Increasing Evangelistic Efforts through the Practice of Spiritual Disciplines at the Arlington Heights Church of Christ, Corpus Christi, Texas

Abstract

This project examines the relationship between spiritual disciplines and evangelism. Chapter 1 defines the historical, contextual and practical issues facing the Arlington Heights Church of Christ in regard to its spirituality and evangelism. Chapter 2 then presents an exegesis of five New Testament passages which show the expectation of spiritual growth and its relationship to evangelism. Chapter 3 reviews two important issues, the changing understanding of spiritual disciplines and the educational paradigm needed to teach them. Chapters 4 and 5 provide the results, analysis, and conclusions of this project.

Throughout the course of this fifteen-week project participants were taught about the twelve classical spiritual disciplines and encouraged to practice them regularly. At the conclusion of the project, an analysis of the change in their understanding and practice of spiritual disciplines was conducted. The resulting changes were compared with the change in the number and type of evangelistic efforts. As expected, the increase in the practice of spiritual disciplines resulted in a 41.63% increase in evangelistic efforts.