Tag Archives: evangelism

Evangelism and felt needs

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siteOK, Ken raised an interesting point yesterday, the fact that many people don’t see personal sin as a problem. That got me to thinking: are the good news only about forgiveness of sin? That is, are we being deceptive when we try to appeal to the felt needs that people have?

The articles that I write for our HopeForLife.org blog are intended to interest non-Christians in what God has to offer them. Sometimes I discuss sin and guilt, but I often address other topics. Those of us that write there write about hope, but it’s not just hope for forgiveness. We talk about things like peace during hard times, community, and purpose in life.

What do you think? Is evangelism mainly about convincing people that they are sinners and need God’s forgiveness? Or is it legitimate to address other felt needs that people have?

 

[Edit: Let me clarify that I don’t think Ken was advocating “turn or burn” evangelism or anything of the sort. His comment raised such issues in my mind.]

Sharing the good news

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cristohavanaAs we talk to people about the good news of salvation, it’s important that we remember what we have to share. What we have that our world needs is the good news about Jesus. It’s easy to get distracted with other things. We can be tempted to go out preaching the church, preaching a certain doctrine, preaching a certain form of morality. All of those things are important, but they must take second place. People must be converted to God, then other things will be taken care of. God will add them to the church. They will learn doctrine and morality from studying God’s Word. If we convert people to the Lord, making disciples, they will change their lives as they learn to follow him. If we focus on the behavior and the doctrinal understanding, they may never understand the need to be under the Lordship of Jesus.

As we go out to share the gospel, we must do just that: share the gospel, the good news of salvation, the news that Jesus came to this earth, lived among us, died, was buried, rose again, ascended to his father and will one day come again to judge the living and the dead. That’s the message the world needs to hear. That’s the unique message we have to share. That’s the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Everyman Evangelism

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conversation

As we consider the topic of evangelism, we need to recognize that people are going to approach this differently. On the one hand, I believe that some people are specially gifted in this area, having a special ability to verbalize their faith in a personal situation (Note: this skill does not always go hand in hand with giftedness in teaching or preaching). However, I think that everyone should be able to “give an answer for the hope that is within them” as Peter put it.

I grew up with evangelism mainly being about convincing believers in Jesus to correct their views on baptism and on proper worship. It was often seen as something confrontational, an attempt to proselytize others. Much evangelism involved teaching strangers. It was an intimidating thing to the average person.

My view on evangelism is somewhat different now. My focus now is on people who don’t know Jesus. I’ll teach anyone who wants to hear, but I’m especially interested in helping those that know something is missing in their life. The gospel is good news to those people, and it’s easy to share good news. I now see much of evangelism as being involved with people and listening to them. Listening is a big part of evangelism. We need to hear when people admit that their lives are lacking something; if you listen, you may be surprised how often people do that.

Another big part of evangelism, however, is our living out our beliefs. We need to be models of service and of love. They need to see that we don’t live out an eye for an eye, that we’re willing to be wronged by others if necessary. They need to see purity in our lives, but also a willingness to admit mistakes.

Another key element is prayer. We have to bathe the relationship in prayer. It’s not about our cleverness or skillful use of language. We play our part, but if God isn’t involved in the process, we are doomed to failure (even if we have apparent “success”; a conversion that takes place like a business sale isn’t really a conversion).

After they’ve seen our lives, after we’ve listened to them, the time will come for us to speak. As I said, I think everyone should be able to state some basic things about their faith. It’s okay for them to take the person to someone else for further teaching, but they need to be able to give a basic statement about their faith.

There will be people more skilled than others, some even able to move a relationship quickly from stranger to friend to convert. But I believe evangelism is something that all of us do, in one way or another.

(Photo by Muriel Miralles de Sawicki, Stock Xchange)

Evangelism in a changing world

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1138315_73143291With the great discussion on the last offering in the Kitchen, I want to continue a bit with the topic. Here are my concerns: as our society moves into postmodernism, evangelism is becoming an embarrassment. Evangelism, to some degree, involves saying, “My way is right, and your way is wrong.” Evangelism needs some absolutism, a conviction that Jesus is the way, the only way to God. Those sorts of concepts don’t fit well with a postmodern mindset that emphasizes tolerance and respect for the views of others.

In the same way, missions have also fallen in disfavor. Aren’t they merely a sign of cultural superiority, of “the ugly American”? With cultural sensitivity, won’t we come to see that the beliefs of other people also have validity? Why do we have to impose our worldview on others? The concept of “spreading Christianity” is extremely offensive in the 21st century.

In such a situation, it’s easier to focus merely on service. Not service as a part of evangelism; that’s been the norm for decades (at least; I’ll only vouch for my adult life, but in reading about great men of the past, I’m convinced that it’s been around much, much longer). What’s typically offered today is no different than what the Red Cross or UNICEF would be doing. That’s a broad generalization, one that I’d love to be wrong about. Maybe my limited experience has led me to a mistaken view of what’s going on.

Still, I’m worried about the future of the church. (Well, the church in my country, anyway; I see a lot more evangelism going on in other countries) We need to bring back the concept of taking good news to the world. I want to spend some time next week talking about what that good news looks like, but for now, I want to emphasize: we’re losing something valuable. We need to wake up and see that, or it could be gone forever. We need to teach our young people about the gospel and what it has to say to a broken world.

As the old saying goes, the church is always one generation away from extinction.

Putting the mission back into our trips

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flagsAs I’ve written before, I’m disturbed by the trend in our churches to take our members on service trips and call them mission trips. They aren’t. If we lose the meaning of the word “mission,” we will have lost something of value within our church.

At least one congregation here in town is doing something about it. They’ve decided that every one of their members that goes on a mission trip sponsored by their church must go through a course in evangelism. If you are going on a mission trip, you need to know how to teach someone about Jesus. Not just build houses. Tell people about Jesus while you are building houses.

I think that’s a good way to begin to counteract this trend. For a trip to be a mission trip, it needs to have an evangelistic purpose. Or call it a service trip. But if it’s a mission trip, let the participants be prepared to do mission work.