THIS MATERIAL BELOW
is a borrowed material
for DISCUSSION PURPOSES at
HIS LIFE DIVINITY SCHOOL
PART 2 of 10
borrowed from B.M.
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THE EVANGELISM FACTOR
I found it written in an old book someone had given me out of their personal library year ago:
“EVANGELIZE OR FOSSILIZE OR GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE WILL BECOME GOD’S FROZEN PEOPLE.”
Those lines have made an indelible impact on my life.
If the truth were really known, about 85% of all American churches have lost the vision to evangelize. It’s reflected in budgets, buildings, schedules and a pre-occupation with “maintenance.”
Peter and John were told in Acts to stop preaching in Jesus name.
They couldn’t. the church today is commanded to preach the gospel and doesn’t.
In the first century, without the help of computers, slick brochures, copy machines, television, radio and newspapers the early church hemorrhaged with the gospel.
They were obsessed with winning the lost and planting new churches.
Until we return to that vision, evangelism will continue to be a lost concept.
Therefore, before dealing with methods, I believe that there are some biblical principles to which the 21st century church must give allegiance.
Examine them closely.
PRINCIPLE NO.1:
GOD INTENDS HIS CHURCH TO GROW!
He created it to grow, He designed it to grow, He equipped it to grow, He empowered it to grow.
And, grow it did. On the very first day of the church’s existence, 3000 people were baptized (Acts 2:41). From 3000, the church grew 5000 (Acts 4:4), then on to multitudes” (Acts 5:14).
It is central to its nature to grow and rightly so. Its primary task, that of making disciples, necessitates growth. Church growth is not a means to an end, but the end to the means of evangelism.
Most evangelical churches today are not growing, but rather making time. Their “no growth status is result of no evangelism. Some people are turned off by the talk of “numbers”. They somehow feel that to talk of numbers is unspiritual. Let me remind you that God believed in numbers.
(He named a book in the Old Testament Numbers). All you need to do is read through the book of Acts as shown earlier and you see numerical reports all the way through.
If it’s true that God wants “His banquet hall filled,” and that “He is not willing that any should perish,” then it seems only normal that the church should grow. Yet the condition that exist today is just the opposite. We have been subnormal for so long in evangelism, let a church return to “normality” and everyone think it’s abnormal.”
Today, growing and dynamic churches are singled out. Their stories appear in magazines, others make the trek to visit their campuses to find out how they did it, and often their pastors are constantly asked to speak at conferences and seminars on how it is being done. What a contrast to the original church we read about in Acts. No matter where they planted a church, it grew!
For your church to grow, among other things, your leadership must buy into the principle that truly God intends His church to grow. It is His will, His desire, yea, His command.
PRINCIPLE NO.2:
THE WORK OF EVANGELISM IS FOR THE WHOLE CHURCH,
NOT JUST A FEW “PROFESSIONALS”
Satan’s biggest deception for the church occurred when he convinced most of the church that the task of winning the lost belongs to the trained professionals. one of the fallacies of that deception is that the trained “professionals” represent only one half of 1% of the total membership of any given church! That plan is not of God. Proof of that is found in Acts 8:
And on that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Samaria, EXCEPT the apostles….. Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word (Acts 8:1-4).
Did you catch the principle in these verse? When the persecution broke out, all the believers scattered, that is, all except the apostles. It was those who were scattered who did the preaching and the evangelism, NOT THE “PROS” (apostles), who stayed put for some reason. It was the common “laity” that went everywhere preaching, because they saw it as their task, not the task of the professionals. I hope you notice it took some persecution to “scatter the saints”. That may be what it’s going to take to do the same in our generation.
It’s no wonder that during the first 250 years of the church’s existence, the entire Roman Empire was seriously affected and altered by “laymen’s movement”. It was the fastest growing movement in the history of civilization, all because each believer understood it was HIS responsibility to win his neighbor. That movement slowed to a crawl, however, when soon the idea was interjected that the “clergy” was alone equipped to fight all the battles for the church, including evangelism.
PRINCIPLE NO. 3:
EVANGELISM IS MEANT TO TAKE PLACE “OUT THERE”
INSTEAD OF “IN HERE”
This is a difficult principle for our western mind-set to absorb. We are a culture that likes “gathering”. Of course, there is nothing wrong with gatherings, specially church gatherings. A crowd assembles, someone preaches, an invitation is offered and a few people step out to receive Christ. While that is a good thing and certainly every time the Word is preached there needs to be the opportunity offered for the unsaved to accept Christ, the biblical pattern was so different. In the earlier quoted passage, with all the other information we are given in Acts, most of the public gatherings on Sunday were for worship, edification, equipping and fellowship, so the saints could go out during the week and let their light shine and their testimony be given. In other words, there was the gathering and the “scattering” this balance enabled the church to take time for winning the lost and maturing the saints. Sunday services really should not be for the purpose of evangelizing, but edifying and equipping SO THAT evangelism can take place in the market place, the neighborhood, the play place and the home through natural relationships. While there is certainly nothing wrong with mass evangelism, our world for the most part will be won by the one-on-one relationships developed by individual believers out there where they work and play.
PRINCIPLE NO. 4:
PEOPLE ARE LOST, DOOMED AND DAMNED APART
FROM JESUS CHRIST
I’m not sure much of the church really “buys in” to that statement. The facts is that we live in an accommodating culture. For fear of being called narrow minded, much of evangelical Christianity has “graciously” taken in under their umbrella all kinds of philosophies and espousals of people. The early church in Acts marched across the world under the banner of the cross with a firm conviction that men are lost outside Jesus Christ. In fact, Peter’s words in Acts 4:12 gives us a clue as to the tone of the preaching in the area:
And there is salvation in no-one else, for these is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
That exclusive statement compels the church to peach conclusively and persuasively the gospel. Statisticians assure us that the world population is right at 5 billions. When you stop and consider that 3.5 billion of that figure do not know Christ, that is great motivation for present evangelism. When you stop and consider that 3.5 billion of that figure do not know Christ, that is great motivation for present evangelism. When you add to this the fact that religious groups such as Muslims are staging massive campaigns in America for converts, our motivation for holding up Jesus as the only way is greatly increased.
Recently in our city a little girl became lost. Within a matter of hours, large amounts of friends, relatives, neighbors, and just concerned people banded together organized themselves and began a massive search for the little lost girl. They were later joined by the many others who had heard of the incident on television. Before night over 1000 people had set aside normal activities of work, recreation and focused their entire energies on one objective, finding the little lost girl. Fortunately, just as the sun was setting , she was found, alone, crying, in a wooded area. That group of people, heretofore unknown to each other, had one common goal and felt a camaraderie as they sought to fulfill that goal. If that many people are willing to inconvenience themselves over a physical life, surely the Church can concern and organize itself to seek, find and evangelize people who are lost for all eternity. Jesus made it clear what His mission…. To seek and save the lost. Until we acknowledge the blatant fact that apart from Jesus Christ men are doomed, and relegated to a devil’s hell for all eternity, not much will happen in the way of evangelism.
Jesus said in John 14:6,
I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, but by me.
What Jesus said is clear. Salvation can be found in no one else, no way else, nowhere else, except through Him. If we really believed that, it would totally revolutionize what we do in the way of evangelism from week to week.
Some has said that if you joined all the unsaved people in the world hand to hand, the circle would go around the earth 5 times and the line would grow 22 miles per day! That is staggering and points up the enormity of our task of sharing Jesus as the one and only answer to man’s estrangement.
Until the leadership of the local church acknowledges the reality of man’s lost position, not much will happen in the way of evangelism. Perhaps one of our problems is that we have lost the biblical meaning of “lostness”. In Luke 15 Jesus told 3 parables concerning lostness; He told about the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost boy. There is a common theme in that chapter we are prone to miss. It is that each and every lost item, including the lost son, was lost because it was out of relationship to the one and only person who could bring meaning, significance, and worth to it. The coin was not in the hand of the owner, and thus in a state of low or no worth. Its buying power (the very reason for which it was created) was nil. The sheep was outside the fold of its shepherd and thus was in danger. The boy was out of relationship with his father and thus had lost his sense of worth and value. To be “lost” doesn’t necessarily mean to be “bad” or “immoral” or “ungodly”, though lost people tend to fail into all of these things.
Biblically, lostness means to be out of relationship. In reality, God created man for the purpose of being in perfect relationship, and harmony with Him. Until that happens, it matters not how good or bad someone is, he is lost. I personally believe every local church needs to hear from the pulpit these words:
We believe that apart from Jesus Christ, man is eternally lost
PRINCIPLE NO. 5:
IT IS GOD WHO INITIATES SALVATION AND DRAWS PEOPLE TO HIM
We tend to forget that salvation always begins with God. Without attempting to reconcile the sovereignty of God and the free will of man, let the Word speak for itself:
Even as he chose us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him (Eph. 1:4).
Paul states an amazing truth here. Long before God even created the world, he chose us to be saved. Perhaps this is why Jesus said:
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:44).
‘In fact, as you read on in John 6, you will find these same words again expressed:
And he said, “This is why I told you, that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father” (John 6:65).
Before God and man can met in salvation, we who share the gospel must acknowledge the call of God on people’s lives. It is God who initiates our salvation. It is God who made the first move in creating us in the first place. It is God who moved again in the coming of Jesus Christ as the divine provision and remedy for sin. In his letter to the Romans, Paul said:
And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:6).
We usually don’t think of our salvation in terms of the call of God upon us. But I believe this is one of the most important principles of evangelism. When the church realizes that God has called people to be saved, and that we are the bearers of that call, it places a greatly needed urgency upon us. If we don’t announce the call of God to a broken and chaotic humanity, who will?
PRINCIPLE NO. 6:
GOD WILLS OUR SALVATION
Not only is His call upon us, it is His sovereign will that we be saved!
There is a lot of discussion about the will of God. Many are frantically trying to discern God’s will for their life… whom they will marry, where they will live, what is their profession to be, etc. Among many things that can be labeled God’s will in scripture, the most significant is man’s salvation. Who can forget the most quoted scripture?
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16)
Jesus made it clear that it’s the world God loves, the whole world, not a potion, not a particular race or culture, but the world. Truly the task of evangelism is cosmic. The great commission is still “all nations.” It transcends cultures, racial barriers, economic strata, and personalities. The cosmic desire of God to see the whole world saved is stressed in II Peter:
The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (II Pet. 3:9).
Jesus died for the world. And while we know some will reject salvation, it is the task of the church to make the gospel message known to the world, and in so doing, we are helping fulfill the divine will of God.
Paul made it clear what God’s desire for worldwide salvation:
This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (I Tim. 2:3-4).
If it’s true, and it is, that it is God’s sovereign will that the world come to Christ, and if it’s further true that God has chosen the church to be the bearer of those unsearchable riches, it is clear that the church’s supreme task, if it would do the will of God, is evangelize.
No church can claim to be at the center of God’s will in its mission and not have on its front burner the objective of world wide evangelism. No church can say “We’re doing the will of God,” if great amounts of energy, large sums of money, and adequate time are not devoted to fulfillment of God’s evangelistic will.
That is why I believe, with a sense of regularity in every local church, the people need to hear “We believe it is the will of God for the world to be saved! And we intend to fulfill that will to the best of our ability.” The primary mission of Jesus is summed up for us in what He said at the outset of His ministry:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19).
Even before His birth, Jesus mission was announced by the angel;
She will bear a Son and you shall call Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).
Jesus made clear His mission when He said;
For the Son of man came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10)
Contrary to popular opinion today, Jesus real mission in coming to this world was not to make this world a better place in which to live, it was not to improve living conditions ,it was not to make a better government. His mission was clearly to bring man back to God. This He accomplished by His death on the cross. Therefore the pattern is this. God wills our salvation, Jesus came to do the will of the Fater, Jesus accomplished the provision of our salvation by His death on the cross. It is the church’s task now to fulfill God’s will---man’s salvation.
PRINCIPLE NO. 7:
EFFECTIVE EVANGELISM IS DONE IN THE POWER OF GOD
Ours is the culture of the quick fix and fast results. I truly believe that much of the church’s attempt to evangelize the lost, has degenerated into little more than psychologizing and humanizing people. All kinds of gimmiks, tricks, plans, programs, strategies, manuals, films and flipcharts have been created to impress and woo the unsaved. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with dressing the old gospel up in new and shiny strategies, but unless witnessing is done in the power of God, it will never be truly effective.
Just before His ascension, Jesus gave His disciples the game plan to take their world for Him. It goes like this;
You are witnesses of these things; and behold I send the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the City until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:48-49).
This the disciples did. You read basically the same thing when the great commission is given again in Acts1.
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses, in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8)
Notice again, “you shall receive power”, .In other words, Jesus gave them the cosmic task of discipling the world, but warned them not to start the task until the power was there. Little is said today about witnessing in the power of the Holy Spirit. All through the Bible we see examples of “power meetings”. These are meetings where the Kingdom of God encounters the kingdom of evil. Of course one of the prime examples was when Elijah encountered 450 prophets of Baal. He witnessed the power of God and God honored his faith. Young David is another prime example of a power meeting between forces of God and the forces of evil when he stood against a giant on a human level, the odds were 1000 to 1 in favor of Goliath. But David said in essence, “You come to me with spear, a sword and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord our God.”
David was the victor that day; not in his own power. When Jesus encountered the Gerasene demoniac, there was a cosmic encounter. It was conclusive. Jesus had invaded the world of the enemy and demons. He had gone to bttle and by God’s power won the victory.
Act 13 records the tense narrative concerning the proconsul, Segius Paulus, who had summoned Barnabas and Saul to hear the word of God. You will recall the Elymas, the magician, had interfered and withstood them as they tried to share with the Proconsul. The scripture says;
But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind and will not see the sun for a time “ (Acts 13:9-11).
The victory was clearly God’s on that day because the scripture later tell us that the Proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred. It further states that he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord. It certainly isn’t coincidence that virtually every conversion that took place in Acts was proceeded by a manifestation of God’s power. Sometimes in the form of a healing, sometimes in the form of death, sometimes by a miracle. I believe the most practical way we can witness in the power of God today is to depend on the Holy Spirit for divine appointments and for holy boldness, for effective results.
PRINCIPLE NO.8:
THERE IS INHERENT POWER IN THE GOSPEL
Close connected to principle 7, this principle relies on the built-in power of the spoken message itself. No one doubts the power of God, but we tend to forget there is power in the spoken message. In Genesis we are told that God spoke the world into creation. By the same token, there is a resident power in the life changing message of the cross. Romans 1:16 tell us;
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who has faith.
The message that declares the atoning death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus has a built-in power of its own that is able to blow apart man’s self-sufficiency, his false confidence, and even Satan’s deception. God’s word is effective when spoken. That is the meaning of Isiah 55:11:
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Many times we are dependent on the suaveness of speech or the cleverness of the presentation or the speaker, or where what scripture comes where and how effectively we present the close, but I would remind you that the result in evangelism has little to do wi the quality of presentation. Proof of this is that Paul preached very rationally and academically in Athens and the converts were few. On the other hand, he preached by the power of God at Corinth, and many responded. In reflecting on that later, Paul reminded the Corinthians:
When I came to you brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words of wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and much fear and trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God (I Cor. 2:1-5)
Our western mind-set leaves little room for God to operate with His power in the task of evangelism. Our confidence too many times has been in the setting of what is presented the suaveness of the presenter, and the rational way in which it is presented. We conclude that an intelligent message, presented in an intelligent way, to an intelligent person, by an intelligent person, should bring an intelligent affirmative result. Of course, no one would even suggest we be in any way sloppy, or slip-shod in the way we share Christ. But in our own church, I have seen people without a great I.Q., whose memories were bad, “slaughter” the gospel presentation, yet at the close the people they shared with came to faith in Christ! So, it’s not only the power of God working in and on the situation, but the power of message which is shared.
PRINCIPLE NO. 9:
THE CHURCH IS CHARGED WITH THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EQUIPPING THE SAINTS IN EVANGELISM
We learned long ago that if the saints are going to do the work of evangelism, they must be trained in the work of evangelism. That is why it is absolutely essential that there be in every church, regardless of size, an on-going training program to equip saints who are willing in the work of evangelism. I learned this secret in 1974 when I went through the Lay Witness Training Program at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderadale, Florida. I came home, took two people, committed them to 18 weeks of discipling and training, took them out each Tuesday evening where they watched me present the very gospel outline they were learning. God honored that “pilot” project by having almost half of the people we called on during that period accept Christ right in front of the eyes of my two trainees! In this program, evangelism is more “caught” than “taught.” At the end of the training program, the three of us each took two more trainees and repeated the process. At the end of that term there were now nine of us each taking two more recruits and repeating the whole process. Before very many years, either as “trainees” or “trainers.” Today, we conduct three 11-week sessions per year including on the job training. Over 900 people have been trained and graduated from the training. Many of those are no longer in the on-going program, some have moved to other cities, and some have dropped out altogether. But the important thing is that we are seeking to be obedient to the scriptures:
And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Eph. 4:11-12).
“. . . to equip the saints for the work of the ministry . . .”That’s the key. Every pastor’s task is one of equipping, training, coaching, leading. Many pastors have not yet learned that God has called them to equip God’s people God’s tasks. Theirs is no the job of DOING all the tasks, but equipping others to do them as they come alongside and do them with them.
I have found the continual use of the Lay Witness Training program, year in and year out, provided the means of fulfilling our equipping role. Here are some simple rules in using any kind of evangelism training:
1. The preacher must not only endorse, but be involved in the training himself. He can never ask his people to do what he himself won’t this is modeling that is inescapable to him.
2. Be selective. Recruit by name. Invite handpicked people to an explanation meeting where the whole training is explained, then have them sign up at the meeting, for the training will start in two to three weeks.
3. Make sure recruits know that training begins on this date and ends on that date. Be specific.
4. Have high expectations. Make sure recruits understand the demands and rigor of the training.
5. Inspect! During training for eleven weeks, there is a weekly exam before each class. We learned that you don’t get what you expect, but only what you inspect.
6. Establish authority in the training process. Trainees must know who is in charge. Except for unusually large churches, the preaching minister himself should be in charge.
7. Have a graduation time with diploma and ceremonies, and offer graduating trainees the opportunity to become a trainer, thus, fulfilling the II Tim. 2:1-2 principle.
8. Make sure all trainees get to see the gospel presented on a call at least 70% of the time.
9. Conduct a final written and oral exam as a condition for completion.
10. Make sure graduates are also acknowledged in the worship service.
Many people ask us many times if this is the only kind of evangelism that is valid in the local church. Of course there are other valid modes of evangelizing, including training in lifestyle evangelism, coffee cup evangelism, home cell group evangelism, and cold turkey door-to-door evangelism. I sincerely believe, however, that the Lay Witness Training form of evangelistic outreach is the most effective over the long haul; mainly because it raises up an army of trained witnesses who, in or out of a program, will have the tools to witness and train others to witness.
Every local church needs an objective, a goal, and a game plan of how to get there always before them in evangelism. It needs a statement that says, “WE PLAN TO TAKE OUR COUNTY FOR JESUS CHRIST BY____________. THIS IS HOW WE PLAN TO DO IT!” Then and only then will your church, and your community, really know you are serious about your existence as a church.
