Developing an Evangelistic Culture at Westgate Chapel

Westgate Chapel has successfully created a culture of worship, prayer, discipleship, and missions, but evangelism remains a relatively elusive value within the congregation. The objective of this project was to develop a multi-faceted strategy for creating an evangelistic culture at Westgate Chapel.

This strategy began by developing a 12-week intensive course where students could discover how God uniquely created them for relationships, the importance of relationship for expanding His Kingdom, and how they were created with unique witnessing styles to share the gospel.

Developing a culture within a congregation requires many approaches within multiple venues (e.g., worship services, classes, workshops, outreach events). The core principles from the pilot 12-week course will be restructured for workshops to offer within multiple venues. In addition to these teaching opportunities, an intentional small group model will be proposed for increasing mentor relationships within the congregation to help them live out this disciple-making mandate.

Research for this strategy included biblical study concerning witness and evangelism, book studies, evangelistic conferences, and interviews with staff and congregational members concerning perspectives on previously attempted evangelistic efforts at Westgate Chapel.

Upon developing and implementing the 12-week course, students were asked to share their experiences and evaluate any change both in their witness and their sensitivity to the unsaved people in their lives. Their responses and testimonies served as a guide for assessing the effectiveness of this project's culture-developing strategy.

Through a combination of intentional intercession and these various teaching, training, and application strategies, this project should contribute to Westgate Chapel's efforts to develop a lifestyle of relational evangelism that the Lord Jesus has called the church to in the Great Commission (Matthew 28).