Reforming Evangelism
1. Introduction (Reforming Evangelism)
2. Preparation
3. Is it Biblical?
4. Practice
5. The Diagram
6. Assurance
The Puritans of the seventeenth century believed that the greatest hindrance to the Gospel in their day was nominal Christianity.1 They found themselves to be members of and preaching in churches that were filled with unconverted men and women who professed faith in Christ. For many members, if not most, Christianity was a religion affirmed with the mouth but not rooted in the heart. It became the task of puritan ministers to evangelize the “Christians” who were already in the church, but had not yet experienced conversion. This task was particularly difficult, for most had obtained some false assurance of their salvation and were therefore no longer concerned for their souls. This led the puritans to address the issue of conversion in their day and forced them to practice evangelism with greater care and thought than their contemporaries.
I am convinced that many of us within the Southern Baptist Convention today find ourselves facing the same situation our Puritan fathers faced 400 years ago. Bad theology and careless evangelism have padded our churches with unconverted Christians. Though we are the largest Protestant denomination in the world on paper, we cannot account for well over half of our baptized members.2 Many of those we can find are seldom involved in ministry and often show no real signs of spiritual life. Like the men who have gone before us we find ourselves in need of revival, awakening and a reformation of our theology and practice of evangelism.
It seems like everyone is crying for some kind of reformation in our Convention at the moment. I believe one of the critical areas of needed change is how we believe a person comes to faith in Christ, and how we help them along the way. And this is much more than simple Calvinism.
While the cry for reformation is good, reforming our evangelism is no small task, because it cuts against many of the traditions that have developed in the Convention over the last 150 years. Not only is there difficulty in overcoming traditions, but there is also the difficulty of doing theology, and this task of change is truly the task of the theologian. In fact evangelism itself is the task of the theologian. Iain Murray put it this way, “The Preacher must be both Evangelist and divine because conversion is too deep a subject to be preached without being studied and too glorious a truth to be studied and not preached.”3 It is unfortunate that we have divorced the evangelist from the theologian in the Southern Baptist context. It is curious that our seminaries divide the Schools of Evangelism from the Schools of Theology. It is disturbing to see that we train our lay people to evangelize without training them in doctrine. It has not always been this way. As recently as 1943 The Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (now Lifeway Christian Resources) published a book titled, Soul-Winning Doctrines. In this little book J. Clyde Turner lays out doctrines like the atonement, regeneration, repentance, faith, justification, sanctification, and assurance as essential to winning the lost for Christ. Though this was written after the Convention had moved away from its reformed heritage, it’s clear that theology was still valued and seen as a necessary part of proper evangelism. The stock of theology has dropped considerably since. If we are to begin rebuilding our churches through authentic conversions we have to return to a theologically driven methodology.
In the next post I will begin laying out what I believe is a better approach to evangelism in our post-Christian culture, than what we have generally practiced as a Convention. In short, I believe we need to recover a better understanding of the process of conversion and what generally preceeds it, a more dialogical, seeking approach to evangelism and the ability to diagnose a person’s spiritual condition beyond “Christian” and “non-Christian.” I will also suggest other resources that can be used in this task.4
1 Iain Murray, Thomas Hooker and the Doctrine of Conversion, pg. 14
2 The facts are available in many places, here is a good article dealing with the numbers.
3 Murray, pg. 26
4 For starters, check out Thomas Boston’s The Art of Manfishing and Solomon Stoddard’s A Guide to Christ.
I am the Lead Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship; husband to Jen; Dad to Katherine, Elias, Madeline, and Kilian. If you're in town you can probably find me in the local coffee house or running through the neighborhoods.
{ 14 comments }
joe…great post. i’m getting ready to teach vs. by vs. through john’s gospel and was reading this morning and noticed that those who followed christ came about following him in different ways (some were brought to him, others followed because of what he said, others doubted for sometime until they believed for themselves and others were just told, “follow me.”) i also found it interesting that at the end of john 2 there were those who were “believing” in jesus but jesus wasn’t “entrusting” himself to them. it was very telling for me to see (once again) that the majority of those who make up any given fellowship may have come to jesus because of the “spectacular” but jesus may still be waiting for them to come like nicodemus did in john 3 (with humility, honest questions, authenticity, etc.). anyway, i look forward to what you have to say.
Joe,
You know, you are the first one I’ve (sort of) met to make a clear, unambiguous, obvious connection between the churches of yesteryear and the churches of today (esp. in the SBC). Of all the smart guys and good books I’ve read, no one has ever entertained for me in print, at least, why those men preached Christ-centered gospel sermons to their church members. You’d think that Edwards’ church members, or Newton, or Flavel, or whoever else, were all saved, wouldn’t you! I would. I did. I still do sometimes!
They preached Christ for two reasons. First, because He is the door to salvation. And those folks needed to be saved…they just didn’t know it. Second, because He is the means for persevering. And those who were saved, needed to continue hearing the gospel of Christ to live, behave, think, and feel that way.
So Christless preaching is the bane of the modern pulpit. We assume they are saved, so we don’t preach Jesus to them. They need strong doctrine! They need fundamentals of the faith! They need to learn how to worship! Doxology and Theology! That’s what our churches need!!!
No, they need Christ. Evangelism is for believers and unbelievers. They both need to be fed the gospel. But traditional church members, even more so, for they are in an in-between group who thinks they are saved but in reality are not. Christ-centered preaching, strong gospel preaching, is the only preaching that will wake them up to their need.
Thanks for the awesome post bro! Let’s hook up sometime! The more I read the more I want to hang with you!
Terry,
Right on. I don’t see how anyone can read the gospels and conclude that a canned approch to evangelism is workable, much less biblical. Jesus interacted with people differently based on where they were at spiritually. The same salvation held out in its different aspects to different people. More in this later.
Rob,
Yeah the puritan’s preaching was amazing. They had the most application filled sermons to date. They always had observations, uses and directions concerning doctrine and truth that far exceeds our very basic, expository sermons which often do little more than educate and convey information. It would be great to mett up some time – but I don’t see myself in Georgia any time soon. Will you be at the next SBC?
Great thoughts Joe! Back in February I posted an excerpt from Wiliam Wistar Hamilton who served as General Evangelist with the Home Mission Board (now NAMB) at the beginning of the 20th century. He called his fellow Southern Baptists to practice “sane aggressive doctrinal evangelism.” I need to post the whole work online soon. I think his 100 year old plea needs to be sounded once again.
Yeah, I think theology/truth is at the heart of “evangelism.” But I am also concerned that our methodology (my primary concern with these posts) is not driven by a proper understanding of truth or people. For example, Ray Comfort and his fans understand that law and Gospel must be preached for a person to enter the kingdom. But they view Edwards and Finney as guys who approached evangelism similarly – when they did not. Both preached law/Gospel, but the doctrine of conversion shaped Edward’s evangelism in ways Finney’s was not.
In other words, You can get the law/Gospel aspect right, but then try to “close” by getting someone to pray a prayer to accept Jesus (Ray does not do this, but others do). This kills the law/Gospel preaching and stems from misunderstanding the doctrine of conversion. I’ll try and explain myself in the next post.
Joe, This post came at just the right time. I was mildly refuke for not getting enough attention to lost members of the flock God has given me to serve.
Jeff
Joe:
Great post! This really is one of the key issues we are facing today. If we get this wrong, it doesn’t really matter what we get right. I look forward to your future posts on this.
-Tom
Thanks Tom. I found this to be the hardest part of working out my Calvinism practically. How can we counsel the lost, guide them to Jesus? Discovering the Puritan perspective on this was the most helpful material I have see outside of Scripture.
Some churches overemphasize evangelism as it is defined in today’s vernacular (when I think “proselytization” would be a better Biblical word for it) while other churches overemphasize discipleship while not really having much evangelistic outreach. The former churches lead people to the Lord, but many of these new converts end up at the discipleship-oriented churches in order to learn what they think they need to know in order to be full Christians.
I do have a cautionary tale to tell, however. I was chatting on an IRC channel one day in which the chatters debated theology all day long. Suddenly, a man came in who said he wanted to accept Jesus Christ right there, on the spot. The channel exploded into a debate on soteriology (loosely translated, “the study of salvation”). I was astonished at what I was reading. This man admittedly knew nothing about anything when it came to spiritual matters, yet one chatter asked him what he meant when he spoke of salvation. I left the channel, thinking someone would take care of him, but when I came back about five minutes later, I privately messaged him and asked him if anyone had led him to the Lord. No, he said. No one would tell him anything! So as best I knew how, I led him through the sinner’s prayer, and he said he was weeping by the time we were done, and I gave him a little advice about finding a church.
After we were done, and he left, the other chatters were still debating salvation. I left. I think that was the last time I ever visited that IRC channel.
Joe,
I really like this intro. You are right on when you talk about the divide between evangelism and theology. This is something that I’ve run into quite a bit in Baptist circles. There is a resistance toward getting too much into theology, because that might turn off potential converts. So… we keep it shallow… and we get shallow converts. And then we wonder why we can’t account for them later…
Michael,
Please be more direct. The “cautionary tale” is interesting, but I am not sure I interpret your point correctly. For example, if your point is let’s not debate it, let’s just do it – then I must say that is what we have done in our Convention for the past number of decades, and it has creted a major problem both in our churches, and in the lives of countless unbelievers who now have assurance they are going to heaven. If your point is let’s not only debate, but be actively involved – I agree. It is far too easy and comfortable to sit around and perfect our doctrine while neglecting our practice.
I would also say that one cannot really overemphasize evangelism or discipleship, for proper evangelism understands its connection to Christ’s command to make disciples, and discipleship is connected in many different ways to evangelism. I get your point, but would put it differently. I would say, some churches are about amassing numbers and others are about amassing knowledge. Both are lamentable.
Oh, sorry…I suppose as a poet, I am used to saying things indirectly.
GOSPEL BEGINS WITH “GO”
It was three years ago when the Lord Jesus spoke to Melanie and I and said, “Go to New Orleans.” We had labored there in Amarillo, Texas for thirteen years; pastoring the church that we had planted, reaching the lost, feeding the hungry and equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.
Our families were there. Our closest friends were there. Our fondest memories were there. The only thing that was not there was God’s will for what He desired us to do next. In just three months time from announcing to the church that we were leaving, we had loaded all of our earthly possessions in a school bus and began ministering full time in the streets of New Orleans…
[edited by Joe Thorn]
Troy,
At over 2000 words, you comment was simply too long, and seemed to exist by itself without relevance to the topic. I have cut it down. Feel free to engage the conversation here, but please no monologues. God bless you and your ministry brother.
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