December 30,
2012
I begin with the premise that there is urgency in
the task of evangelism. I can think of
no worse condition for a human being than to be alienated from God, and I
believe all people are sinners and sin cuts us off from God completely. The solution for sin, which make relationship
with God impossible, is the teaching, life, death and resurrection of
Jesus. Many will reduce the gospel to
Jesus dying on the cross. I see his work
of salvation in his life and words, and in his death and resurrection. Without
the resurrection, the death on the cross is empty.
But he did rise.
He did conquer the greatest enemies – Satan, sin, and death. To be protected from the enemy, to be free
from the damning effects of sin, and to be assured that we will be resurrected
and have eternal life, we need Jesus. He
is God in the flesh, by him all that we know was created, he is the eternal
one, and he is the way, the truth, and the life. All people need Jesus.
I offer this simple definition. Evangelism is helping people meet Jesus as
Savior and Lord. In upcoming weeks, I
will say more about why as we come to be saved from sin and by Jesus, it is
just as important that we come to follow Jesus as master and Lord. Evangelism is helping people come to
Jesus.
It is the work of Christianity. Paul writes in 2nd Timothy, “In
the presence of … Christ Jesus, … and in view of his coming and his kingdom, I
solemnly urge you; proclaim the message; be persistent, whether the time is
favorable or unfavorable” (from v. 1, 2).
Why did he think this so important?
He writes in chapter 3,
in the
last days distressing times will come.2For people
will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,3inhuman,
implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good,4treacherous,
reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,5holding to
the outward form of godliness but denying its power (v.1b-5).
And in chapter 4,
3For the
time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having
itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own
desires,4and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away
to myths.
Who are the people who not only don’t have a
relationship with God, but don’t even want to?
Who are those who don’t believe there is a God at all? Who are they that are hostile to Christians
and Christianity? I don’t know who they
are in your life. In my life, they are
uncles and cousins, people I have loved my entire life. They are some of my closest high school and
college friends. They are neighbors, the
parents of my son’s friends. These
people I care about deeply are the ones who are going through their lives with
no relationship with God. They don’t
know the love of Jesus. They don’t know
they can turn to him for purpose in their lives. They don’t know he rejoices when they become
parents or when they graduate. They
don’t realize they have a heavenly Father who delights in them. They don’t know that when life gets really
hard they can turn to him.
On top of that, like me, they are mortals. Like every person, these that I care about
are one day closer to their own deaths each time they wake up in the
morning. Unless there is some
evangelistic intervention, they will go into eternity without a relationship
with God. They will go to judgment day
without Jesus covering their sins. They
will face judgment and then a godless eternity.
That is what is at stake.
I grew up in a Baptist church that taught that
people who did not know Jesus were lost and hell-bound. From what I have said,
it’s clear I still believe this and it leads to the question: how do people go from
being lost to being saved? This is a New
Testament issue.
From Romans 10, beginning in vers 13.
13For, “Everyone who calls on the
name of the Lord shall be saved.”14But how are they to call on one
in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they
have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?15And
how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How
beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”16But not all
have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?”17So
faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of
Christ.
And also of Matthew 28:18-20
18And Jesus came and said to them,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.19Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,20and teaching them to
obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always,
to the end of the age.”
These passages make it clear and the church in
which I was raised reinforced this message. We must go out and share the
Gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.
To be Christian is to be evangelistic. I don't
believe there are non-evangelical Christians. However, I do see a few problems
with the evangelism teaching I received.
First, we were told what to do, but not taught how
to do it. Go share Jesus. OK, how do I do it? If technique was taught, I
sure did not hear it. We were sent off on a mission but not equipped for that
mission. In my life, trying to live out the lessons I received at church, I
found myself in conversations about faith with people outside the umbrella of
church, and often they were far more prepared for those conversations than me.
A second problem with the teaching I received on
evangelism is I did not see it modeled in the church. The people who taught the
lessons were, at least when I saw them, with other Christians. Go share
Jesus with unbelievers. But I only ever saw the adults who gave that
instruction when they were with other Christians. I did not really see effective
evangelism. I had no model to copy.
No practical equipping. No good modeling. A third
problem is one I have discovered more recently. What we were taught did not
exactly match up with what the New Testament emphasizes. I have heard many pastors definitively state
that nothing is more important than getting people out of Hell and into
Heaven. This idea has a common-sense feel
about it. If Hell is unending torment,
then it is the worst possible conclusion for any soul. No matter what else happens in someone’s
life, it is crucial that we Christians do whatever we can to keep them out of
Hell.
Though this seems to make sense, it is a flawed
approach. Recall the passage we began
with, 2 Timothy 4. This chapter says
nothing about Hell. Neither do Romans 10
or Matthew 28, passages cited earlier.
In Romans evangelism is urged because unbelievers need prayer but don’t
know God, so cannot pray. In Matthew the
motivation is obedience. We go because
Jesus is sending us. In 2nd
Timothy, we are urged to evangelize because people have “itching ears” (v3)
full of false teaching. They cannot know
God because their minds are clouded with false doctrines.
To help people pray; to obey Jesus; to help people
meet the real God and move away from false teachings: these are some New
Testament reasons for evangelism. Going
to Heaven and staying out of Hell is part of evangelism, but I was taught that
it is 95% of evangelism. The Bible does
support such an unbalanced approach.
So with no real equipping, no role models, and a
skewed, limited view of what it is to share Jesus, I entered college, then
seminary, then ministry and adulthood. I
was in a terrible place. I did not know
how to do evangelism. I did not know fully
what evangelism is. Yet as the pastor, I
was supposed to motivate the church to do evangelism and to show them how!
I won’t bore you with all my mistakes, just two of
the glaring ones. The first involves one
of my best high school friends. In our first
year out of college, we were both back in Roanoke, Virginia where we had gone
to high school.
My friend wasn’t really a church-guy. He would come once in a while, but walking
with Jesus was not a driving force in his life.
I am not sure what role Jesus played for him back then, and 20 years
later, I am still unsure about that.
Here’s what I did with my friend. I went over to his house to play video-game
football. It was the 1992 version of
Madden or something that preceded Madden.
Anyway, we’re playing the video game and arguing about the NFL like we
always did. All of sudden, I said, “Hey,
I have to talk to you about something.”
And I whipped a gospel tract out of my back pocket and took him through
it, step-by-step. This conversation had
the potential for unbelievable awkwardness because I didn’t prep him at all for
what was coming and it was way out of the ordinairy.
What prevented it from falling apart completely is
how easy-going my friend his. He
patiently listened, nodded his head in a show of interest. When I was done I gave him the tract and he
read it again without my commentary. He
did not ask any questions. I did not
push him to respond in one way or another.
And within a few minutes we were back to the game.
I can definitely say I clearly presented the gospel
to my friend. There is no mistaking that
the tract which I read to him, with explanation, and then he read again, called
for the reader (him) to make the decision to pray to receive Christ. Some of you might think me a stumbling goof
for forcing such a formulaic approach into a situation where it did not
fit. Others may commend me for using the
tract but think me a coward for not pressing my friend to respond on the spot.
All I can conclude about the episode
is that he heard the gospel. Since then
he has heard me preach sermons. We are
still best of friends. I still do not
know where he stands with God.
Here is a second example from my own
life, one that happened in completely different circumstances with completely
different people. I was a pastor, 30
years old. I was rooming with some guys
in Alexandria, Virginia, one a former college roommate and a really dedicated
Christ follower. Another of our college
friends came to visit us. Of course
Alexandria, – that’s the Washington DC area.
Our friend was coming to participate in the national Gay pride
march. That he stayed with us while
coming for that event was momentous. He
was coming out of the closet to me and my roommate.
When we had all been in college
together, we did not know he was gay. We
played rugby together. We did 3 and
4-mile runs every morning together. We
were all in the bass section of the touring choir together. I thought I really knew this guy well.
So there we all are at my apartment,
reunited after being out of college 8 years, and our friend is explaining his
sexuality and why homosexuality for him was affirming and wonderful. As he talked I listened, and when he stopped,
I said, “All those things you’re saying, I get that from Jesus.” What I said was totally true – completely
true. The timing of it was
terrible. This guy needed to know his Christian
friends wouldn’t judge him. He needed to
know we would love him. What I
communicated was hey, you’re OK if you
follow Jesus, like I do.
My intent was for my friend to know the
Lord. But my words did not communicate
my intent because I had not earned the right to speak my piece. Not with him anyway. He would not have been able to hear me talk
about Jesus unless he knew I was a safe person.
He was sharing something totally new in our friendship. In other contexts, he had suffered from cruel
words spoken by Christians. He needed to
know his Christian friends would love him.
By going with Jesus language so abruptly and bluntly, I lost the
opportunity to actually share Jesus with my friend. I did not say the wrong thing. I said the right thing at the wrong
time.
I still see that friend once in a while. Whenever I do, I try to be a good
listener. But something changed that day
that we talked. It was already changing
as he was growing into honesty about his orientation. But the change became stark when he looked to
me for safety and friendship, and I said, “Jesus.” I could see it in his eyes immediately. When I said “Jesus,” he did not hear the name
of one who loved him unconditionally. He
heard me judging him. I needed to show
Jesus-love first. Had I done that, I
think I would have had a better chance at sharing Jesus’ name and the salvation
Jesus offers.
These evangelistic attempts are not failures
because of the response of my two friends.
Success or failure in evangelism is not determined by whether or not the
unbeliever becomes a Christ-follower. We
have no control over that. The Holy
Spirit ultimately must speak and the Spirit speaks on the Spirit’s time table,
not ours. When the Spirit speaks, and I
personally believe the Holy Spirit speaks to all people many times in their
lives, then the person has to respond in faith or respond by rejecting God and
rejecting faith. We cannot control the
Holy Spirit’s initiative or the person’s response.
My two examples are failures because I was not
artful or tactful or patient in setting the circumstances. In my eagerness to do my evangelistic duty, I
failed to see how complicated this entire business is. With my video-football playing buddy, I
needed to press our conversations to where they were about matters that go
deeper than who will win, the Redskins or the Cowboys. I needed to get him talking about things that
matter at the heart level. Then, when he
talked, I needed to listen.
My friend from college was already at the heart
level. He was already talking. I needed to listen. I needed to spend a lot of time listening
compassionately and prayerfully.
In both cases, listening was the key. This will be a central teaching in this
series on evangelism. We might even call
it “listening evangelism.” Of course it
cannot be only listening. We aren’t
therapists. We are disciples of Jesus
Christ and we want to help our unchurched, unbelieving friends to become not
only saved, but passionately devoted followers of Jesus. We most certainly need to speak the Gospel. But not first. Speaking cannot be where we start because our
friends won’t hear a thing we say if we aren’t safe and trustworthy.
The unbelieving world expects the church to be
self-righteous and judgmental. We have
to shock the world with our love. Paul
says in 2nd Timothy 4:2, “be persistent … with utmost patience in
teaching.” This is not soft
evangelism. This is evangelism that I
think will actually gain a hearing. We
don’t just want to tell people that Jesus saves. We want them to listen when we say Jesus
saves. I have too many stories of my own
failure to wait for the other to be listening before I began talking.
I invite you on a journey into the world of
listening evangelism. We’ll look into
scripture – the stories of Jesus and the first evangelists in the early
church. We’ll hear from each other. And together, we will go into the world with
the good news that before God Satan is powerless, death is defeated, and sin is
covered. It’s all because of Jesus. We will share that message and we will do it
slowly, patiently, listening, so that when we share our friends will hear.
AMEN
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