Personal Evangelism 101…

Christians live under command—the command to participate in the great Commission:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”   —Matt. 28:18–20

Little makes good Christians more uncomfortable than talking about personal evangelism. We all recognize our need to witness to Jesus, yet many of us shrink back, worried that we may not know enough to answer questions or that we are otherwise ill-equipped to share our faith.

Yet personal evangelism is not about knowledge, eloquence, or the ability to think fast on your feet. In truth, it should be the easiest thing we ever do. To prove it, we need only look to John’s gospel. Take a moment and read John 1:19–51. In that extended passage, John presents a model for personal evangelism. Its simplest expression is found in the account of Andrew and his brother Simon:

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).     —John 1:40–42

How does Andrew evangelize? Simply by sharing his own experience: “We have found the Messiah.” The day before, Andrew himself heard a testimony about Jesus and decided to follow Him:

The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.   —John 1:35–40

Andrew heard testimony about Jesus from someone he valued, and he chose to follow Jesus for himself. Andrew then stayed with Jesus—the Greek there can also be translated as to remain. By remaining, Andrew acquired his own experience of Jesus. And that experience served as the content of his evangelism to his brother.

You do not need a degree in theology nor an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible to be an evangelist. All you need is a willingness to forego your exclusive possession of Jesus! You need to be willing to share Jesus with others. Then, like Andrew, just bring the person to Jesus (Jn 1:42). How do you bring someone to Jesus? Bring them to the Word! Jesus is the Word of God:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.   —John 1:1–3, 14

People don’t need to be led to your church, your home group or your lunchtime Bible study. Introduce them to Jesus! Let them garner their own experience of Him. Then you might invite them to church. Church will only confuse the lost, but Jesus will open the eyes of their understanding. Bring them to Jesus and He will direct their steps to His church.

Evangelism isn’t hard; it takes nothing more than your own experience with Christ. You know the difference Jesus has made in your life; can you imagine what He could do for those around you who do not yet know Him? Tell them! All you need to say is, “Come and meet the man who changed my life!” Give them a copy of John’s gospel; better yet, buy a couple of those pocket New Testaments and give them one. Avoid the pop-culture paraphrases (Message, NLT, NNIV) and pick a readable, faithful translation (NIV, ESV, NKJV) instead. Show them the gospel of John and encourage them to read it. And make yourself available to them to talk about what they’ve read. Then pray for them—both with them and apart from them.

It is time for all of us to obey the command and participate in Jesus’ great commission. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Let us share the good news of God—Jesus Christ of Nazareth! May God have mercy upon us.

A seeker-sensitive case-study…

I received a letter from a couple who recently left their church because they perceived it had embraced a seeker-sensitive ecclesiology. I read their remarks with interest because I know something about that church. The situation presents a marvelous case study of how some contemporary church leaders supplant the historical culture of a local church with the recently formulated seeker-sensitive ecclesiology.

The couple that penned the letter tends toward the Calvinistic end of the theological spectrum, yet their theological proclivities are not so adamantine as to make it impossible for them to find a home in a genuinely reformed church. This particular church trumpets its reformed credentials and makes much of its denominational affiliation, which nationally (at least) embraces a Calvinistic view of redemption and a high view of Scripture. Yet the couple perceived an insidious difference between those proclamations and the message coming through the pulpit and recent church marketing. They interpreted the difference as indicating a substantive change of theological direction, and because of it, they decided to leave.

The church is in a season of change. Unlike many churches, which choose to remain blind to the future, the leadership of this church is seriously engaged in planning for its future. And to their credit, they recognize that the future will not be the 1940’s—let alone the 1840’s or 1600’s. Absent the Lord’s return, the Church is headed into the 2040’s, and there are few among us who have a clear vision for what that world will look like. One must applaud leaders who take the shifts in culture, demographics and traditions seriously and allot time to think through how their church(es) should respond. That said, their responses must be critically examined.

The leadership of this church sees their future requiring a new church facility equipped to dispense a panoply of services—from the weekly Christian worship ceremony and Christian school, to sporting fields, movie theatre, retirement village, meeting space, cafes and shops. Explanations of the vision range from the view of the church as evangelistic outreach center to the church as alternative community for Christians. The vision embraces the romantic conception of the church as the center of the community by exploding the separation of the church from the larger life of the community. It is a big vision.

However, the couple recognized that hidden within this change to the church’s physical plant was a larger change in the definition of church. When they combined that with what they were hearing from the pulpit and reading on the church’s website, they concluded that the church was being led away from its historic culture. Instead of remaining with its roots as a conservative, reformed evangelical church, the church was exhibiting a distinct tendency towards seeker-sensitivity.

The genius of the couple’s letter lies in its comparison of statements made on the church’s website with the doctrinal statements of both the national denomination and previous versions of the church website. The difference is palpable. The current leadership has obviously embraced the vocabulary of Hybel’s seeker-sensitive movement. There is the noticeable absence of traditional language, including words such as sin, forgiveness, righteousness, holiness and sanctification. In its place is the language of postmodern culture: meaning, community, wholeness, relevance and doing good. Some suggest that language is just a matter of style and not substance, yet this misses the point. For a church, language is its substance. Words are of immense significance in Christianity. It may seem unfathomable to the modern mind, but wars have been fought over some of our words. Christians, like our Jewish forefathers, are people of words. Faith and salvation come through hearing words (Rom 10:17; Acts 11:14). Although our traditional biblical vocabulary has been proven by numerous generations and has transcended countless cultures, proponents of seeker-sensitivity declare that it must be changed to address contemporary cultural norms. But in the process this dilutes doctrine and marginalizes Christian principles.

Almost as if to prove that claim, statements on the church’s website reveal a substantial departure from orthodox Christianity. The church is no longer described as a gathering place for the people of God; instead it is now seen as a fellowship for everyone—saved or not. There is silence on the critical issues of the authority and inspiration of the Bible. And apparently the church has adopted the liberal understanding of humanity; where the Bible characterizes all of humanity as under sin, liberals—and this church in particular—view humans as a “mixed bag” of good and evil. Each of these statements demonstrate that the leadership has embraced seeker-sensitive theology.

Meanwhile, the majority of the church—or at the least, those who are long-time attendees—remain conservative evangelicals, committed to the Word and the principles of the reformed faith. They maintain a traditional view of the church’s function as meeting the needs of the body of Christ. They believe that individual Christians—and not the church—do the work of the ministry (evangelism and compassion), and that the church must empower them for service. The people sense the changes in the church, but because they have little exposure to contemporary ecclesiology, they are unaware of the implication of those changes.

Thus we see a church exhibiting an ecclesiological schizophrenia—the leadership espouses one theology while the people hold to another. The couple perceived this disconnect between their understanding of the church and the leadership’s definition and decided to leave. Sadly, the majority of people remain silently confused, blaming themselves for their increasing sense of discomfort at church. And like the story of the frog in the coffeepot, by the time they recognize the change in their surroundings for what it is, they will be cooked!

This church will no doubt proceed with its new direction, and over time, more people will decide that they too must find a new church. It is sad to witness the destruction of an existing church, but change is inexorable. It remains to be seen what the future will bring to the church in North America, yet one wonders if the kind of wholesale change advocated by the proponents of the seeker-sensitive movement is truly wisdom. Nonetheless, it seems to be a season of change. Therefore it is a time to stay alert and on-guard. It is a time to discipline your mind with the Word and cultivate your awareness of the indwelling Holy Spirit, who will teach you and confirm truth to you. These may be days of change, but they are also days of deception. May God have mercy on us all!

A walk of faith…

It has been a tumultuous couple of months for our family here in Virginia Beach. During the precipitous market crash of the Fall, 2008, our savings disappeared without so much as a “see you later!” We were entirely too leveraged and should have pulled the plug earlier, but my unfounded optimism and tendency to avoid unpleasant realities clouded my judgment. I had hoped for an escape, but unlike previous downturns, we would not weather this storm.

Losing one’s financial security yields an odd mixture of outright panic, deep remorse and remarkable peace. My wife consoled me by saying, “At least we don’t have to worry about what the market is doing anymore!” Yet it brought other worries, including my on-going struggle to find ministry employment. As long as we had some kind of safety net, the process of sending out endless résumés to churches was merely a frustration; without any means of support, it became a luxury we could no longer afford.

So after twenty-two years of teaching and ministry, I began a search for secular employment. And God is so good: He opened a door for me with an electrical contractor in Yorktown. The committed Christian who owns the company learned of my need and thought that we might help each other for as long as the Lord allows. So I am now learning the language and processes of purchasing electrical equipment and materials. I confess there are moments when I am entirely baffled by my circumstances, yet I quickly remember how miraculous it is that I—a middle-aged preacher, ignorant of almost everything other than some theological tidbits—have found a job at a time when the economy is (supposedly) going down the tubes.

Needless to say, my life has been dramatically rearranged. The job only asks for 40 hours a week, but the commute adds another 10–15 hours each week. My days begin well before the birds awake and seem to end shortly after dinner! For those of you who know me well, you would be genuinely surprised by how early I’m “up and at’em!”

The change has necessitated a reexamination of my ministry activity. For some time I had wrestled against what I believed was the prompting of the Lord to start some kind of fellowship. Still being somewhat scarred from my earlier ministry experience in charismatic, word-faith circles, I was reluctant to go out on my “own,” and so sought a position in an existing church. While I had the means to wait for the right position to open, I eagerly volunteered my teaching gift to local churches. It is not as noble as it sounds, though; I admit that I hoped that one of those churches might have recognized the gift and been moved to take me on staff as a teaching minister, but it never happened. Why buy the cow when the milk is free, right? Heh!

At any rate, my wife and I prayed and concluded that the time of waiting for recognition had come to an end; it was now time to do what we knew to do. So we resurrected Household of Faith Ministries, the tax-exempt ministry organization we formed ten years ago, and began holding services in our home on Sundays at 4 pm. While these are still early days, we are cheered by the attendance and the fellowship. I decided to step down from the other volunteer positions; they consumed a lot of time. It is important to be a blessing, but when one is drowning its not the time to volunteer. I chose to spend my ‘free’ time with my family and in pursuit of my writing.

As you might imagine then, the last seven weeks have been a blur. I am emotionally and physically exhausted. It may be only another opportunity to walk by faith and purge my reliance on things of this earth, but it has been an arduous education. It has taught me a lot, about God, others, and myself. You really do learn who your friends are when times get hard! But thankfully, there is Jesus! Now that I’ve completed the last of my volunteer responsibilities, I should have another eight to ten hours to use for other projects. But, for this week at least, I’ll probably just sleep!

Believe it or not, I do have a couple of entries to post here. I have been working on a new website for Household of Faith which will include recordings of my teaching. I have not decided if I will migrate this blog to the website, but for now I will continue to post the occasional musing here. There is so much to say…! Until then, please—get into the Word! And may God have mercy on us all.