Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus

by J. Mack Stiles Narrated by J. Mack Stiles

Overview

Short Guide Helps Churches Cultivate a Culture of Evangelism within the Context of Community Christians often struggle to know where to start when it comes to telling others about God, Jesus, sin, and salvation. In this short book, J. Mack Stiles challenges Christians to view evangelism as something to do together instead of something to do alone, helping churches cultivate a culture of evangelism that goes beyond simply creating new programs or adopting the latest method. Part of the 9Marks Building Healthy Churches series, this book will help Christians joyfully embrace evangelism as a way of life as it equips them to share their faith with those who don't yet know Jesus. - Practical: Equips Christians to winsomely share their faith with unbelievers in the context of community - A Great Resource for Congregations: Short guide to evangelism - Part of the 9 Marks Building Healthy Churches Series

Product Details

BN ID:	2940193688860
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	12/17/2024
Series:	9Marks: Building Healthy Churches
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

OF ALTAR CALLS AND LASER LIGHTS

I was a freshly minted 1970s-era Jesus freak. During the first months of my first year in college, I led my friend and roommate, John, to Jesus. One Sunday, not long after, we decided to attend the large Baptist church in downtown Memphis.

I cut quite a figure: I sported a huge red Afro, bell-bottom jeans, and a purple wool trench coat. We were amid crew cuts and suits.

The preacher preached, all stanzas were sung, and then came the invitation. The preacher announced sternly that he would rather have someone leave during his sermon than during the invitation, "the most important part of the service."

The appeal came for people to give their lives to Jesus. Hands were raised. We were thanked and then told to "just slip out" of our seats and come forward. "If you can't publicly stand up for Jesus in church, you won't ever stand up for him outside these walls," the preacher said. The logic seemed ironclad to me.

John, whose head was bowed but whose eyes were opened (against instructions), whispered to me, "Do you think I should go forward?"

"Well, it can't hurt," I whispered back, "I'll go with you." John popped up from the pew and I followed.

Dozens "slipped" out of their seats and streamed forward. Unbeknownst to us, they were mostly ushers. Up front, the semicircular rows of pews surrounded us. The congregation, more numerous than had appeared from our back-row seats, seemed to lean forward and focus on us, smiling.

In a flash, the preacher was by my side. "Son," he said to me in a kindly voice, "why are you here today?" He held his mike down against his leg and curled the long speaker cord behind his feet with a practiced flick of the wrist.

"Well," I said, "my friend John here accepted Jesus a couple of weeks ago, and he wanted to stand up for Jesus." The pastor glanced over at John, whose life was a mess, but who dressed conservatively. He nodded to John, "That's wonderful, son." Turning back to me, he said, "And what brings you forward?"

I was gazing up at the balcony and the bright Klieg lights with a sort of gee-whiz, country-boy-in-the-big-city look on my face. "Well, I ... wanted to support John," I stammered.

"I see," he said, nodding, his arm now draped over my shoulder. "Are you a Christian, son?"

"I am," I said.

"And would you like to rededicate your life to Jesus?" The theological complexities of this question escaped me, so I said, "Well, sure, I guess."

The preacher then pressed the microphone to his lips and stared up at the balcony, too. He located the recently installed TV camera and pointed to it with his hand, fingers spread. "I'd like to say to all you in TV land, these two young men have come to give their lives to Jesus. You can do that in your home, right now, where you sit ..."

It took me years to figure out what had just happened.

WHAT IS EVANGELISM?

When I think back to that service so many years ago, I want to ask: Did evangelism happen that morning in that church?

We should be careful how we answer. Many people have become Christians when they walked an aisle after hearing an altar call. Recently, at a pastor's convention at Southeastern Seminary, the president, Danny Akin, noted that the gathered pastors were culturally sophisticated, well educated, and theologically robust. None of them would think of leading an altar call such as the one I experienced in Memphis. But then Akin asked, "How many of you came to faith in a church that evangelized in ways you would now reject?" Almost every pastor raised his hand.

This response should give us pause. There is much room for humility when it comes to evangelism. We need to acknowledge that God is sovereign and can do as he wills to bring people to himself. There is no formula that dictates how God must work in evangelism. And though we may disagree with the evangelistic practices of individuals, ministries, or churches, we must also recognize that when people develop good-hearted commitments to evangelism, God can produce true fruit.

I, for one, will take people practicing evangelism as best they can over those who forgo evangelism until they have the perfect practice. Remember how gently Priscilla and Aquila instructed Apollos in his evangelistic efforts (Acts 18:26)? Paul even rejoiced over selfishly motivated evangelism that caused trouble for him (Phil. 1:17–18). So when people come to faith through strange means and methods, we should first take heart that God can take the smallest seeds of gospel truth and grow them into the great fruit of gospel reconciliation in people's hearts.

Let me be clear: I do not think altar calls are catagorically wrong. Yet when I think back to my experience in Memphis, it's easy to see how the methods of those days were driven mostly by a desire for instant results: there was too much emphasis on a decision or on walking an aisle, too much concern about the watching TV audience, and too little concern about the actual state of my soul and my sin.

Many people have responded to altar calls over the decades. But for all who have been genuinely converted when they responded, there have been many more who merely came to the front of a church building out of some other compulsion — just like John and me. Most important, even though people come to Jesus through various means, the Bible never uses results to guide or justify evangelistic practice.

So when we set out to practice evangelism, we must start with biblical foundations. We must look to these to shape, guard, and inform how we share our faith rather than starting by looking for a way to gain maximum impact. We must be very careful to conform our evangelistic practice to the Bible, because this honors God.

Sadly, what often informs our evangelistic practices is the world — perhaps the business world or the self-help section in the bookstore — rather than the Scriptures. Satan plays to our desire for results by offering a bigger TV ministry or financial profit. He even tempts us with seemingly good-hearted desires such as an expanded membership or the undying belief that if a child prays a sinner's prayer, he or she has become a committed believer regardless of how he or she lives. In all this, people trade biblical principles for worldly desires, and our evangelistic practices get twisted.

Paul could rejoice over the gospel being preached regardless of motive because he knew God would accomplish his purposes through his Word. But Paul also corrected twisted evangelistic practices: he stressed that we must not manipulate, change the message, or deceive (e.g., 2 Cor. 4:1–2). Instead, we should seek pure motives in love for people and Christ, with a deep conviction of truth (2 Cor. 5:11–15). And we must trust that the Lord will add to our numbers (Acts 2:47).

Think of how much in that Memphis church service teetered on the edge of error:

• Did the pastor truly believe that the most important part of the service was the invitation rather than the Word of God rightly preached?

• Where in the Bible do we see people raising their hands to ask Jesus into their hearts? And when did walking an aisle replace baptism as a public display of our faith — at a Baptist church, for crying out loud?

• Wasn't it manipulative to have ushers slip out of their seats in an apparent response to the invitation? Didn't the use of unbiblical terms such as "rededicate your life to Jesus" fail to put forth the truth plainly (2 Cor. 4:2)?

• Did the pastor mean to publicly lie when he said John and I had just given our lives to Jesus, though we really had not? Or was he so blinded by cultural lenses that he just missed the two brothers in Christ who stood before him? Were we just a foil to show the world the effectiveness of his evangelistic efforts?

Actually, the two guys standing before him were the biggest thing he missed, and that oversight is what makes me want to jump up and down and holler. He missed a living example of the best kind of evangelism: an eighteen-year-old kid who could not have found the book of Mark without help from the table of contents had just led his friend to Jesus simply by loving him enough to explain what he knew about the gospel message. And I suspect that the congregation was so blinded by the razzmatazz of a slick program and a TV audience that they didn't think about it, either.

A DEFINITION FOR EVANGELISM

So how do we know when evangelism is happening? Well, the answer depends on how we define evangelism. Defining evangelism in a biblical way helps us align our evangelistic practice with the Scriptures. Here's a definition that has served me well for many years:

Evangelism is teaching the gospel with the aim to persuade.

Sort of dinky, huh? I bet most people would expect much more from such an important theological word. But this definition, small as it is, offers a far better balance in which to weigh our evangelistic practice than looking at how many people have responded to an appeal.

Around the same time that John and I attended the Memphis church, I bought John a Bible. It was the Amplified Bible, which, if you haven't seen it, offers stacks of synonyms for key words. Here is how the Amplified Bible might have expanded my definition:

Evangelism is teaching (heralding, proclaiming, preaching) the gospel (the message from God that leads us to salvation) with the aim (hope, desire, goal) to persuade (convince, convert).

Notice that the definition does not require an immediate outward response. Walking an aisle, raising a hand, or even praying a prayer may tell us that evangelism has happened, but such actions are not what evangelism is. Notice, too, that if any of the four components are missing, we are probably doing something other than evangelism.

If I could, I would love to go back in time and teach the church in Memphis what evangelism really is. I would warn that there is much sickness in the church worldwide because of churches calling something evangelism when it is not. "Please," I would beg, "when you teach, don't teach people about how to behave during an invitation. Teach clearly what the gospel is and what is required of a person to turn to Christ."

I would urge the church to aim to persuade, but to persuade without manipulation. I would encourage them not to exclude what is hard about the Christian life, however tempting that may be; not to confuse human response for a move of the Spirit; and not to lie about results. "And please," I would say, "be wary of calling people Christians without some evidence that they are truly converted followers."

Of course, by today's standards, it's easy to sneer at those old church practices. But if we are honest, we have to say that we face the same temptation to sacrifice biblical principles for results and "success." As I look around, I don't see that much has changed besides the form in which we practice unbiblical evangelism. The gospel often remains untaught, and unbiblical words water down the poignant true meaning of sin, death, and hell, or confuse those who are genuinely seeking truth.

Promises of health and wealth deceive the most vulnerable: the poor, disadvantaged, and sick. And many churches offer a costless, comfortable, and benefit-giving "gospel" that is found nowhere in the Scriptures. In fact, the gospel is subverted with what Paul calls "different gospels," which are not gospels at all (Gal. 1:6–7). By catering to the desires of people, churches communicate that their focus is on nonChristians, not on the glory of God displayed by his people worshiping him.

The soaring choir riffs have been replaced by laser light shows, so that a church service becomes an avenue for entertainment rather than worship. Jesus was engaging, but he never entertained; there is a huge difference, one that is lost on the modern church. Likewise, appealing for friends, followers, and converts through social media seems much like yesteryear's TV camera in the balcony: both can tempt church leaders to miss the people in front of them. The high-pressure sales job has been replaced by the soft sell of self-help.

These kinds of things are the result of the same worldly temptations that undermine biblical evangelism, so much so that those who sneer at the old practices may need to apologize to that church back in Memphis.

But there is an answer to such temptations. It's no different today than it was in my first year in college or in the first churches in Paul's day. The solution is to fix biblically principled, gospel-centered evangelism in our minds and hearts. It is to learn how to teach the gospel with integrity and to keep the big-picture aim of true conversion in view.

So let's carefully "amplify" the four parts of my definition: "teaching," "gospel," "aim," and "persuade."

TEACHING

First, there is no evangelism without words. After all, Jesus is the Word, and the Word was with God (John 1:1).

The most important use of words in evangelism is teaching. If you think about it, this makes rational sense. We humans are unable to figure out a way of salvation on our own. Therefore, salvation must be revealed to us by God through his words.

Teaching is also the pattern of the Bible. The Bible is a book of teaching. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible teaches us. And the Bible tells us to teach others: our kids, our neighbors, the foreigners in our midst. Older women are instructed to teach younger women. The only qualification for elders, besides being careful followers of Jesus, is that they are able to teach.

Perhaps because teaching is everywhere in the Scriptures, we can miss its significance. Jesus saw that the crowds were like sheep without a shepherd, so he fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and fish (Mark 6:34–44; Luke 9:10–17). These miracles amaze us, as they should. But the interesting thing is that in each instance, Jesus's first act of compassion was to teach.

Many of us think of preaching when we think of evangelism, as we should. I, for one, want any sermon I give to contain the gospel. Certainly Paul did his share of evangelistic preaching. But often when Paul describes his ministry, he says it is a teaching ministry (1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11). J. I. Packer, in his survey of Paul's evangelistic practice, says that Paul's method of evangelism was primarily a teaching method.

This is good news for those of us who don't get to preach every Sunday. Not all of us can be preachers, but we can all teach the gospel as opportunity comes. I often wonder whether more people come to faith over lunch when someone asks, "What did you think about the sermon today?" than during the sermon itself. Great things happen when we can teach the gospel.

Being able to teach the gospel benefits our spiritual lives as it makes sure we are living according to gospel themes. One of the first things we ought to do at the Communion table is to check whether our lives are aligned with the gospel. Ask yourself: Am I living a life of faith in Christ's work? Am I applying gospel grace to those around me? Do I give sacrificial forgiveness to those who have wronged me?

If you do not know how to teach the gospel, you may not truly understand it. And if you do not understand it, you may not be a true Christian. I know many people who thought they were believers, but when they began to study the gospel in order to teach it, they realized they had never truly repented of sin and put their faith in Jesus.

But most important, remember that the gospel must be taught before someone can become a Christian.

When I have led people to Christ over the years, it has usually been because a non-Christian was willing to study the Scriptures with me. Perhaps it was a group of students looking into the Gospel of Mark at a camp or conference. It could have been a couple of people in a coffee shop or just one person during a lunch break. No matter where or with whom, the process is simple: we read the passage and talk about what it means. Over time, in ones and twos, people come to Jesus because they are taught the gospel. Such teaching may not be as exciting as a massive revival, but if every Christian did this with non-Christian friends, it would have far greater reach and authenticity.

GOSPEL

We don't teach math or biology. We teach the gospel. It's important to teach the gospel well because there is much confusion about it around the world.

There are two mistakes we can make about the gospel. We can make it too small or too big. Both mistakes turn on a very small hinge: misunderstandings about implications of the gospel. These implications flow out of our belief in the gospel message.

A Shrunken Gospel

We make the gospel too small by thinking it only "gets us saved," that it is a sort of fire insurance, without understanding that it has implications for all of life.

Since the gospel manifests the heart of God, it makes sense that the themes of the gospel should inform how we live — themes such as love, reconciliation, forgiveness, faith, humility, repentance, and more. Then we see that the gospel becomes both the door of salvation and the pattern for life.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Evangelism"
by .
Copyright © 2014 J. Mack Stiles.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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