Right now, JR and I are leading Sunday School at Parkade Baptist. We are doing a series on Evangelism. Each week, we are posting recaps over at the Parkade’s CYP blog. I wanna reproduce them here as a series. As evangelicals, the notion of evangelism is very important to us. Therefore it is paramount that we can do it effectively. However, doing so might challenge the ways we have thought about this term in the past. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.
We had a great time this morning discussing our previous experiences with evangelism. Here are some of the things we worked though. (Remember, we were asking about people’s experiences with evangelism in the past, not necessarily how they thought evangelism should work in a best case.)scenario.
1. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘Evangelism’? How does it make you feel?
There were a variety of answers here. Answers ranged anywhere from memories of community revivals and Power Team visits to “street prophets” handing out tracts. Several people remember evangelists trying to convert them on the street. Others (both people who had been servers and who know servers) said that Sunday afternoons were the worst time to wait tables. Not only were the tips lousy, but every so often, someone would slip you one of those Bible tracts disguised as legal tender. Ah, that brings us to Bible tracts. Not one of us were too thrilled at the prospect of giving or receiving tracts – they have left a bad taste in our collective mouths. Additionally, we all have felt pressure not to “flirt to convert,” but to become friends with unbelievers for the sole sake of converting them.

Part of a Bible Tract from Chick Tracts.
Overall, we felt like in order to evangelize we had to be salesmen selling a product. Often we felt like our “sales calls” were to be cold calls, instead of earning the right to present our product to them. Hence, most of our emotions and memories of evangelism in our pasts had negative connotations.
Why was this the case? Well, these methods just seem… impersonal. How can I blindly approach someone and ask them to make such an identify-altering decision without any kind of shared worldview or, most importantly, any kind of relationship.
2. Is Evangelism important? How often would you say you ‘Evangelize’? Why is this the case?
Of course, we thought evangelism was important. How could we not? After all, as one of our Bible professors used to say, “Every day people are dying and going to Hell.” Hard to argue with that one. However, despite the shared value placed on this thing we call evangelism, no one said they really ever evangelized. Sure, some of us were sure to be extra nice and extra courteous to people, but we thought that did not lead a single soul away from the path of destruction.
We felt at ease with living our lives as an example, but uncomfortable with evangelizing (see question 3) because if we do it wrong, the consequences are severe and we just did not know how to do it right.
3. Traditionally, what have been the most utilized methods of Evangelism? and 4. Discuss the process of Evangelism these methods employ. That is, what is – from start to finish – the best-case encounter with someone who does not already know the Gospel?
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A common sight on the University of Missouri Campus, Brother Jed, gently proclaiming the love of Jesus.
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- Tracts
- Regular old relationships
- missionary friendships
- revivals (Power Team, etc)
- Sales
- Confrontational Evangelism (example, Brother Jed, see pic at the right)
- Inviting Non-Christians to:
- Revivals
- Power Team showings
- “Christian” movies such as the Passion of the Christ or Fireproof
All of these things were ways to get people to walking someone down the “Roman Road” at which point we go and find another one to reach out to, having successfully added one more soul to the rolls of heaven.
At this point, we are reminded of the first line of the hymn, Each One, Reach One, which encapsulates the this process:
Each one can reach one; As we follow after Christ we all can lead one;
5. What term should Christians use for persons who are not citizens of God’s Kingdom?
We had a hard time with this one. Here are some that we came up with:
- pre-christians – this describes those that will eventually become Christians. They are already on the path that will lead them to Christ, they just need help down the path.
- seeker / explorers – these are terms coined by Willow Creek. Explorer is replacing the term seeker.
- non-christian / non-believer - If we are X and they are not X, then they must be non-X, no?
- the lost – This is pretty biblical, right? It is how we translate τό ἀπολωλός in Luke 19:10, right? They are who Jesus came to find.
- heathens – This describes their sinful behavior of which they need convicting. Why not be accurate in our terms? Why should we be bashful with the truth?
All of these terms are accurate to an extent. However, that does not mean they are not without their problems. A lot of these terms are offensive and overtly negative. How well do you respond to negative terms foisted upon you? How one refers to people in private tells a lot about how you really view them compared to how you treat them and speak of them in public. Certainly those that we call unbelievers believe in something right? How open am I gonna be to what a person wants to communicate to me if they say I am lost? I seem to be doing just fine. If I call you a pre-Christian, that assumes that they are going to eventually become a Christian.
We struggled to find a non-pejorative term that wasn’t watered down. We could not agree on one term that fully encapsulated the person who is outside the kingdom of God.
Final Thoughts
We have a serious problem. We recognize the need of evangelism. We desperately want to lead people into the Kingdom of God. But we don’t ever do evangelism.
However we have not had a good experience with current evangelism methods. They just aren’t working. There is no real relationship there; people become items on a checklist, not fellow imagines dei who desperately need a restored relationship with their creator.
What is needed is a way of viewing and practicing evangelism that is effective and that treats people as more than mere numbers. This is what we will be looking at in the coming weeks. It will require looking at the subject in a completely new way, so stay patient and stay tuned!