What’s the Plan?

Discovering we had planted far too many jalapeño plants in our garden, my wife and I had to figure out what we were going to do with all of them —especially as we don’t typically eat jalapeños! The solution for an abundance of garden vegetables is usually to share your blessings. But it isn’t always easy to give away a large number of jalapeños. The plants themselves were a lot of fun to grow, and we figured that the problem of overabundance of garden-grown food would be one of life’s better problems. But it would have been better if we had planned ahead when we first planted the seeds.

When it comes to soul winning and evangelism, a similar question needs to be answered. How will you deal with an abundance of souls? What is the plan if you end up with more Bible studies, more visitors to the church, or more baptisms than you were expecting? One church received a large number of Bible study interest cards as the result of a mailing to their community. Faced with an abundance of names to follow up as part of their evangelism prework, the church simply decided to do nothing. Many months after the cards came back to the church, several frustrated church members followed up on the leads only to discover that no one wanted to study the Bible.

“We were waiting for someone to contact us,” they were frequently told, “but seeing as no one did, we started studies with another church.” Others said that so much time had passed that they were now simply not interested.

What do you do if an outreach event generates more interest than expected, or if a series of evangelistic meetings results in a larger number of baptisms than were anticipated? It is vital to have a plan to preserve the harvest.

Otherwise, souls —like garden-grown vegetables— can go to waste. Having a plan and sufficient people to carry it out ensures the gains won’t be lost. It can be a challenge to win a lost person to Christ. Letting them slip away due to a lack of preparation or commitment should be strenuously guarded against.