Center for Church Health: Equipping churches for evangelism

Texas Baptists exist primarily to serve the needs of our churches; to help the local church be healthy so that God’s people may succeed in His mission of connecting the world to Jesus.

Victor Rodriguez, Hispanic Evangelism associate and Discipleship specialist, found his original plans for training Hispanic churches in evangelism and discipleship shaken when COVID-19 hit Texas. Now, he has readjusted, and he is focused on ensuring that the Texas Baptist Hispanic churches and their pastors are healthy. To Rodriguez, that looks like a church that is actively evangelizing, engaging their community and making disciples.

Rodriguez is part of the Center for Church Health, which in addition to focusing on evangelism, also includes discipleship, music & worship, BaptistWay Press and church architecture.

Though there are many ways to evangelize, Rodriguez wanted to keep the format simple.

“There are so many systems of evangelism out there, but I want to be able to focus two basic ones: how-to share your testimony and how to approach someone. These are very personal applications that people can go back and duplicate at their churches,” he said.

These simple, yet personal, evangelistic tools are the key to sharing the Gospel, Rodriguez explained. One teaches people how to connect with non-believers, the other tells them how to share the Gospel after they have made the connection.

In addition to these basic tools, Rodriguez is also teaching the churches how to deliver the Gospel message to people of different and diverse backgrounds.

“The product, the gospel of Christ, never changes, but sometimes we have to change how we deliver that message,” Rodriguez explained. “Factors like income level, education and family background change how people understand the Gospel.”

Furthermore, Rodriguez is conducting assessments of every church he interacts with to better understand the successes and struggles of churches around the state. This will better help Rodriguez and the Center for Church Health to see what resources are needed to enable churches to make the biggest impact on their communities.