ECO Pres Denomination and InterVarsity Institute Co-Sponsor: Developing habits for Relational Evangelism in your Church.
Choose one of the following. Registration for the Pre-Conference Event opens Sept 1st. Registration for the cohort opens Feb 1st, 2024.
Register ECO Pre-Conference Register ECO Cohort (coming soon)
Breaking the Huddle: How Your Community Can Grow its Witness
Would you love to see your church full of disciples who are willing and able to engage in fruitful evangelism? Are you looking for practical ways to equip lay people to evangelize effectively? ECO Pastor and author, Rev. Don Everts, will be partnering with staff from the InterVarsity Institute to walk you through a thoughtful model of relational evangelism that is based on scriptural principles, decades of ministry, and new research from Barna. These three interactive sessions include content and materials you can easily bring home and use in your home church. We will cover: 1. The Call to Evangelism in the Post-Christendom West, 2. How to Walk with Someone Along their Journey to Faith, and 3. How to Grow Your Own (and Your Community's) Witness.
The ECO 5T Cohort is for you.
You are discontent with the status quo in your church and you are ready for change. You want coaching from seasoned leaders who will help you think differently, lead differently, preach differently, equip differently and pray differently in ways that work in your context. You are ready to recruit your leaders to join a six-part cohort of transformation. You are eager to understand the non-Christian journey toward Jesus, and serve them along this pathway (the 5 Thresholds).
What are the 5 Thresholds of Conversion?
For the past 25 years, many ministries have built their evangelism strategy around the 5 Thresholds (see testimonies). The 5 thresholds will help you grow in empathy for non-Christians as you understand their pathway toward Jesus. Non-Christians need different things depending on where they are in their journey toward Jesus. Watch this 5-minute video for an overview.
You are ready to grow! You want personalized feedback and coaching from veteran leaders who can help you think differently, lead differently, preach differently, and pray differently in ways that work in your context.
You want to equip your members as joyful and fruitful witnesses in their style of relational evangelism.
You yearn to welcome more non-Christians into your church and engage all the generations.
You are unsure how to pivot your congregation toward a path of effective evangelism and conversions.
5T Cohort Participants will:
- Think and see differently about evangelism: you will grow in habits of relational evangelism.
- Love and live differently: you will be equipped to journey alongside non-Christians.
- Lead differently: you will create an evangelism growth plan in partnership with your church’s leadership team. Together you will experiment with improving your Christmas or Easter programs, and how to welcome more non-Christians.
- Preach differently: you will learn to preach to Christians and non-Christians at the same time without watering down the Gospel. We will help you create a culture of response in your church.
Our program integrates assessment tools, trainings, simulations, planning tools, individualized coaching feedback, and personal reflection assignments so that participants can lead their church into relational evangelism.
Meet the Team
Doug Schaupp
Doug is the National Director of Evangelism for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He became a follower of Jesus at Occidental College at the end of his freshman year in 1986. He served as the Los Angeles Divisional Director and as the Regional Director for Southern California. He is passionate about the alignment of the Gospel and racial reconciliation. He and his wife have served in both Korean-American, and African-American church contexts. He is a co-author of Being White, I Once Was Lost, and Breaking the Huddle. Breaking the Huddle is Outreach Magazine's "outreach resource of the year" (2018). He is a father of three, and has coached all of their soccer teams. Doug's personal goal is to play ultimate-frisbee 3 times a week.
Don Everts
Rev. Don Everts is the senior pastor of First & Calvary Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Missouri, and is a writer for Lutheran Hour Ministries and the Hopeful Neighborhood Project. Don has spent almost three decades helping people on college campuses (with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship) and in the local church discover life in Jesus and become better equipped to introduce others to him. He is an award-winning author whose many books include I Once Was Lost and Breaking the Huddle (with Doug Schaupp), and The Reluctant Witness and The Spiritually Vibrant Home (which feature original research from Barna).
Meet the Coaches
Jamie Ladipo
Angelo Blancaflor
Brent Campbell
Their content comes with a healthy balance of Biblical instruction and real-world evaluation. Cohort participants will walk away with a better understanding of evangelism dynamics in today’s world and a toolbox of ideas and models to address such “a time as this.”
Doug reminds us to expect the Holy Spirit to work in our midst when we make room for his loving presence.
The 5 Thresholds framework has been a game-changing paradigm that many parishes, dioceses and various ministries …
It’s fair, I think, to say that most people in our churches want to share Jesus with others. The simple reality is that in this increasingly complex world it can feel so overwhelming. I’ve seen again and again that when the people in your church understand where people are at in the “Five Thresholds”—those you lead are so freed-up and more effective in journeying with those they love and want to see come to know Jesus
The 5 Thresholds helped me and my people engage in spiritual conversations with more nuance and sensitivity. Understanding the Thresholds made us more helpful to non-Christians who are seeking Jesus!
We loved having Doug train our church planters and their core teams in evangelism. Everyone left with an understanding of the grittiness involved in sharing your faith, a practical next step, and the inspiration to see the work through.
The 5 thresholds have greatly influenced our work at Your Move Collective in reaching religiously unaffiliated people…I highly recommend the 5 Thresholds.
It's so important to help local churches break out of the mindsets and patterns that keep them from more fruitful faith sharing. Breaking the Huddle does this so well!
The five thresholds have been influential in my thinking as a leader and has been very helpful for us to utilize in how we serve churches and organizations who are looking for new methods of evangelism. It has definitely been one of the most influential paradigms to my leadership thinking.