At the beginning of this year, Grace Fellowship Church in Columbus, Ohio, launched a new initiative with a focus on evangelism. Called “2 at 2,” the goal of initiative is to encourage their congregation to pick two people to commit to praying for every day at 2:00 p.m.
“We strive to be an ‘and’ church —to be focused on both evangelism and discipleship. Jesus modeled this really well in His ministry.” said Tim Farrant, executive director of staffing and strategic initiatives at Grace Fellowship.
The elders at Grace Fellowship recently went through a process of evaluating how well the church was currently balancing both. “Since COVID, we’ve really doubled-down on discipleship, focusing almost entirely on it,” Tim said. “We noticed our evangelism muscles were starting to atrophy. While our people were really connected in discipleship groups, we noticed stories of evangelistic conversations were becoming less and less in the overall context of the church.”
The elders agreed 2024 would be a year to focus on evangelism. Out of this desire came Grace Fellowship’s new initiative, “2 at 2.” At it’s core, it’s every person in the church, across all five campuses, committing to pray every day at 2:00 p.m. for two people to come to know Jesus. During a service in February, each person in the church was given two ping pong balls, and they wrote one name on each of someone they were committing to pray for in 2024. “There’s probably 5,000 people being prayed for everyday at 2:00 p.m.,” Tim said.
The church is emphasizing and supporting this initiative in a variety of ways. They began with a four-week book study of the book Turning Everyday Conversations into Gospel Conversations. Every group in the church went through the book together. They concluded with a series of workshops to help people know how to present the Gospel through their own story, how to invest in relationships, and how to invite people into a relationship with Jesus. In the spring they are doing a service project in their local communities and in the fall they will have a global-focused initiative and sermon series. They are also keeping it at the forefront of people’s minds by posting prayer reminders and tips on their social media throughout the week and by having a display of the ping pong balls in the church lobby.
As a word of encouragement and advice to churches who are looking to for creative ways to help their people engage in Gospel conversations, Tim said “People knowing how to share their faith is part of discipleship. You have to be ready to imbalance your church for a season to ramp this up in the hearts and lives of your people. You have to commit weekend messages to it. You have to commit to unifying groups around it. You have to take action steps in your community. And you have to bring it up often with your people.”
To connect with Tim and Grace Fellowship about their evangelism initiative, contact the church here.