Evangelism

In my previous post, I asked about methods of evangelism that readers had confidence in. The most common response suggested building relationships with people. One reader said, “at least in our culture, people are longing for truthful relationships”.

I agree that this will work well in the modern world. However, relationships take time, so this is not a quick option.

I nearly said “relationship evangelism”, but I remembered a friend who hates that term. He said that if Christians are making friends with people just so they can share the gospel with them, it is not true friendship. Especially if they drop the friend if they have not received the gospel within an appropriate time.

We should make friends with unbelievers because they are children of God made in his image, not with any other agenda. If we are demonstrating the love of Jesus, we should be prepared to continue being a friend of the person, even if they never choose to follow Jesus. And if they do choose to follow him, we should continue the friendship, rather than neglecting them to pursue another victim. Friendship must be a way of life, not a method of evangelism.

Evangelistic Methods

Turning the spiritual tide in New Zealand will require serious sharing of the gospel of Jesus. A revival of faith will need a catalyst of evangelism. However, I have to wonder if the church has the effective methods of evangelism that will be effective in the modern world.

Jesus used to main methods of evangelism.

• Healing a sick person and preaching the good news with the crowd that gathered to watch.

• Sending a pair of disciples into a village to share the good news with the people living there.

These methods see to have gone out of favour.

The methods of evangelism that used to be effective for the church no longer seem to work.

• Large evangelistic rallies like those conducted by Billy Graham. It is hard to see this method being successful in the NZ culture.

• Door-to-door evangelism used to be popular, but it is no longer used, because it is difficult to find people at home. Even travelling sales people have given up.

• Having an altar call at the end of a sermon at church service still works, but it will only reach that segment of the population that is willing to go to a church meeting.

• The Alpha Course works for some churches, but it only seems to be effective for some types of people.

• Some pastors are pushing work-place evangelism, but this is not always practical, because managers or owners have control over what happens on their premises. People are not always free to talk about religion at the end.

This list does not inspire confidence for the future. What have I missed? If you have a method of evangelism that is effective for you in the modern world, please describe it in a comment below.

Healing and Evangelism

Healing and evangelism are usually treated as separate issues for the church. Putting them back together is critical to our future success.

Everyone is called to be a witness. So teaching Christians how to share the gospel with their friends and neighbours is really important. However it will not bring the big breakthrough that is needed.

The ministry of the evangelist is really important. Most Christians assume evangelism means preaching, but preaching at crowds does not work in many places, because people feel intimidated and badgered. The evangelist often hammers people into repentance by focussing on sin, which leaves people feeling condemned. Most people do not like it.

The New Testament describes a different approach. That healing/evangelism model is different (and used throughout the gospels and Acts).

1. Heal someone sick in a public place.

2. A crowd gathers and people ask, how did this happen.

3. The evangelist preaches the gospel by explaining what Jesus is done.

There are different couple of differences about this approach.

• The crowd gathers because they are curious about what they have seen. They want to be there. They are free to sneak away, if it gets uncomfortable. This produces a much more conducive atmosphere.

• The preacher does not have to prove God’s existence, because the proof is standing at the front of the crowd.

• The preacher does not have to badger the people, because they will often be asking what they need to do.

• The preacher does not have to prove Gods grace and love, because that is evident too.

• The focus of the preaching is different too. It does not need to browbeat people into repenting, but explains what Jesus has done, and explains to the crowd how they can get it.

This model of evangelism has not been seriously used by the church for about 1800 years. This explains why such a great gospel has been far less successful than it should have been.

I believe that if we are to see the big turn around for the gospel, then we will have to get back to that healing/evangelism model. We already know that nothing else works. We have this healing/evangelism model, but we have not tried it. The solution seems obvious.

The other side of this issue is that the ministry of healing has been totally distorted and abused. Most prayer for healing take place at the front of the church and is for Christians. It has become a form of entertainment for Christians and a tool for building up big name ministries.

The gift of healing is actually a gift for the lost. They are currently being robbed of gift that God wants to give to them. We will not see a real manifestation of the gift of healing until we take it out in the markets and villages where it belongs and give it to unbelievers in the way that Jesus and the apostles did.

Unless we can bring healing and evangelism together, we will not see the real explosion in evangelism that many Christians are dreaming about.

For more detail on this topic see Healing and Evangelism.

Local Localities

The Holy Spirit works locally, not globally. He is not interested in large audiences or getting onto television. He prefers to work in a particular locality with local people. When Peter’s mother-in-law was healed, the entire neighbourhood came with their sick. They realised something special was going on, because they knew Peter and his mother-in-law. Some that had seen her with the fever saw her again healed. They did not need further proof.

As soon as healing goes onto the public stage, questions get asked. Was the person really healed? Were they pretending to be sick to get close to the great preacher? Were they as sick as they claimed? Did the sickness come back next week? Has the healing been authenticated by their doctor? God does not need this junk.

The Holy Spirit prefers to work locally. The people living close will know the person that is healed. They can quickly work out for themselves if the healing is real. When Jesus healed the man who was blind from birth, “his neighbours and those who had formerly seen him begging” could see that he was healed (Jn 9:8).

One reasons that we do not see as many healings as we would like is that we look in the wrong places. We expect people to be healed on the stage at the front of a church or on television. The Holy Spirit loves to work locally. If we went and prayed for our sick neighbours, we would see greater healings.

Jesus Instructions

Jesus instructed the church how to do evangelism in Mark 16:15-19. He said we should go into the world (not stay in the church) and preach the gospel. We should expect God to confirm our gospel message, by healing the sick and other signs. This method has always been successful. It worked for the twelve and the seventy-two when Jesus sent them out. When the latter returned, Jesus saw Satan falling from heaven (Luke 10:18). Jesus method worked for Peter and John when 5000 men came to the Lord, as a consequence of one lame man being healed (Act 3,4). The same method worked for Paul in Malta, even though he was a prisoner (Acts 28:1-10).

Yet strangely, the church has ignored this method of evangelism through most of history. We dream up other methods of evangelism, like inviting an evangelist to the church and getting people to bring their friends (they rarely do) or putting on a concert or user friendly worship to bring people to the church. Yet we stubbornly refuse to use the method of evangelism that Jesus specifically commanded, so we should not be surprised that we do not have revival.

The evangelists with the anointing to heal the sick must be shooed out of the churches and into the world to demonstrate the love of God to the world, by healing the sick and preaching the gospel. If they have an anointing, church leaders should stop filling their diaries and keeping them busy in their churches and conferences. They should be sending them out into the world to touch the lost hurting people of the world.This would bring revival.

See Healing Evangelism.

Healing and Evangelism

Modern evangelistic campaigns are often held in a church building, so a powerful publicity campaign is required to get people to attend. The evangelistic method is worship, sermon and altar call. These methods do not exist in the New Testament.

New Testament evangelism is healing the sick/casting out demons and preaching to the crowd that gathers. This method was very successful for the early church, so we are unwise to do something different. Sickness is the key vulnerability of the modern world. Our affluent lifestyle has given people almost everything they need, but modern medicine has not been able to conquer sickness and pain. A gospel confirmed by healing of the sick will be well received by the modern world.

More at Healing Evangelism