the same location (if possible) the next week, at the same time, but utilizing a different format. It is helpful to bring the follow-up Bible study leaders to the front at the end of the course and briefly interview them. Even better is if these leaders have been hosts for the specific course, so people have got to know them.
6. Repeat Regularly
Consistency is key for this evangelistic strategy to gain traction at your church.
When starting, plan to have a minimum of two courses within your first year. How many courses you run per year will depend on your own specific context, but we recommend running at least three within a 12-month period.
When a Christian uses MyLife Workshop to share the gospel, often a new culture of evangelism, hospitality, invitation, and prayerfulness develops. If you are longing to see God do more, MyLife Workshop could be the spark of change to help this happen.