Alright so this brings back some memories, some not so long ago:
“Romans Road, Evangelism Explosion, The Four Spiritual Laws, The Bridge – approach the “lost person” from a position of power. They come to the lost person with a prepackaged message that assumes one gospel fits all. They assume the questions to be asked and the answers that shall be given before we have even listened. (intellectually, and more important attitudinally – we are saying with our posture that we already know what you need, what your problem is, and we’re right and you’re wrong – none-Christians come away feeling like “I’m one of your ‘cases’”). I contend this is contrary to the gospel. For the gospel always comes incarnationally: i.e. humbly, entering in to hear each person/ culture in its own language. The one message fits all implies that everyone has the same problem. Only in Christendom, where everyone was already pre-initiated and where the cultural problems are homogeneous, would this make sense..”
-David Fitch, When They Will Not Come, (via the BHT, via Next Reformation)
I remember being show the Roman’s Road in sermon’s and gospel presentations all growing up. One of my earliest memories of church was being about six years old and playing some sort of Pictionary game in Sunday School that revealed various verses from Romans for this. W…Sounds like… (a picture of a cage). The WAGES of sin is death. OK I get it.
I’ve seen the bridge illustration many times. I remember by father drawing it on scraps of paper, with his trademark “Beaky Bird” characters instead of stick people. During a particularly boring sermon here and there, I’d read the bulletin though four times and then fumble with the tracts that were always on the table at the back of the church. An illustration of the bridge figured prominently in one of them.
Oddly enough, I had never really heard of the Four Spiritual Laws. That particular one wasn’t as prominent in the circles I grew up in I guess.
When I came to college, I was struck by hit head-on by something entirely different: friendship evangelism. It seemed so superior to these canned gospel presentations – investing time and energy into someone until they actually cared what you thought, then telling them gradually how Jesus had changed your life. Make them WANT what you have. The charismatic church I attended in college had this down pat. And really, there are a lot of good things to say about the approach. It builds community (even though my “friend” disappeared after the first year, I had found lots of others). There are problems with it too (besides the one I just mentioned), but I’m not going to go into that now.
So, meanwhile back at the friendship evangelism church, I signed up for a class on evangelism, taught by the cool college pastor. The first day of class, our notebooks were handed out. I was shocked. The curriculum? “Evangelism Explosion”. Memorize Roman’s Road. Cheesy 70′s cartoon illustrations. Canned question and answer. Door to door. Intellectual assault (minus the underlying scholarship). Wait a minute…
Over the next several years, I did a little bit of all that. I went door to door. I completed the assignments to accost people on campus and share the gospel with them. The Mormon guys do this every day for two years when they are in their early twenties. I’m sure it must get comfortable after a while, but for me (and most of my fellow classmates and friends) it was hell.
Why hell? Just personality weakness? Just being sinfully self-conscience and cowardly? I’ll be the first to say I wish I were braver sometimes. But it goes way deeper than that. I just didn’t believe it worked. That it was really true. Now don’t get me wrong. I believed ALL of it was TRUE. The Gospel contained in these methods didn’t contain any untrue statements about God or the Bible. But they were truncated. They left things out. They always made me feel icky. The pastor telling us we should “win souls” for the Lord by whipping these out on the person waiting in front of us in the grocery line – I just could never buy it. I remember feeling uncomfortable about them when I was young, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Doug Wilson (a local pastor and author) has written a ton of helpful and well-thought-out books on Christian living, education, parenting, ecclesiology, etc. However one of his earlier books on evangelism, Persuasions, is nothing I could get very excited about. It’s more of the same:
I, the brilliant Christian have the divine rhetoric to smack down your (fill in the blank: paganism, materialism, legalism, post-modernism, fondness for light beer). Come back when you’ve seen the light of my Biblical, Reformation-upgraded, presuppositional answers (with the Holy Spirit’s help of course) and we’ll hook you up.
And hey, I’m ALL for knowing WHY Christianity gives paganism a noogie. The rhetoric has a place too. Is that our evangelism though? That’s our main shtick to help redeem the world? I’m not convinced. Wilson and co. are not convinced either actually. They take a post-millennial-church-subverting-the-culture approach that makes a lot more sense on a lot of levels. Again. Somewhat off-topic. I guess I’m talking about evangelism proper.
Back to the quote from Fitch. From the introduction to his series of posts:
When They Will Not Come” (WTWNC) names the social dilemma of the church in post Christendom when we can no longer assume non-Christians will come to church even when they are seeking God.
Man, how quickly does the REACTION to this gospel-in-a-can dispensing fall into the ditch of liberal “don’t impose your views on other people” wishy-washyness? Long before you can pronounce all five syllables of “Proselytizing”. Ewww, that sort of relativistic mush is no good news at all.
So what to do?
A friend of mine is hoping to move to Romania soon to plant a church. An inlaw is planting one in the next town south of where I live. I’ve been intrigued by the AMiA (Anglican Mission in America’s) church planting efforts. I’ve been thinking about church planing a lot lately and that naturally leads to thoughts of evangelism proper. But what if proper as we know it is a silly invention Jesus would have rolled his eyes at? I don’t have answers to any of this stuff. A few ideas. Mostly just more wrestling ahead.
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May 21st, 2009 at 4:11 PM
I too have thought a lot lately about evangelism, especially in the context of missions. My interest in history and biography naturally leads me across the paths of missionaries, some more successful than others.
To me, thinking about evangelism begins with looking at current Christians and what brought them to the Lord. I found the discussion at Small Group enlightening. A mix of parents who loved Christ and showed a life worthy of emulating to a friend that invited someone to Youth Group.
The successful missionaries tend to be the ones also whose lives do the talking. Elizabeth Elliot, for instance, probably didn’t plan to have her husband murdered then to live and raise her daughter with his murderers. Not your gospel-in-a-can type of evangelism for sure.
Is it the mere fact that their religion was all-consuming? Mother Teresa’s sure was. Even my dad’s was. It was that which drew me like a moth to the flame, not the cute cartoons on the tracts in the back of the church. How to translate that to mass marketing in today’s comfortable culture? No idea. But it seems the espresso bars in the lobby don’t quite have the same impact.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:25 PM
I pretty much agree with all that you’re saying here. I think late-20th-century American methods for “evangelism proper,” as you call it, were well-intentioned but often simplistic. Think “cheap man-made approximations of the real thing.”
What most helped me think about evangelism proper is a task that you have to do for yourself to get the full benefit of it. Go through the book of Acts verse by verse and find every reference to evangelistic activity of any kind (use a pretty broad definition and notice how the book itself labels what’s going on in each case). Then lay all those sections side by side and see what’s going on there, what are the common factors and the differences.
Or better yet, but a little more complicated: Do the same thing with the Four Gospels. Notice especially all uses of the words “gospel,” “good news,” “preach,” etc. E.g. “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Is this evangelism proper? I would certainly say so.
And then see where it all leads…
May 27th, 2009 at 2:58 PM
Thanks for thoughts Jeff. I think your suggested exercise in Acts is an excellent idea. I’m going to give it a shot soon.
Still, from memory it seems as if the scripture accounts are full of gaping holes. That’s why we’ve filled in the holes with so many different ideas and techniques. I mean, we know Paul made tents, but what about the other apostles? Did they have day jobs? We know Peter preached in the streets sometimes, but was that the main activity the others did too in their travels? Or was their influence more (limited?) to closer friends and family?
I can hear some of my charismatic past talking right now too. They advocated nearly the same exercise. Go through Acts and find every time a miracle, healing, or exorcism was used spread the gospel. Back to Acts 3, the only reason a crowd had gathered around Peter (so he could preach) was that they were amazed he had healed the crippled beggar. This happens over and over again. They argued (rather convincingly at times) that the reason our evangelism sucked was because we had theologized signs and wonders of any sort right out the back door. Have we chopped off our right hand by limiting our “tools” to 16th century rhetoric or lately to 20th century psychology? I mean, if your going through Acts making lists of things, you’ll have a pretty incomplete picture if the special power moments are left out.
The gospels are even more interesting. Is Jesus a special case? I used to think so, but then I heard argued (again pretty well) that everything Jesus did was by the power of the Holy Spirit, who he had in full measure. We would be sent out with the exact same spirit, and so that’s why he said we would do “even great works” than he did. When Jesus healed a man, he wasn’t using special Son-of-God power, but Holy Spirit power. Perhaps the only things he did unique to the Incarnation were 1) forgiving sins, 2) coming back to life all by himself. Pretty much everything else was not a special case – stuff only Jesus could ever be expected to do.
That being the case, then looking at the gospels would also be a beneficial exercise!
April 11th, 2010 at 3:26 PM
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