Today, as I begin my sermon, I am tempted to tell the council members on duty to go and lock the doors so that no one can escape because today’s sermon is on evangelism. Why are we here as a church? To do evangelism.
This is an inarguable point when it comes to the church. Jesus gave absolutely clear commands to His disciples in His parting words. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I am with you always to the end of the age.” And, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses...to the ends of the earth.” There’s no escaping these commands. They are straight forward. They are easily understood, and they are absolutely necessary if the church is going to thrive in the world.
And, honestly, there are very few Christians who think that evangelism is unnecessary. Most Christians give tacit agreement that we are to be out in the world evangelizing. But if that is the case, then why is worship attendance falling? Why are fewer people attending church? Why are so many people registering “none” in their religious affiliation?
As I’ve studied things, I think there are several reasons, but to make things easier for this sermon this morning, I’m going to concentrate on just a couple. First, I think we have a difficult time understanding what evangelism is. Second, I think we kick the can of responsibility. And third, I think we struggle with how we are to evangelize. So, let’s walk through each of these so that we can get our heads around it.
First, what is evangelism? If we go all the way back to the Greek text, we find that evangelism is taken from the root word “evangelion”. This is simply translated “good news.” So, evangelism is telling the good news.
And this is one of the areas that we get in trouble as a church, in my estimation. There is an adage that is often attributed to St. Francis of Assissi although it is questionable if he even said it. Perhaps you have heard it. “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” Now, this might make for a good sound bite. It might be catchy. It might make a good meme on Facebook, but it isn’t true. You know, I used to think it was. I used to think that if I went around doing good things and being nice that folks would ask me, “Why are you being nice? Why are you being so kind?” and then, I’d get an opportunity to share Jesus with them. But, you no what? No one ever asked. No one ever commented on my kindness. They kind of expected it. I mean, that’s one of the things we expect in society, and just to let you know atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, men, and women all do kind, good deeds. The fact that you do something nice is not a proclamation of the Gospel. If it were, we’d have a lot more people believing in Jesus.
You see, there is a thread that is running through some branches of Christianity that says our faith is about what we do. Our faith is wrapped up in how we make a difference and how we change the world. There is a thread that is running through some branches of Christianity that states that our actions are the most important thing we can focus on. This hit me really hard a week or so ago when we took six of our confirmation students on retreat.
I was sitting on the tailgate of my truck when one of our kids came and set beside me. He made a very intriguing comment, “We’re really not doing anything on this retreat. We’re not helping anyone or anything.”
His comment was absolutely true in one sense. We weren’t doing any service projects. We weren’t going out of our way to help anyone in need. But did that mean we weren’t doing anything? Of course not.
“You know,” I said, “one of the things that we need to realize about Christianity is that it isn’t just about doing things. It’s also coming to learn about who God is and growing in our relationship with Him. It’s about understanding what He did in Jesus Christ. You are right that we aren’t doing anything on this retreat to help others. But we are learning about Jesus. We are growing in our faith. We are fellowshiping with one another and growing in our relationships.”
The wheels were turning in this youth’s head, and since he had gone to the national youth gathering and participated in a service project, I wanted to help bring this home.
“You know that service project that you did at the national youth gathering where you cleaned up that cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen five or ten years from now in that cemetery if no one keeps it up? All the work that you did will disappear. It will go back to the way it was and no one will know that you were even there. And that’s the way it works in the world. There is always one more person to feed. There is always one more cemetery to clean. There is always another thing to do to try and make the world right. And if no one else keeps things up, everything that we did will disappear. That doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to do them, but they don’t last. But what we are doing here: learning about God and growing in our relationship with Him, that will last our entire lives.”
This conversation that I had with one of our youth is key to evangelism because Christianity is not first and foremost what we are supposed to do. It is first and foremost about what God has done particularly in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If we focus on what we do and believe that spreading the gospel is done by our actions, then folks will focus on us. They will see us, and they will never see God. They will never see Christ. They will never get to the cross to see what Jesus did for them on that hill far away. You can’t do the crucifixion and resurrection. You have to tell about it. News is meant to be shared. Actions follow from how you receive the news, but news itself is meant to be told.
We will come back to this when we talk about how to do evangelism, but we need to briefly touch upon point number two. Kicking the can of responsibility. What do I mean by that? This week, I listened to several challenging sermons on evangelism, and one of them was by Francis Chan. He spoke about a conversation that he had with another pastor. Francis was feeling very guilty because once he became a pastor, he no longer really had the opportunity to share the gospel with ordinary people. He was preaching and doing all sorts of church work, so he didn’t get the chance to really tell the good news. He shared his concern with a fellow pastor who said that he felt no guilt at all for not evangelizing directly. Francis asked him why. The pastor replied, “That’s really not my responsibility anymore. That’s the responsibility of the people in the pews.”
Francis shared his initial reactions to this before coming to another realization. “What if,” he thought, “what if I’m thinking that it’s the people in the pews responsibility to do evangelism, and what if they are thinking it’s my job to do evangelism–after all, that’s what you get paid to do? What if we are both thinking it’s the other person’s responsibility, and then no one really shares the good news?” I think Francis is onto something when he thinks this. I think that many of us feel that way. Pastors think congregation members should be sharing the gospel in their daily lives. Congregation members think they don’t know enough about the Bible and God and so they believe the pastor is the one who should be doing evangelism. Therefore, no one is doing evangelism. No one is sharing the good news. No one is inviting anyone to come to church. And our churches shrink. As far as I can tell, as far as I can interpret the Scriptures, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are supposed to be doing evangelism. You are supposed to be sharing the good news of Jesus. I’m supposed to be doing it. You are supposed to be doing it. It is the responsibility of everyone to tell about the mighty acts of Jesus Christ.
And that leads to point three: how? How are we supposed to do evangelism? I mean, there are a lot of things that prohibit us–mainly our fear: fear that we will be rejected; fear that we don’t know enough; fear that we might actually be successful! Fear is so dominant.
I was very intrigued by a book that I read this past week on rethinking how we do church. It was titled Total Church, and it had a chapter especially devoted to evangelism. This is where the graphic on the front of our bulletin came from. That rope with three strands is the authors’ suggestion of how evangelism is effectively done. They argue, rather successfully, I think, that evangelism is best done intentionally by individuals working in community. Evangelism entails three basic things: building relationships; sharing the gospel, and introducing people to community. Please listen to the following quote from the book:
...Not all of us are eloquent or engaging. Not everyone can think on their feet. Some people are simply not good at speaking to strangers and forming new friendships. One of the practical benefits of the three strand model of evangelism is that it gives a role to all of God’s people. By making evangelism a community project, it also takes seriously the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in distributing a variety of gifts among his people. Everyone has a part to play–the new Christian, the introvert, the extrovert, the eloquent, the stuttering, the intelligent, the awkward. I may be the one who has begun to build a relationship with my neighbor, but in introducing him to community, it is someone else who shares the gospel with him. That is not only legitimate–it is positively thrilling! Pete may never share the gospel verbally with Duncan, but his welcome and love are an integral part of the evangelic process and should be honored as such. Meanwhile Susan can make friends and introduce them to the community, confident that others will present them–at an appropriate point in an appropriate way–with the challenges of the gospel. It is lovely to think of us making up for one another’s deficiencies with our collective community strengths. P. 62
This takes a lot of the fear out of evangelism. You might not have the gift of being able to share the gospel well, but you might make friends easily. You might not make friends easily, but you have the ability to share the gospel. You might have the gift of invitation and bringing people into a community but not the ability to share the gospel. When we are each working and using our particular gift, then evangelism can take place. We can build relationships, intentionally come together in community, and share the gospel. Everyone has a role. Everyone has a responsibility. Evangelism doesn’t just fall upon one person who has the gift of gab, but it is a community effort intentionally made to bring people into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And it is done with love. Love for others and love for the world. Evangelism is meant to bring salvation to people. I don’t have time to go into the details today–maybe I will touch on this next week because of its importance, but everyone knows that the world isn’t right. Everyone knows that there is brokenness and suffering that needs to be addressed. But you’ve got to understand the problem before you can administer the cure. So much of our attempts to cure the world are due to the fact that we don’t look deeply enough at the problem, and we are also afraid of the cure. Christianity digs deeply to name the problem, and then it shares the glorious news of how God solved that problem. It shares the glorious news of how God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the son into the world not to condemn the world but to save it. The church preaches good news. It does not preach condemnation. As one of the preachers I listened to this week said, “No one was ever argued into the kingdom of God.” They are loved into it. “The objective is not to win the argument, but to win the soul.” If God has won your soul; if you have been touched with His grace, you know how the Christian message is good news. You know how important it is, and you want to share it with others. The church knows the good news. The church knows the gospel’s power, and that’s why we evangelize. It’s one of the central reasons that we are here. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment