Pastors can motivate church members to evangelize, LifeWay Research says

Allie Martin
OneNewsNow.com

A Lifeway Research study finds the churches that are most successful in the area of evangelism are those whose pastors set the tone for an emphasis on soul winning and lead their congregations by example.

A new study by the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) finds churches that excel in evangelism have pastors who emphasize soul winning. LifeWay Research interviewed staff from several SBC churches and found that the senior pastor’s involvement was the most important determiner of a church’s success at evangelistic outreach.

In its study, LifeWay Research wanted to focus on churches that met the following criteria: churches that had baptized at least 26 people each year for 10 consecutive years; had overall worship attendance growth during the same 10 years; and had a membership to baptism ratio of no more than 20-to-1.

Out of more than 43,000 churches in the denomination, only 22 Southern Baptist congregations met those criteria. In interviews conducted with staff members from 19 of those churches, LifeWay’s researchers found the involvement of a senior pastor to be the most critical factor when it came to soul winning.

"In every case,” LifeWay Research director Brad Waggoner says, the study showed that senior pastors “set the tone for the whole church,” leading not only in terms of preaching and encouraging people but also by example. “Once again,” the LifeWay official notes, “we were reminded of the importance of God calling out leaders who set the pace."

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