A Defense of House to House Personal Evangelism

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 8

Last week we laid out for you a brief case for the nearly unlimited potential for personal confrontational evangelism. I would be remiss if I did not admit that the majority of American Christianity disagrees with me. This is seen in the fact that so few churches have an active, organized, vibrant personal soul winning program, but it is also seen in the sometimes sincere and sometimes snide criticisms leveled at soul winning. I plan a much longer blog series dealing with many of these objections but I want to briefly address them today.


"You will never reach everybody."

I know. I agree with you. But that is not our aim. Our aim is to fulfill the Great Commission which tells us to preach the Gospel to every creature. (Mark 16.15) And personal evangelism is the method that offers the greatest opportunity to personally offer Christ to the greatest number of people.

"That might have worked fifty years ago but nowadays people don't want anyone badgering them. Our culture isn't like that anymore."

I've got news for you. There's never been a culture where people liked people badgering them. People are people, and they largely share similarities across cultures and generations. The church in Jerusalem didn't start practicing house to house evangelism because the Jews welcomed it so eagerly, and we shouldn't stop it when people don't. 

…and I might also add I routinely have precinct workers, alarm salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses, plumbers, and school kids selling all manner of things ringing my doorbell in 2017. It's funny; apparently the only group that thinks it is inappropriate to ring a doorbell anymore is evangelicals.

Some days I just want to shout at American Christianity, "Stop being culture driven; be Scripture driven!"


"Well, confrontational evangelism always results in false professions, and you ought to be concerned about that."

Actually… you're right. Yes, I can hear your gasp all the way over here in Chicago. Confrontational personal evangelism results in false professions – and so does every single other method of evangelism. But the solution to false professions isn't to stop witnessing. The solution is stop being pushy, to teach soul winners to look for people with whom the Holy Spirit is dealing, and above all to emphasize a detailed, thorough presentation of the Gospel.

False professions don't make soul winning a bad thing; they make badly done soul winning a bad thing.


"Confrontational. Do you understand what that word means, Tom? You're going to run people off with such an approach."

Um, they are already on their way to hell now. Where are you going to run them off to? Hell number two? He that believeth not is condemned already. (John 3.18) I'm being a little snarky, and I realize that but I'm still right. If we allow ourselves to become concerned about not offending people we will close our mouths for Christ and never open them again. I am not advocating that we purposely seek to offend, but I am advocating that we ought to purposely seek to confront. And that is entirely scriptural.


"You soul winners are plucking green fruit. Those folks aren't ready to get saved, and your premature efforts are causing much harm."

How do you know that? Is there some waiting period in the Bible I've missed somewhere? To the contrary, behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (II Corinthians 6.2) I realize that the Holy Spirit must convict the sinner in order to prepare him to be regenerated, but there is no reason the Holy Spirit cannot convict him today. Scripturally, there is a sense of urgency both explicitly stated and implicitly referenced in relation to witnessing all through the Bible. Jesus led Nicodemus, the woman at the well, and the thief on the cross to Himself in the first conversation. 


"Witnessing is not a set time scheduled on Saturday morning. It is a way of life."

I could not possibly agree with you more. If you preach that in my church I'll sit on the front row and holler "Amen" as loud as I can. …but thirty years of experience in soul winning and close observation of churches has proven one thing to me: the only Christians who actively incorporate witnessing into their daily life are those who first incorporated it by schedule.

The truth is our flesh fights witnessing more than any other spiritual activity besides prayer, I suppose. Building an evangelistic culture is the single most difficult thing to do in any church. If we do not purposely and regularly schedule a time for soul winning we will rarely witness. If we leave it there we are remiss, but if we do not begin there we seldom if ever progress to an active life of witnessing.


…so take the Gospel to someone this week. Better yet, do it today. Step out in compassionate boldness and speak a word for Christ. Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. (Luke 10.2)

Go into it. I don't mind if you put up a sign with the Gospel on the edge of the field. I don't mind if you play the Gospel on a PA system aimed toward the field. But get up from the table and walk out into that field. That's where the harvest is.

The Potential of Personal Evangelism

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 7

 
This is a series that attempts to explain why our kinds of churches emphasize personal evangelism, and why we are right to do so. Thus far we have discussed both good and bad motivations to witness. We then briefly sketched for you a history of evangelism. In the process we discovered that there are really only two kinds of evangelism, personal and impersonal, and that impersonal evangelism is limited in its effectiveness primarily because it calls for men to come to church rather than calling for them to come to Christ. 

Personal evangelism, on the other hand, has more potential than impersonal evangelism. This is because soul winning takes Christ directly to the lost where they are at.

The first part of the book of Acts records the staggering rate of growth of the Early Church. How were they able to reach so many people with the Gospel so quickly? There are several answers to that question but one answer is that the Apostles placed an emphasis on taking the Gospel to every home in Jerusalem.

Acts 5. 14 And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)
…
17 ¶ Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which is the sect of the Sadducees,)and were filled with indignation,
18 And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison.
19 But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said,
…
27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them,
28 Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.
…
42 And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.

I have met those who maintain that in every house was not evangelism but rather the 1^st century equivalent of home Bible studies or house churches, but the context does not bear this out. From verse 17 to verse 42 is one story. In that story the Sanhedrin is not attempting to stop sermons to the saved but rather the Apostles' efforts to give the Gospel to the lost. Some of this was done via public preaching (daily in the temple) but some of it was also done personally from house to house (in every house).

This emphasis on a personalized individual presentation of the Gospel at each house was not just modeled in Jerusalem by Peter. It was taken up by Paul and used in his church planting efforts.

Acts 20. 17 And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.
18 And when they were come to him, he said unto them, Ye know, from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons,
19 Serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews:
20 And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house,
21 Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

Clearly, this is not a Bible study for those who are already saved. I am not against that, by any means, but going house to house and preaching repentance and faith in Christ is explicitly connected with soul winning. In other words, both Peter and Paul, and the churches they influenced, believed in preaching the grace of Christ corporately but also in taking the Gospel to the lost where they were at.

Acts 17.16 ¶ Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.
17 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.

Potentially then, personal evangelism is the only form of evangelism that can reach an entire community. Indeed, both in Jerusalem and in Ephesus they took the Gospel house to house and this is precisely what happened.

Ac 5:28 Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.
…
Acts 19. 10 And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
…
Ac 20:31 Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.

Jonathan Goforth was a Canadian Presbyterian. The Lord moved on his heart to take the

Gospel to China and then used him in a wonderful way. In his wife's short biography of him she tells of his days as a Bible college student in Toronto in the late 1800s.

On weekdays, Jonathan spent much of his time visiting in the slum district. His strategy was to knock at a door, and when it opened a few inches, he would put his foot in the crack. He would then tell them his business and if, as was usually the case, they said they were not interested and went to close the door, his foot prevented the proceedings from being brought to an abrupt end. As he persisted, the people of the house almost invariably gave way and let him in. Of all the many hundreds of homes that he visited during his years of slum work, there were only two where definitely failed to gain an entrance. While visiting in slum homes, Goforth would sometimes lead as many as three people to Christ in a single afternoon. Dr. Shearer, who accompanied him in his visits one day said, as they parted, “Goforth, if only this personal contact could have been made with every human soul, the Gospel would have reached every soul long ago.”

I don't advocate this approach to soul winning, but look past that to the fact that Bro. Goforth was using confrontational soul winning long before its so-called heyday in the 1950s and 60s. This is because he found such an approach to personal evangelism modeled in the Word of God. Nor was Goforth alone in this. The oft-quoted C. H. Spurgeon said in his 1863 sermon, "Am I Sought Out?":

There are thousands in London who never will be converted by the preaching of the gospel, for they never attend places of worship. Some of them do not know what sort of thing a religious service is. We may shudder when we say it: it is believed there are thousands in London who do not even know the name of Christ - living in what we call a Christian land, and yet they have not heard the name of Jesus. Thank God things are better than they were, but things are bad enough still. Brethren, you must go and see these things and mend them. To the lodging-houses, young men, you must carry the gospel, and to those thickly-peopled habitations, where every room contains a family, and not one room a Christian. I believe there is very much good to be done by house-to-house visitation - not by City Missionaries and Bible-women only, may God speed that noble body of laborers - but by all of you, by you that have position in society among your neighbors. Make yourselves free, and go and talk to them of Christ in the little houses that are near to you. As far as your time allows be a visitor, and if there be one dark part of the town known to you as the haunt of sinners, make it a point to use this agency of visitation from house-to-house. Let the lost sheep of Israel's house be sought out.

Peter and Paul, Goforth and Spurgeon, why even D. L. Moody understood the importance of personally confronting the lost with the Gospel. In Richard Ellsworth Day's biography of him he describes Moody in 1860s Chicago as "…this man who rushed through life making felonious assaults upon total strangers with his rude challenge, 'Are you a Christian?' "

I am not saying impersonal evangelism is wrong. It isn't. It just isn't as effective at reaching the entire community as confrontational soul winning can be.

…and that position is not one invented by the independent Baptist movement of our father's generation. It has a long and storied history for very good reasons.

The Rest of the Five

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 6

There are only two kinds of evangelism, personal and impersonal. Personal evangelism – otherwise known as soul winning – is the most effective form of evangelism. That is the premise of this blog series. Impersonal evangelism can be wonderful but it is limited in ways personal evangelism is not. In the last post we examined two of the things that limit impersonal evangelism. In this post we will examine three more.

Third, impersonal evangelism strategies such as mass evangelism and niche evangelism cannot be sustained over the long term, and usually not even in the medium term.

From time to time we attempt to have a special day in our church. We promote something

exciting or at least interesting and different. We wind our people up to work extra, pray extra, visit extra, prepare extra, etc. In due course we get a large crowd. But what we cannot do is keep that large crowd. We cannot constantly keep the interest piqued, nor can we keep our lay people working at turbo speeds indefinitely.

On the other hand, what was the testimony of the Early Church? Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. (Acts 2.47)

There are only two ways I can think of that a church can evangelize so effectively as to see people saved every day. The first is if it is a mega-church that has some kind of promotion, program, or niche outreach every day of the week. The problem with this is not that such churches exist. Some do and I am glad for all of their efforts at evangelism. But this is not where the typical church lives, nor can it live there. The second way is for a church to be so caught up in soul winning that its people witness constantly, at work, at school, in the neighborhood, or in some organized capacity perhaps. A church like this wins people to Christ constantly and it has little to nothing to do with promotion, targeted group marketing, or any kind of formal program whatsoever. Instead it happens almost organically. Witnessing becomes part and parcel of who your people are in Christ, and that kind of approach is sustainable over the long term.

The fourth weakness of impersonal evangelism is that the individual Christian does not personally participate in witnessing. If I get my people wound up to invite their coworkers to church, and many do that is wonderful. But that is not participation in evangelism. Inviting someone to Sunday School is not evangelism. Manning the dunk tank on a Big Day is not evangelism. Witnessing is one person speaking to another person about his need for Christ with a view of bringing him to a decision. Every Christian is tasked in the New Testament with winning souls, and I short change my people spiritually if I do not give provide them the training, motivation, and opportunity to personally do so. Again, bear in mind, I am not criticizing any service for the Lord, nor am I criticizing those who work so hard to make mass, enlistment, or niche evangelism work. I am saying, however, that I have not helped my people reach their full spiritual potential until each one personally and actively seeks to talk to others around them about Christ. For far too many years I have known too many Christians who have never led a soul to Christ. That is a tragedy.

Lastly, impersonal evangelism has driven American Christianity into the pragmatism of worldliness. This is certainly not true in every case but it is often true.

Allow me to illustrate. Pastor A and Pastor B both know that their church is not reaching their community like it should. Pastor A is visionary, conscientious, and bold leader. To solve the lack of fruit in his church he focuses on teaching his people how to do personal evangelism and on motivating them to continue to do so constantly. Pastor B is also a visionary, conscientious, and bold leader. However, instead of focusing on taking his church into the community to actively witness he focuses on how he can get a greater percentage of his community to attend one of his services, programs, or events. But you can only invite people so many times to the same type of program or event. He must constantly find newer and better ways to motivate lost people to show up. Eventually, out of a sincere and sheer desperation or a misplaced sense of purpose, he grasps that he can motivate the carnal, worldly lost man with carnal, worldly things. So this is what Pastor B does.

Did you ever wonder why the modern edition of American Christianity is so widely soaked in worldliness? There is more than one answer to that question but a large part of the answer is a visionary leader and a burdened church set out to reach the "unchurched", the lost men around them, and they decided the best way to get the unchurched into church was to make the church as much like the world as possible. Contemporary American Christianity has the right motive – they want to reach the lost. But contemporary American Christianity is using the wrong philosophy to do it – get the "unchurched" into church – and is using the wrong method – worldliness – to do so. As long as we view our city as "unchurched" instead of "unsaved" we will focus on getting them into church instead of getting them to Christ, and pragmatism will drive us to increasingly carnal means of attracting them into church in an effort to reach them.

In the past two posts I have given you five limitations or potential weaknesses in impersonal evangelism. Not all of these five things happen in every situation every time. But these five foundational flaws are still there, and a church that chooses to use solely such means to evangelize will often find itself working from a position of weakness rather than a position of strength.

Two Limitations of Impersonal Evangelism

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 5

Let me say at the outset that I am not against the types of evangelism I will mention in this post, or in the ones to come. The only kind of evangelism I am against is unscriptural evangelism. I am against witnessing that does not point people solely toward Christ. I am against unclear or incomplete or manipulative explanations of the Gospel. I am also against using worldly means or methods to attract attention to the Gospel. But outside of those parameters I am not against anyone anywhere who is witnessing in any way. What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. (Philippians 1.18) It is important to me that you understand I am not attacking certain kinds of evangelism with this series.

At the same time, I do want to speak up for confrontational personal evangelism, what is more commonly called soul winning. There are good reasons to do it, and some of those reasons include the fact that personal evangelism is better than any other form of evangelism. In order to explain this it is incumbent upon me that we examine the limitations of impersonal evangelism. Again, I am not attacking these types of evangelism; I am explaining why they are not as useful or as helpful as personal evangelism.

First, impersonal evangelism cannot win the world to Christ.

Billy Graham Crusade, 1967

Take mass evangelism, for example. It is premised on gathering into one location as many unsaved people as possible. But the simple fact is that no matter how stirring or popular the preacher is, and no matter how accessible the venue is you will never get everyone to attend. The same facts are true about media evangelism. No matter how many people you invite to your small group or your Sunday School not all of them will attend. No matter how well produced your Gospel podcast is or how well designed your tracts are you are never going to get everyone to listen, read, or watch the Gospel.

Let me illustrate this with enlistment evangelism. Studies I have read show that the average Gospel preaching church wins one out of every five people they enlist in a small group, Bible study, or Sunday School class. By enlisted I mean they get them to attend at least once. At the same time, the average church only wins one out of every 240 unsaved people in the community that they do not enlist. Those two sentences support this supposed solution: we need to enlist more people. After all, a higher percentage of those enlisted trust Christ then those who do not. I understand that, but the simple fact is that the vast majority of people refuse to be enlisted. Roughly 97% of the unsaved people in the community that I attempt to enlist in a class will refuse to attend. If my basic evangelistic thrust as a church is enlistment evangelism I have just essentially thrown away any ability to win almost the entirety of my community to Christ.

Chicago proper, the city in which I serve, has a population of about 2.7 million people. According to the above numbers, even if I could possibly try to enlist all of them roughly only 81,000 would respond. If we win one out of every five of these we have won about 16,000 people to Christ. Let's say by dint of hard work and prayer we manage to double that number to 32,000 people. That is nothing to sneeze at by any means but do you see the problem? There are another 2.6 million people I will never reach. After thirteen years of pastoring in this city these statistics ring true to me. If there are more than 32,000 people in this city regularly attending services at a sound, Bible preaching church I would be very surprised. Yet what are these 32,000 Christians in Chicago doing to reach the rest of the city? You guessed it, didn't you? They are busy inviting people to attend their church service, small group, Bible study, concert, or event. The result is that most of the city will go to hell.

The painful truth is most of the churches in this city have no plan to reach people who will not enlist in their programs or attend their services. I am not saying we ought to stop enlistment evangelism. It reaches people, and beyond that it ministers to them in a very real way. It gives them fellowship. It teaches them the Bible. But what it does not do is reach this city with the Gospel.

Secondly, impersonal evangelism is limited in its ability to make sure every person clearly

understands the Gospel.

Every unsaved person is trusting something other than Jesus Christ. In order for them to get saved you must demolish that misplaced trust, help them understand they are rotten and deserve hell, and then help them to trust in Christ alone for their salvation. But each individual is different. They are different in their understanding of biblical words and terms. They are different in which illustrations will bring clarity. They are different in their concerns and their hang ups. They are different in respect to which Scripture verse or passage will pierce their darkness and bring them light. In every setting other than a one-on-one setting the unsaved man practically cannot ask any questions. He cannot object that he does not understand or agree. The person witnessing to him cannot probe his thought process and belief system. The plan of salvation cannot be effectively tailored to any personal situation in mass evangelism or media evangelism, and its ability to do so in enlistment evangelism is limited.

Again, I stress, I am not saying it is wrong or even bad to attempt to broadcast the Gospel, to place it on billboards, to put it on web pages, to put it on television and radio, or to invite your coworker to attend church with you next week. I am saying, though, that as good and as helpful as these are they are limited. They cannot possibly reach your community for Christ.

…and if we are going to build a philosophy of personal evangelism we must come to the place where we grasp this, and allow that understanding to inform our chosen evangelistic emphasis.

The Only Two Kinds of Evangelism

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 4

In the last post we briefly sketched for you a history of evangelism from the time of Early Church to the birth (or re-birth) of mass evangelism in the eighteenth century. This is a series that attempts to teach you the reasons that underlie our emphasis on personal evangelism. To do so, it helps us to understand how evangelism has flowed through history. In that light, let us pick up the thread of the story again in the eighteenth century where we last left it.

Following the birth of mass evangelism, or perhaps I should say along with it, came the birth of enlistment evangelism. Robert Raikes (1736-1811), out of a desire to see the street children of his day receive both a religious and a secular education, revolutionized England via the Sunday School. He was so successful that by 1831, within twenty years of his death, one out of every four children in the country were receiving a religious education in Sunday School.

This successful idea naturally came to America, and then spread around the world as the re-birthed modern missions movement pioneered by Carey sent British and American preachers into every continent.

The original premise of the Sunday School system was an attempt to enroll unchurched people in a small class. This brought them under the influence of the Word of God and the sound of the Gospel. At the same time, it explained to them doctrinal concepts about God and man in a non-threatening manner. In his own inimitable style Mark Twain humorously shows us this in his classic Tom Sawyer. With Sunday Schools being started by the thousands all across the world the result in the nineteenth century was a wide scriptural literacy and huge numbers of people being evangelized.

As the nineteenth century rolled into the twentieth the pace of technological change began to accelerate. The century that would begin with horseless carriages still being relatively rare would end with the dawn of the information superhighway. In the early decades of the century this technology was aimed squarely at enabling humanity to communicate faster and wider. Evangelistic minded Christians immediately seized upon radio, television, and then the internet to communicate the gospel. We broadly label this approach as media evangelism.

Historically, in Western society, pastors did not attempt to build churches. By "build" here I mean to grow them. They did not need to for the vast majority of the European and American population attended church, period. They preached the Gospel and pastored the people but they did not put much emphasis on church growth methods. I am not aware of any church growth book written in the nineteenth century, let alone centuries prior. But in the twentieth century that changed as church attendance began to wane. The result was an increasing emphasis on adding programs that would appeal to, attract, or reach various subsets of the population.

I call this concept niche evangelism. Modern churches have programs centered on divorce recovery, addicts, prisoners, senior citizens in nursing homes, young mothers, teenagers, college students, athletes, etc. About once a month I get a call from a random Christian comedian who wants to come to Maplewood. What is that (besides ridiculous)? It is an attempt to reach people who like comedy. CCM artists do the same thing with music. Examples of niche evangelism are numerous.

Some of this is done inside the local church structure and some of it is not. But they are all

aimed at getting some subset of people to show up at a club, group, meeting, concert, etc. In a sense then this is another example of enlistment evangelism. Perhaps the most widely used example of this synthesis in our circles of niche and enlistment evangelism is the bus ministry.

I would be remiss if I did not include before I am done with this sketch the rise of personal evangelism that began in American society with the post WWII generation. Motivated in part at least by a desire for church growth but also a sincere burden for the lost, influential and large churches in the 1950s increasingly emphasized organized personal soul winning. Every person reading this blog understands that because we grew up in that kind of a church culture, were nourished in that culture, and if we did not we have certainly encountered it. It is found most often but not exclusively in Baptist circles, and though it has waxed and waned through the decades it is certainly still incorporated on a wide scale.

If the purpose of this brief sketch is to learn from history what do we learn? I think we could answer that several ways but in the context of this series we see this: in reality, there are only two kinds of evangelism – personal and impersonal.

Mass evangelism has reached millions, and I am glad for that. But did the evangelist individually talk with each of those people? Did they respond in a back and forth conversation? No. It is impersonal evangelism. Media evangelism has reached countless numbers of people, and I am glad for that. It too is impersonal evangelism. Much of the time enlistment or niche evangelism is likewise impersonal, although its structure allows for much more personal interaction than mass or media evangelism.

Personal evangelism – one person talking to another person about his need for Christ with a view of bringing him to a decision – is different than all of these. It is individually tailored. It is almost certainly the method that guarantees the highest rate of clarity. And it is also the only one that has a real possibility to reach every person.

In the weeks to come we will explore this last paragraph in more depth. As always, you are more than welcome to add your own perspective here. It is always welcome.

Evangelism’s First Two Thousand Years

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 3

I love history. It has long been my favorite subject of study. I have read thousands of history books, including many on church history. I am reading two right now on the Roman Empire. I love history for many reasons but primarily because a better knowledge of the past almost always directs us toward better choices in the present. To that end I am going to briefly sketch for you the progress and regress of evangelism in the past two thousand years of church history. It isn't fair to attempt such a thing in a blog post or two. I apologize for the brevity but such is the limitation of this medium.

Ephesian amphitheater 

We see, first, the extent of evangelism in the Early Church through the prism of one church, Ephesus.

Acts 19. 1 And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples… Paul brought them into New Testament Christianity, split the synagogue over Jesus, and launched a brand new church.

7 And all the men were about twelve.
8 ¶ And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God.
9 But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus.
10 And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Now, it certainly helped Paul get attention for the Gospel that he had the capacity to do miracles, and a rather sensational conflict with a demon, but nonetheless, the Ephesian church grew rapidly.

17 And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified.
…
20 So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.
…
23 And the same time there arose no small stir about that way.
24 For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;
25 Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.
26 Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands:

The term "Asia" in the KJV does not refer to the entire continent as we use it today but rather to a specific region around Ephesus so named by the Roman Senate. We see then that this early church at Ephesus had clearly evangelized their entire city, and had then taken the Gospel into the wider province around them. And they did this in only two and a half years.

At the risk of being melodramatic, next we sadly see the death of evangelism.

A Roman mosaic of a Christian
held by a gladiator being destroyed
by a wild beast

Initially, the devil's response to the Early Church was persecution.

I Thessalonians 2. 14 For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:
15 Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:
16 Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.

But persecution could not stop the church; indeed, persecution actually produced more growth.

Acts 8. 3 As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison.
4 ¶ Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word.

How then did the devil manage to slow the explosive growth of the Early Church? First, he stirred up a veritable plethora of doctrinal controversies and heresies on the second century of our era to sidetrack it. The response to this was codified statements of doctrinal orthodoxy via Empire wide church councils. But at the same time ecclesiastical authority became centered more and more on the Roman see. Constantine, in an if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em moment, married the declining Western Empire to the Church, and thus co-opted the growing movement and birthed the Roman Catholic Church.

The resulting conglomeration of authority and doctrinal error would rule most of the Christian world and much of the secular as well for the next thousand years. The Roman Catholic Church calls this the Golden Age; history calls it the Dark Ages, with its almost complete collapse of inter-community commerce and communication. Isolated churches and regions burned bright with the genuine gospel of Christ but by and large that isolation prevented wider evangelization. For the most part, in this era, though men still came to Christ, they did so more often because of what they read than whom they heard.

The Protestant Reformation – begun via a Martin Luther converted by reading Scripture – did much to wrest the Europe from the grip of the Roman Catholic Church. The Reformation was marked by a return to an emphasis on preaching and sound doctrine, but it largely ignored evangelism. For example, John Calvin, one of the most influential authors in the history of Christianity, birthed a detailed system that is today called Calvinism or Reformed Theology. It posits an orthodox view of justification by grace through faith but it boxes it into a harshly closed looped that practically kills most motivation for witnessing.

God in His grace broke through this doctrinal and practical logjam with the life of William Carey and the birth of modern missions. Carey was an English cobbler with a love of geography and an aptitude for languages. He constructed a map of the world, and hung it over his cobbler's bench so he could pray while he worked. This led – and, remember, prayer feeds evangelism – to a desire to go to that lost world with the gospel. He took the increasing burden of his heart for the lost to his Calvinistic denomination and was told, "Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen world, He will do it without your help or mine." Boldly ignoring such stifling pontificating he formed the first missionary society and in 1793 he sailed for India. Soon the Moravians, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists followed his example and the nineteenth century saw a virtual explosion of missionary driven world-wide evangelism.

Billy Graham

As this missionary minded Christianity advanced it was also marked by a rebirth of mass evangelism at home. John Wesley and George Whitefield in the eighteenth, Charles Finney then Dwight Moody in the nineteenth, and Billy Sunday then Billy Graham in the twentieth centuries brought millions into the Kingdom with enormous city-wide crusades.

This approach continues today though usually on a smaller scale. In fact, one could argue that the concept of event evangelism – using special days and promotions in the twentieth century such as Christmas dramas, Easter cantatas, and Big Days – is simply a local church expression of mass evangelism. In these the lost are gathered into crowds, the Gospel is preached, and men and women trust Christ.

This brief sketch shows us some of the swings in emphasis and application of evangelism through church history. I shall continue it next week and then chase it with some applied wisdom.

Good Reasons to Win Souls

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 2

 
One of my burdens is to explain why. In my opinion, the previous generation of independent Baptist preachers in America largely failed in this. I think that failure directly contributes to the (generally younger generation's) abandonment of doctrines and distinctives that we hold dear. The solution offered to this by some (generally older generation's) is to yell louder. I am all for preaching but shouting loudly on a weak point is not the answer. They need a why to hold them. I want to help to give them one.

In the context of personal evangelism this becomes, "Why do we personally confront strangers with the Gospel? Isn't that rude? Won't it run them off? Isn't it ineffective? Isn't it manipulative?" This blog series attempts to answer those questions, to lay out a scriptural philosophy for why we embrace personal evangelism.

Last week we examined a number of bad reasons to win souls. This week I want to flip the coin. There are good reasons to win souls. For your consideration, I offer you three.

The first reason we should win souls is to obey God's instructions that we do so. And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. (Mark 16.15) This is commonly known as the Great Commission.

"Wait a minute there, Rev. Brennan. You know that was given to the Apostles, right? The church did not even exist then. It was a wonderful statement but it wasn't given to the Church."

Au contraire. The church was founded in Matthew 16 in the mountains around Caeserea Philippi the summer before Jesus death. Thus, it started before this giving of the Great Commission rather than after it, at Pentecost, in Acts 2. Additionally, Jesus' instructions after His Resurrection were not confined to the Apostles. At one point, He appeared to a crowd of more than five hundred people. (I Corinthians 15) Immediately after the Ascension there were one hundred twenty gathered in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. (Acts 1) It is clear from Acts that each member of that church took responsibility to witness. They did not believe that commission was only given to the Apostles. No, they believed each member had a responsibility to be after people with the gospel. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word. (Acts 8.4)

The Great Commission was entrusted to the church. My church. Your church. Me. You. And I want both of us to obey God.

The second reason is that the world needs Christ, and that need is staggering. There are 2.7 million souls in my city, 5.2 million in my county, 314 million in my country, and 7.5 billion on my world. In the time it took me to write this post 15,000 people were born and another 10,000 died. It took the world 5,800 years to get to the first billion, and one hundred twenty three years to get to the next billion. For thirteen years I have labored in Chicago. During that time the world was birthing another Chicago every two weeks. That is an increase of a billion just since I moved here.

We must go to people with the gospel. Now. If there has ever been a time in the history of Christianity that this has been true – and it has always been true – it is true now. We cannot afford to sit on our blessed assurance and let the world go to hell.

Finally, we must lead our people to actively witness because they must if they are going to grow in grace. (II Peter 3.18)

Initially, as a baby Christian, if spiritual growth were projected onto a graph the line would be jagged at best. Young Christians grow in one area and completely neglect another. They like church but refuse to give up their old music. They read the Bible but only throw the occasional $20 in the offering plate. They want their parents to get saved but they still curse like a sailor on the job.

As we move on to Christian maturity we discover that in order to continue to grow that growth must be more even. In other words, to grow in one area requires growing in another. For example, if I want to grow in prayer I must also grow in holiness. If I want to grow in love, joy, and peace I must deal with long held resentments and bitterness. Increasingly, we find the areas of our spiritual growth are inter-related, intertwined if you will.

Mature Christians are not mature by definition if they are severely stunted in one area; the lack of progress in this negatively impacts that, and it can actually result in backsliding entire. When a Christian moves from salvation to being a babe in Christ he can have whole gaps in his knowledge and application and the Holy Spirit will continue to teach him. But when a Christian moves on to maturity the whole man must be elevated spiritually together.

God is in the business of growing you and me, beloved. He intends to develop us into complete, well rounded Christians, with strengths, certainly, but not with huge gaps such as baby Christians often have. But let patience have her perfect work; that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. (James 1.4)

Practically speaking as a pastor, I am not going to continue to develop the prayer life of our church if I do not also develop their giving, holiness, study, service, knowledge of God, pursuit of wisdom, praise, love, marriage, parenting, faith, and on and on and on. To develop my people into maturity I must develop them as soul winners who take an active part in fulfilling the Great Commission. Ergo, I emphasize soul winning in order to help the spiritually mature around me to continue to grow in grace.

For two weeks we have discussed both the bad and good motivations that underlie our soul winning emphasis. For the next two weeks I am going to briefly trace the course of evangelism in church history. This will give us, I think, an increased understanding of how we arrived at the methods and means the church uses today in its evangelism.

See you then, my friends.

Bad Reasons to Win Souls

A Philosophy of Personal Evangelism 1

One of the strengths of the independent Baptist movement is that we heavily promote personal evangelism. We certainly are not the only group to do this, but it is conspicuous both in our history and in our present. I think it is fair to say that we emphasize it more than any other orthodox religious group.

Why?

In this series I want to attempt to answer that question, or at least to offer some insight into an answer. Your own perspective or response is welcome, as always.
The word "philosophy" is used only one time in the King James Bible and that use is negative. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2.8) Yet we notice here that not all philosophy is condemned, only worldly philosophy.

Philosophy is defined as a set of ideas or beliefs relating to a particular field or activity. In the original language the word simply means a lover of wisdom. Surely, then, philosophy cannot be entirely unscriptural for we are repeatedly told in Scripture to love wisdom. What are to love is not the world's wisdom but God's wisdom. Philosophy, then, for the purposes of this blog series, means the why behind the what that we do and emphasize in relation to personal evangelism. More plainly, there are good reasons why we push confrontational soul winning, and I want to explain them to you in this series.

Let me begin negatively. In other words, the following are not philosophies that undergird our approach to personal evangelism – though they are often thought to be.

First, it is not because confrontational soul winning is a popular method in American Christianity. Now I freely admit it was embraced initially by many churches and pastors in the 1960s and 1970s who had a desire to copy the success of Lee Roberson, Jerry Falwell, and Jack Hyles. But such is no longer the case. In fact, soul winning is now routinely criticized, certainly in evangelical circles and even somewhat in fundamentalist circles. Statements such as "you're plucking green fruit," "you're giving people a false sense of security," "soul winning doesn't work in our day and age anymore," and "the message doesn't change but the methods do" are constantly heard. No, churches and pastors are not flocking to this. We are not following a trend by any means.

Second, our emphasis on personal evangelism is not rooted in an attempt to build a bigger church. I do not know of any pastor that wants his church to be smaller; we are all trying to grow spiritually and numerically, but that is not why we go soul winning. If that was our primary motivation the obvious path to take is not confrontational soul winning; it would instead be the pragmatism of the contemporary church growth movement. We would speak much more of marketing and relevance. We would say much less about worldliness. Etc. etc.

Third, it is not because we are unwilling to change. I suppose there are some men and churches that still promote soul winning because that is all they have ever known, but I am sure they would be a small minority. Is the independent Baptist movement suspicious of change? Yes. Is it loathe to change? Again, yes. Are we cautious of change? Yes. But the hundreds of independent Baptist pastors I know are willing to change – if that change is in the right direction. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (II Corinthians 3.18) Change must be toward God, toward the precepts of Scripture; it dare not be toward the world. Fear of change is not holding us hostage to the methods of the last generation.

A group from our church evangelizing
in a different neighborhood in
Chicago to help plant a new church

Fourth, our emphasis on personal soul winning is not because it is an easy thing to do. I have been pastoring for twenty years. I can think of a thousand things that are easier to develop in a church's culture than soul winning. In fact, I can think of nothing more difficult. Soul winning is not easy. It takes practice and time and work to learn. It takes a dedicated amount of time. It involves overcoming a person's fear of rejection, and the accumulated weight of a church's inertia and excuses. Additionally, there is nothing the devil fights harder than a soul winning church unless it might be a praying church. It would be much easier to get a church wound up about world hunger or anti-violence marches or some other immediate, visible, and emotionally affecting cause than it is to motivate them to win souls.

Fifth, our soul winning emphasis is not embraced because we have a persecution complex. Is soul winning hard? Yes. Is it unpopular? Yes. Does it get criticized? Yes. Are there some who will perversely do it for exactly these reasons? Also, yes. They do not seem to feel spiritual unless they are being attacked for their faith. Ergo, they embrace behaviors that practically solicit a push back so they can claim they are one of the persecuted few who are actually righteous. But such people are few and far between; their numbers could in no wise account for such a widely embraced emphasis on personal evangelism.

Sixth, it is not because we can claim big numbers via these methods and thus impress "the brethren." Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound the trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. (Matthew 6.2) Yes, we keep track of how many get saved. Yes, we want to win more people to Christ this year than last year. But the men and churches I know well in the independent Baptist movement have given up the numbers game. We have seen in our youth where such foolishness often leads. In fact, I cannot think of the last time a preacher friend of mine asked me how big our church was, how many we had baptized last year, or how many professions of faith we see.

Perhaps someone told you these were our reasons. Perhaps someone intimated that our motivations are petty, shallow, vain, lazy, and self-serving. Obviously I disagree. I do not disagree that some may have such unscriptural motivations; I completely disagree, however, that these drive our movement's emphasis on personal evangelism. We are better than that.

Next week we will flip the coin over and begin to examine the positive side. Stay tuned.

To My Unborn Son

 
The teenage years are often difficult. Our bodies are changing, we are contemplating what we will make of life, and we are constantly thinking about the other gender. We are in the process of maturing emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. We begin to realize how important money is to life. We become at once both fearful and exhilarated at the thought of leaving home and striking out on our own. We make big decisions, and often make them badly. Temptation becomes more prevalent and more dangerous. Our cocoon is vanishing and the molting process is often painful.

the letter

As my own teenage years drew to a close I began to contemplate them. I held them up in my mind and turned them hither and yon. I examined my choices, and what the potential impact of those choices might yet be. I compared them with some friends of mine, and where I thought our differing choices would take us in life. Somewhere along during that period I made a decision to write a letter to my son. My intent was to guide him into making good choices as a teenager himself. So the day I turned twenty I sat down at a picnic table and wrote my yet unborn son a letter with some advice for navigating his own teen years well. I decided to give it to him the day he turned fifteen.

For twenty three years I carried that letter around through numerous moves and life changes. In time, the Lord in His grace did give me a son, Jack, fifteen years ago. I pulled the letter down from the book in which it had sat all these years and gave it to him last week.

Setting the emotion of the occasion aside for a moment the letter is interesting. In re-reading it and giving it to him last week I went both forward and backward in time. Most all of what I wrote I still agree with though if I were to write the same letter again it would be much longer. Experience teaches the best lessons and I've learned a few in the intervening years. Then, too, I know my son very well now; back then he was just an idea. As all parents understand, I am both excited and fearful for him. So much of what he does, decides, and becomes in the next five years will determine the course of the rest of his life.

Several people asked me to share the contents of the letter. After asking his permission I have decided to do so. My intent is not to make you think I am an awesome father, nor am I trying to impress you with my thought process twenty three years ago. I simply want to help you, whether you are a teenager or a parent, whether you are a grandfather or a Sunday School teacher. I believe that Satan has built a world system more devilish in its temptations than at any other point in history. And he has placed our young people squarely in his sights. May God give them the courage to stand, the understanding to choose wisely, and the grace to lay the foundation for a wonderful life spent loving and serving Him.
______________________

Son,

the lake at Hyles Anderson College

This moment is sacred to me. I'm sitting on a picnic table by the lake at Hyles-Anderson College. Today is my twentieth birthday. A few months ago I decided I would sit down today and write to you some of the things I've learned in my first twenty years, with especial attention to what carried me through my teenage years.

My dear son, I do not yet know your name. I do not know where you will be when you read this. I do not know your mother's name. As you can tell by the mistakes this is not a re-copied letter. It is just me. A me that loves you although you are yet unborn. A me that has tried and will continue to try to prepare himself to be your father. Nobody special, just me, but I love you.

The most important thing I've learned in the last 20 years is that everything rises and falls on your walk with God. By the time you are old enough to get this, my life will either have risen or fallen and no matter which, it will be because I have either walked with God or I haven't. Today you are fifteen. By this time I trust you have learned to walk alone and weep w/ God. For six years now I've walked with God and what a blessed six years they've been. My life, when you read this, will have proved this statement, but you have yet to. Everything in life rises and falls on your walk with God.

Next son, I would tell you to seek counsel. As a young teenager of 14 I began to seek counsel, and in only 6 years it has saved my hide numerous times. I've gotten counsel on financial matters, spiritual matters, dating, college, friends, schedule, everything. I've talked to my parents many times, my sisters and brother, my preacher, and those who are successful in whatever area I need counsel in. Seek counsel.

Jack

Lastly son, base your decisions on the future and not the present. I've heard Bro. Hyles say, "Everything in life that's worth getting you pay for now and get later, and everything in life not worth having you get now and pay for later." Solomon said, "But afterwards." Son, when you decide to do something always remember those two words "But afterwards." Don't sacrifice the future on the altar of the immediate, rather sacrifice the immediate on the altar of the future.

If these three things "be both in you and abound, they shall make you neither barren nor unfruitful." I'm in the springtime of life. I'm twenty years old, the sun is shining and all of life is ahead of me. If you'll heed this letter, you'll be in the same position I am at twenty. Son, my teenage years are over. They ended yesterday, but the bulk of yours are ahead. May they be filled with precious memories as mine are. To that end I write.

I love you.

Dad