I am a student at Southern Seminary, and I think it may be possible that the picture is of a servant evangelism project. I don’t know this for sure, but I do know that Reaching Out Louisville (the once a semester event where the seminary community as a whole is invited to participate in evangelistic activity) has servant evangelism projects. With that many people at one house, it seems more likely to me that this was a group of people offering to do some kind of job, like raking leaves or something.

And you guys better hold down all the criticism of “door-to-door” evangelism before Ergun Caner shows up!

I am very passionate about this stuff because of my own experiences in ministry. I pastored a church that was highly dysfunctional and disunified.

We finally closed the church down last year, it was so screwed up. But the good news is that out of the rubble came a new church that is doing well, even though I’m not part of it physically anymore.

So yeah, I’m a little burned, and burned out still.

However, it seems like everywhere I go, I see signs of a lack of leadership, vision, and direction. It is interesting to analyze churches here in the UK too.

So I am trying to put the discussion about evangelism into context, even though I know the original posting was done to emphasize the irony of it all.

When I was a student minister, I trained students in sharing their faith door to door. It taught them to be courageous, bold yet humble, truthful yet objective. They handled objections, wept for people’s lostness, and understood that there was a world next door that needed Jesus. Those were experiences and memories that I will never forget.

But let me say that the greatest lesson I have learned is that effective evangelism must take place through relationships. If you don’t have a foundation of a genuine, loving friendship, the gospel more than like will not take root in their life. While at Southern, I have chosen to not work on staff at a church because I want to be around as many unbelievers as possible on a daily basis, so I chose UPS (where there are about 5,000 around the time I work). This has led to many fruitful relationships, some even leading to their conversion. The great thing about it, however, is that we meet weekly for Bible study and are currently going through Grudem’s Systematic. This could not have happened unless the framework and foundation of a loving, genuine friendship.

I think that both are viable evangelistic methods; however, it is obvious that one is more effective than the other.