Since I am in my 36th year of vocational youth ministry, I can respond to this question from the scope of my own experience. Evangelism was the primary focus of my early youth ministry efforts. To give more context to my evangelistic journey, see the September 7, 2010, Slant33 post. In the late ’70s and through the ’80s I gave little thought to any theological implications concerning the hard-hitting, strong-armed, manipulative, bait-and-switch, hellfire tactics I engaged in to get kids “saved.” Throughout the 1990s, this style of evangelism became increasingly disturbing, not only to me but also to hundreds of youth workers in my social network.
There are many reasons the practice of evangelism and the posture toward evangelism have changed so much in the last three decades. I’d like to think the primary reason for the change in my thinking about evangelism has been driven by deeper theological reflection concerning soteriology and ecclesiology. What does it mean to experience salvation? What role does becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ play in evangelism and salvation? How is evangelism connected to church? How does our society view proselytizing? What role does apologetics play in evangelism? How do we define apologetics in our current culture? These questions are really important, and the answers to these questions have dramatically impacted the issue of how evangelism is taught and practiced.
I strongly believe that the gospel, which means “good news,” has been defined and communicated in ways that has led to the good news not being genuinely and intuitively perceived as good news by most people outside the church. One of the reasons for this negative reaction has been the framing of the proclamation of our story of the gospel around a primary emphasis on how wicked and sinful human beings are.
We mistakenly corrupt the good news by starting the story of humanity in Genesis 3, with the fall. Yes, human beings are broken, but the story of humanity begins in Genesis 1, with God creating human beings in the image of God. Let’s tell the whole story! The idea that we have to place a hyper focus on our sinfulness in order to get people to respond to our evangelistic techniques does not work in our culture.
Several months ago I was verbally assaulted in a coffee shop by a young man involved in a college ministry who wanted to evangelize me. He started by asking if he could ask me a few questions that wouldn’t take more than “a couple minutes” of my time. His first question was, “Are you a good person?” I knew immediately where this was going. I replied, “Yes, I think I’m a good person.” He asked me if I was married. “Yes, for 35 years to my best friend.” His next question was, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”
I told him that I found his question, 30 seconds into our conversation, to be quite inappropriate and personal. For the sake of the conversation, I explained to him that my wife is the only woman I have ever been intimate with. He then proceeded to find a variety of ways to prove that I really was a bad person who certainly had lusted after other women and was therefore an adulterer (based on Jesus’ Beatitudes) who had no hope unless I prayed a prayer that he had written up, ready for vile sinners to recite. This came with the promise that I wouldn’t have to spend eternity in hell.
Being the fatherly person I’ve become and because of my love for college-age young people, I spent more than an hour engaging in a theological and biblical discussion with him. His head was spinning, but I could tell that his heart was opening to imagine a more Christian way to share and live the good news. He had been assigned to travel a half hour away from his church to do evangelism. I explained to him that he was in the neighborhood of my church community and that we were engaged deeply with people on a regular basis. I asked him if he were to lead someone to Jesus Christ, would he come back to build a relationship and disciple the new convert, or would that be the last time he would see that person? He acknowledged that he was only focused on getting people to “pray the prayer.”
This zealous, well-intentioned young man wanted to get people to believe what he believed about salvation, sin, and Jesus Christ. This methodology focuses on the progression of Believe, behave, and belong. If we can just get people to believe the gospel, they will begin behaving properly, and eventually they can belong to our churches.
When I think about how evangelism has changed in the last three decades, I think that the progression of Believe-Behave-Belong has shifted to Belong-Behave-Believe. God has instituted the church to bear witness to the glory of God and (like Israel) be a blessing to the world. Evangelism happens quite naturally when we are entrenched in faith communities that are actively caught up in cooperating with God’s compelling work of restoration—restoration between people and God; between people and their own brokenness; between people and other people; and restoration of all creation.
As our God invites us into the divine fellowship of the Trinity, so we should invite people to join us in community. In my church, we are intentional about being actively engaged in our community and inviting people to come join us, even before they believe or really know what to believe. In fact, they often actually begin behaving like Christians before they really grasp (believe) what it means to be a Christian. We engage in activities of justice that people want to participate in. We also embody hospitality. We throw parties and tell stories of love, life, transformation, and hope. Evangelism happens naturally when God’s people live astonishing lives as people of crucifixion and resurrection. We must recapture the essence of the gospel story that is truly good news for all who hear and see it.
Recently I have seen the following quote used frequently in blogs and books. This description of Christians, written in the late second or early third century, is found in the Epistle to Diognetus.
“For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life, which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct, which they follow, has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive people; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking way of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.”1
This quote is consistent with the narrative in the book of Acts that describes Christians as a community of people who do astonishing things. The citizens of Jerusalem viewed Christians favorably because they were generous people who demonstrated love and concern for their neighbors along with proclaiming the great good news. As a result, people were being added to the church every day. Christians who are lovers of people and bearers of a story that is perceived as good news by those outside Christianity create a compelling environment for evangelism. Embodied Christianity creates a portal to salvation and the church.
1 Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Church Library, Edinburgh 1867, Volume 1, pg. 307.
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Well, the scary thing is that I actually remember three decades ago and remember how we were doing evangelism back in the dark ages of the ’80s. As a high school and college student, I really wanted people to know Jesus, and I really didn’t believe that only people with “the gift” were the ones called to evangelize. Honestly, though, I never believed I had the gift, and I was much more about relational evangelism than the in-your-face kind. As a college student, I was in student leadership in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. IVCF had a more relational approach to outreach and evangelism through small groups and mission trips, and that fit my personality better than cold calling or passing out tracts with the four spiritual laws written on them.
During my college years, my IVCF group sponsored a campus-wide outreach called Reason to Live that had nightly large-group gatherings in the basketball arena, packed out each night with students and faculty. Billy Graham was the speaker, but we only did an altar call on the last night, and we didn’t call it a crusade because, even back then, we felt that word was a negative.
The problem was long-term follow up. It too often didn’t happen. We told people the good news, asked them to receive Jesus, and had them “pray the prayer.” And then we left. We didn’t help these newbies learn to live out their faith or walk through the hard parts of the Christian life. And much too often, we didn’t talk about the hard parts at all. Sadly, after Reason to Live, our leadership team was so tired and we’d been working so hard for so long, that we didn’t follow up with many of the folks who actually filled out their little commitment cards.
Street preaching was also a part of campus life. Often you’d walk by at lunch and find a student preaching in the Pit outside the student union. The “preacher” got lots of hecklers but also a lot of listeners too. Last year, on the University of Cincinnati campus, a street preacher was confronted by the Christians on campus rather than the not-yet Christians. The Christians were verbally challenging the street preacher because they felt he wasn’t really preaching the love of God or forgiveness but a lot of legalistic condemnation, and they were discouraged by his style. This preacher didn’t care for dialogue.
There was an openness to the name Christian a couple decades ago that has been lost, thanks to negative press and negative impressions and comic stereotypes of believers in film and on TV. The impression of Christians, especially evangelical Christians, is that they are negative, judgmental, anti-everything, and this has shut down the openness of conversation on the street. People are skeptical, jaded, and a lot more afraid of fanatics. But they are also hungry to be listened to and to have authentic relationship. They just don’t want to be slam-dunked with Bible verses.
And since fewer and fewer people have biblical memory, it’s important not to make assumptions that someone actually knows John 3:16 or anything about the story of Nicodemus. Thus, in 2010, we have to start a lot farther back than we did in the 1980s. Even kids who have grown up in church don’t necessarily get that they have to respond to Jesus’ invitation and receive his gift of salvation. It’s more important than ever to take time with people and help them hear the story and learn how their own stories intersect God’s story.
Another change I’ve experienced in the world of evangelism is the difference between contemporary church and traditional church. Where many contemporary churches provide opportunities to accept Christ on a regular basis, more traditional churches rarely give their members the opportunity to accept Christ as their savior. They have you join the church, but there isn’t a traditional an altar call, so no one is ever invited to make a decision for Jesus. There is never an up-front “ask.” The assumption seems to be that if people want it, they’ll ask for it themselves.
But if we don’t ever ask the question, how will they even know there is a question? “Have you invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life? Have you received him as your Savior?”
Too often in the past, we led people through these questions but didn’t really stop to consider the consequences of accepting Jesus as Savior. It’s not all roses and perfection or big houses and fancy cars. Following God is hard work and can be painful.
What I see as most important in this age of relative truth is that I/we are living out our faith and actually loving people and serving them regardless of their response! Even if they are different from us, even when we are tired. Remembering that the way, the truth, and the life are Jesus—a person, not a doctrine. Faith in Jesus is a relationship, not just a belief system or a list of rules. And contrary to popular belief, the Holy Spirit is still at work and hasn’t lost any power! Now, that’s exciting!
People in 2010 want a holistic Christianity. They want to see how being a Christian actually makes a difference in one’s life now, not just in eternity. People in 2010 are focused on the present and how they are living now, not where they will be when they die. And people aren’t really worried as much about where they will go when they die. At least, not younger people. They are worried about getting into college and actually finding a job after that. Or whether they even want to go to college because what’s the point anyway? Everything seems so messed up. There is a real lack of hope.
Our emphasis needs to be different. It needs to be about living life to its fullest now, not just for eternity. And helping ourselves and others discover how to do this—doing it together in community!
Caring about what people need, learning who they are, not just dumping the Bible verses on them. Unlike in the ’80s, the question Where would you go, if you died tonight? is extremely outdated.
So in this new decade, I’m working on living missionally and building relationships with those I’d like to see experience the kingdom and know the King.
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Evangelism has, apparently, embarrassed too many people in the Western church over the past few decades. A casual tour through any Christian bookstore reveals that this is a subject matter for the faithful that is out of favor. There isn’t much interest in marketing or teaching on the topic.
The salient feature of evangelism centers around proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. The good news is that salvation is available to any person on the planet because God loved us enough to step into history as a Jewish baby born in Bethlehem who would ultimately and willingly die on a first-century Roman torture device so that our sin need no longer separate us from God. The facts of this storyline were originally professed by hundreds of people whose faith in Jesus Christ so profoundly transformed their lives that they, in turn, changed their world. Many died as martyrs so that the truth of a resurrected Christ and hope of salvation could be known everywhere. They believed that the stakes of making this gospel known were worth forfeiting their lives.
Their faith in Jesus meant that they had acquired a new perspective on their earthly existence and were convinced that death no longer held any power over them. This freedom propelled them, and millions of Christ followers since, to fearless missionary efforts. They established communities of believers who could encourage one another for the task at hand—to make the one true God known to the nations.
Evangelism was and is the communication function assigned to the church. To be effective, it depends on the integrity of God’s people. The early church lived as compelling witnesses so that when they testified about the necessity of faith in Jesus they were not dismissed for incongruent lifestyles. They walked their talk, oftentimes gaining a favorable hearing from others due to the sheer attractiveness of their courage, dedication, and selfless, sacrificial love. It was clear that Jesus not only was their inspirational model, he fortified them with his indwelling power and constant presence.
I wonder if there aren’t a couple of distressing reasons that evangelism is no longer an urgent agenda for many churches. First, in our postmodern, truth-is-relative culture, are we still convinced that humans are utterly lost in their sin? Much of today’s preaching seems to deal with the common pain of our existence, certainly an issue the gospel addresses. But navigating the difficulties and trials of what life tosses at us is very different from zeroing in on our own culpability as sinners who cause damage because we are broken and incapable of self-repair.
A second fear I have is that many nominal Christians do not believe in the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ for salvation. There are sophisticated theologians who have painstakingly argued for nuanced ways to affirm that we are saved through Christ even if our faith is (mis)placed in some other source. It seems to me that this shifts the salvific burden to the quality of our faith rather than the certainty of Jesus Christ and the sole sufficiency of his redemptive work on our behalf. In any case, such inclusivity (at best) or universalism (at worst) certainly reduces the burden of our own evangelistic faithfulness.
I’m now prepared to offer a short and disturbing response to the question of the day. As someone who has walked with Jesus for 40 years, it’s my perspective that evangelism has changed over the past two or three decades. If we are truly dispossessed of convictions about how thoroughly sin wrecks everyone or how faith in Jesus Christ is the only solution to our lostness, it is easy to understand why evangelism is not the priority it once was in our churches. This shift in evangelism is not good.
There is one more factor at work, and I am sympathetic to how far-reaching it is for Christians today. We are increasingly “word weary” and do not, collectively, walk the talk as followers of Jesus. Evangelism of a few decades ago concentrated so much on getting the propositional truths of the gospel packaged well for delivery and understanding that we began to acquire a verbal formulaic faith. Our subsequent church structures and forms have been built to reinforce this pseudo-faith. We have bred Christians who may be strong in confession but weak in observable Christlike character. As a result, evangelism-as-explanation is left without Exhibit A.
Two streams of evangelistic approaches have evolved from this unhealthy landscape over the past few decades. One seeks to verbally steer would-be converts away from considering the poor evidence presented in the lifestyles of contemporary western followers of Christ. The other seeks to counter our image as slick talkers by shutting up and living well.
I view this shift in evangelism as a corrective and one that we still may not have dialed in just right.
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