During the five years she served as his caregiver, Sue Strother and her husband, Joe, understood the roles each filled. “He bore the pain. I bore the strain,” Mrs. Strother said. Her husband, pastor of North Riverside Baptist Church in Newport News, Va., was diagnosed with multiple myeloma — cancer of the blood plasma cells — in 1989. His wife cared for him through rounds of chemotherapy, a period of remission and recurrence of the cancer.

It’s emblazoned on the sign outside Gayton Baptist Church in Richmond. Belong. Believe. Become. Those three verbs — in various word orders — crop up frequently in discussions on evangelism and a congregation’s role in it. For some, it’s a promising harbinger of new approaches to reach non-Christians.