Go After the People

In the previous weeks here at Sunday School Leader, we have focused on the first four principles of Flake’s Formula:

• Know your possibilities;
• Enlist and equip new leaders;
• Enlarge the organization;
• Provide space.

The final ingredient of the formula developed by Arthur Flake comes straight out of the Great Commission… “Go”.  Go after the people.

Many Sunday School classes and small groups are filled with wonderful people. In your group, you probably have stay at home moms, businessmen and businesswomen, clerks, managers, and more. But one person that is missing in the typical Sunday School class… a lost person who does not know Christ as Savior.

Almost any research you study will reveal the same basic truth:  lost people generally are not flocking to our churches. In order to reach them, somebody is going to have to go get them.

Unfortunately, the “somebody” in most of our churches that is going into the community to reach and bring the lost to Christ is actually “nobody”. Far too many of our people think that “somebody” means somebody else. From their behavior, somebody means anybody but them.

As we wrap up our final week of Five Weeks of Flake, we are going to turn our focus to the people who are outside the church walls and are not attending our group. Sunday School used to be called the “evangelistic arm of the church” for a reason – it was! It is time for Sunday School to earn that label again!

You may look around your church as a group leader and realize that very few, if any of your church’s small groups are intentionally focused on bringing the lost to Christ. If I may offer a small suggestion… Do not worry about the other groups. Focus on your group! What can you do, as the leader or teacher of your Sunday School class, to lead your people to be an evangelistic group that brings eternal life to your lost friends and neighbors?

Now… go reach them!

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Bob Mayfield is the Sunday School/Small Groups specialist for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. He also has his own blog at www.bobmayfield.com