The Dying Baby
Tim Downs

One of the most difficult struggles the Apostolic movement seems to have in the church growth area is retention. Follow up and convert care seems to be the most illusive accomplishment of the church.

Each week our goal is to come into a church and teach people to win souls and give them an effective method of becoming spiritual mothers.

Our theory is that if we can teach more and more people how to actually win souls, then we will make more spiritual mothers in our churches. We have found that as in physical mothers, they do not really need a whole lot of motivation and skills to provide for their new child. The natural instinct of a mother is to care for her baby.

The same applies for spiritual mothers; they do not need a whole lot of motivation to care for their new babies or converts.

We believe one of the problems we face is the nursery syndrome. You see, people love to see new babies, its exciting, its refreshing, however the longer we hang around in the nursery the faster we want to get out of there! Once the excitement of the new baby goes away, and then we must face the responsibility of caring for the child. It’s not easy caring for children, the screaming, the smells, and the attention!!! I get nervous just writing about it!!!

One thing I can relate to though is when it was my own child, I did not get upset, I did not quit, I did not just leave my child screaming and crying! The reason: It was my baby!

In most churches today we have one or two at the most people who are ACTUALLY winning souls. This makes it difficult for them, because they are left alone to care for all of the new babies on their own. It’s not hard caring for one or two or even three but when there starts to be a full house of babies it does not take long for the spiritual mother to burn out.

We must train more soul winners; we must equip the saints to do what God has called us all to do.

The statistics tell us that a brand new baby, if left alone for more than three days without food, water, touch, care or contact in anyway would die.

In most churches, new converts are born each week. Rarely are the new babies contacted other than a letter from the Pastor congratulating them. WE MUST get into their homes immediately, we must offer them rides to church, invite them over for dinner, fellowship them etc… by three days at the latest!

We MUST get an accountability system in place for follow up. We cannot assume someone followed up, we cannot assume someone took cookies to their home, called them, offered a ride to church, we must have a plan of action in place to assure the babies are cared for.

We often hear the question, well bless God what good is it to baptize 50 people if none of them stay. I assume this is not a question to provide an excuse not to win souls, so I always answer in this manner:

“I’m glad you asked, now let me ask you a question, did you personally call the new converts that were baptized? Did you personally go to their home and take them cookies? Did you personally invite them to your home for dinner? Did you personally go over to their home and teach them a personal Bible study?”

You guessed it, the answer is always NO, and that’s the real reason they don’t stay!

We spend an average of 30 minutes with every convert we baptize, yes, this may shock some people; to believe we are not just out dunking people for numbers! We spend time telling them that this is just the beginning, it’s just the start of their new walk with God and they need to attend church, learn to pray, learn to fast etc… and also we prepare them for the attacks the enemy is going to be launching at them so when they fall or fail they will not feel to guilty to come back to church!

We have an adoption program that WORKS, download it today on our website and get started caring for the babies! We also have a great power point for free on our site that can help you in setting up your care program. GET it today and start seeing more souls staying in your churches!

We can do this; we CAN reach our world and grow our churches! Get on board today, ask God to give you a fresh burden and to stir up the gift that is in you!

God Bless,

Apostolic Evangelist Tim Downs

727-512-0567
The article The Dying Baby written by Tim Downs was excerpted from www.Gowinsouls.com web site, September 2008.