Feature: Connection
by Pastor Robert Boettcher

Keys to Revival
Bro. Boettcher said the keys to revival are, “prayer, fasting, and mentoring, involving others in the prayer and fasting. Senior Pastor Yonts has developed a church life-style of prayer. So, we do a lot of bringing our leaders together and teaching them to pray. We pray over the cities that we want to plant churches in, for our departments, and over the new converts and visitors that have come in. It’s very specific prayer.”
The foundation is important. “Make sure that the church is not built on you. Don’t be afraid to develop the young ministers so that you can trust them, so that you can move on to another part of your ministry,” he said.
“If something happened to Pastor Yonts and I (God forbid), the church would go on just the way it is now because of what we’ve put into those younger leaders. We have nine licensed ministers in our church. Pastor Yonts was given a dream by God of starting ten churches. I told all of the ministry, ‘You will either start a church, help somebody start a church, or fill the place that someone else has left.’”

Closing the Back Door
“Of course every church wants visitors. Revival is a consolidation of both of those, people walking in and keeping them. We have first time guests receive a gift bag, with Christian music CDs, messages that we’ve preached, an invitation to come back, a list of all the ministries in the church, a list of all the Small Groups that we have in the community and maps to their homes, as well as an invitation to our Guest Dinner immediately following the morning service.”
These Guest Dinners are very nice, white table cloth meals. “We seat them very specifically. If a person lives in Schaumburg, we will seat them at the table with the Schaumburg Small Group Leader so they can get to know them and get them to come to that Small Group.”
“In the last three months we have won probably eight people that way. Jesus told Zacheus, ‘I’m going to come eat with you today.’ There’s just something that happens when people eat together. It’s like walls come down. I’m not the pastor and you’re the visitor. Now, I’m just a human being sitting down and eating. There have been testimonies of people who said, ‘If it hadn’t been for that Guest Dinner, I wouldn’t have come back.’ Now, they’re in our church today. We just had another one get the Holy Ghost last Friday night that came through our Guest Dinner program.”

Six Contacts For A Sale
Bro. Boettcher’s church gives first time visitors invitations to four Sundays of Guest Dinners. “Why four Sundays? First of all, they’re going to come back just for the free food, and this is nice, first class food. We have Italian dinners cooked by someone from Sicily. We have Mexican dinners cooked by someone from Mexico. People say, ‘I thought you guys were going to have hot dogs, but this is a five course dinner!’”
“I was in sales for 12 years. They taught us, if you can have six contacts with a person, you can sell them. So, we have them come back four times for the dinners and, in between, we have the Small Group Leaders contact them at least twice. That makes for our six contacts.
“We want them to really get to know us. We feel like once we’ve got them at the Guest Dinners, we’ve got four weeks to get them committed to a Small Group.” Small Groups have food, fellowship, and singing, 15-20 minutes of Bible study, and then clean up and go home. It lasts about an hour to an hour and a half.
“Obviously, if people are not converted or a brand new convert, we can’t get them involved in the ministry of the church yet, but they can do something in a Small Group. We say, ‘Would you mind bringing the pop next week?’ or ‘Can you read this Scripture next week?’ It makes them feel a part of things. That has been very successful,” Bro. Boettcher said.

Follow-Up
“We used to send out a series of letters,” he said. “Now, because of our Guest Dinner program, we’ve utilized all of our follow-up through that and the Small Groups. People have to sign up for the Guest Dinners with their name and address. We give that card to the Small Group Leader to call and invite them back to church.”
The Small Group Leaders want to call because they are trying to grow their groups. “Small Group Leaders are in charge of any absentees in the church. Even if it’s a 15 year member of the church, I’ll just ask the Small Group Leader where they were and they better know. In the Old Testament, God told Moses to have rulers over 10 and 100 and 1000. There’s no way I can keep track of everyone in a church of 240 people, but I can use 8 to 10 Small Group Leaders to do it for me. I’ve really been working in the last few years to develop efficiencies in the church,” he said.

Visitors, Converts, Discipleship, Ministry
In growing the church, Senior Pastor Yonts’ and Pastor Boettcher’s concept has been four-fold: Visitors, Converts, Discipleship, and Ministry.
“Our plan is to use Community Outreach to bring people in, use the Guest Dinners to get them into a Small Group, and use the Small Group to get them founded in the church,” he said.
“What we told the Small Group Leaders originally is that these groups are not an additional service. They are designed as an Outreach. Our goal is to have less than 50% church people in every Small Group. We want visitors. We’ve already split Small Groups because they got too big. We have now about 7 or 8 Small Groups going on a weekly basis.
“Bro. Robert Henson from Michigan told me that a Small Group will not be evangelistic until roughly 4 to 5 years. You’ll be spending most of your time in training leaders, administration, and developing your Small Groups. But then, at that point, they will really turn on evangelism. He was absolutely right.”
For new converts, the church has a 23-week Discipleship class to help new converts know “why we do what we do. At the end of this, we have a ‘Finding Your Ministry’ class. In that, we talk about and hand out a spread sheet which lists all the ministries in the church,” he said.
The teacher has them take 15-30 minutes going through this and ranking the various departments according to what they are most passionate about. This is all entered into the computer for use as departments have openings and needs arise.
“If you get people involved in the heartbeat of ministry right from when they’re converted, they feel that this is the way it’s done,” Bro. Boettcher said

Leadership Organization
“Every month, we get together at my house for a pastoral staff meeting. When Jesus left, the church went on because He transferred to them what He was. So, every month I get together and talk for five minutes and inspire our pastoral team. The meeting goes for about three hours and we talk about the church, what’s working, what’s not working, how can we make our departments better, and what we need to get rid of. I have questions for them, and then I let them run with it. They know that there is a respectful platform where they can express their views. The brainstorming that goes on is just incredible.”
Another thing discussed is “all the talents of my leaders and if I have them in the right place. We talk and pray about where their kingdom passions lie. If someone has a passion for youth and they’re over Couples’ Fellowship, that’s not going to fly.”
Bro. Boettcher believes people will be the most effective for God if they are in the ministry that involves their passion. “They’ll bend over backwards if they’re doing something they enjoy.”