The two words that carry the whole movement
In the language of the streets, in the language of family, in the language of every household where the porch light still gets left on, "pull up" means one thing: be present. Come through. Show your face. Do not text — come.
Somebody calls and says, "It is been hard this week." The right answer is not a Bible verse text. The right answer is, "I am pulling up."
Why we needed a new word for it
The word "evangelism" has scars. For a lot of our people — and especially for a lot of the people we are trying to reach — it conjures the wrong image: a stranger at the door with a Watchtower, a megaphone on a downtown corner, a televangelist with a private jet, a church that wants something. The word has been weaponized by the very people it should describe.
So we are not asking you to do "evangelism." We are asking you to pull up. Same Great Commission. Different posture. Different language. Different result.
| OLD POSTURE | PULL UP POSTURE |
|---|---|
| Tract-based — hand them a paper. | Trust-based — give them you. |
| Event-driven — get them in the building. | Relationship-driven — get into theirs. |
| Information transfer — "Here is the gospel." | Transformation invitation — "Come see." |
| Monologue — preach at them. | Dialogue — ask, listen, share. |
| Strangers convince strangers. | Friends introduce friends. |
| Measured by decisions made. | Measured by disciples grown. |
| The pastor's job. | Every member's calling. |
| A campaign. | A culture. |
The world has changed. Our methods have not kept up.
Rick Richardson, in Evangelism Outside the Box, makes a sobering observation: the people we are trying to reach today are post-Christian, not pre-Christian. They have heard the gospel and rejected the version of it they encountered. Most of them did not reject Jesus. They rejected a Christian who hurt them, a church that betrayed them, a system that excluded them, or a presentation that insulted their intelligence.
This is not a hostile audience. It is a wounded one. And wounded people are not converted by louder arguments. They are converted by safer relationships.
Why this works for the small church
If you pastor or attend a church of 30, 60, 100 people, here is the truth no church-growth book has the courage to tell you: you do not need a band. You do not need a building. You do not need a budget. You need to mobilize the relationships your congregation already has.
Do the math with me. The average member of an American church knows somewhere between 75 and 200 people on a first-name basis (family, coworkers, neighbors, friends, parents from school, salon clients, regulars at the shop). A church of 60 active members therefore has — conservatively — a relational network of 4,500 people.
Why this works in the everyday small church
The everyday small church has always been more than a Sunday institution. It has been a community center, a political headquarters, a social safety net, an economic cooperative, an arts academy, a counseling office, a school, and a kitchen — sometimes all in the same week.
Our culture is already relational. We do not need to be taught how to feed a hungry neighbor or sit with a grieving auntie. We need to be reminded that those instincts ARE the gospel in motion. Pull Up does not import a foreign methodology. It baptizes what is already in our cultural DNA.
Leader's Note
Pastors: do not skip this exercise. Model the Pull Up before you preach the Pull Up. The single biggest predictor of campaign success is whether the senior pastor was the first one to do the work. If you cannot name the person you are pulling up to this week, the campaign is already in trouble.