What comes to mind when you think of street preachers, street evangelism, etc.? What do you think most Christians think of these things? For many in the Church these ideas bring to mind images of crazed arrogant people with a bullhorn and a few large signs with Bible verses on them. They imagine the presentation of such evangelism to be centered on external sins and even irrelevant issues (fornication, smoking, drinking, etc.) with a minor mention of Jesus if any. The phrases “turn or burn” or “hellfire and brimstone” may come to mind. These stereotypes are understandable. These people do exist and do head out to the streets and the front of concerts every weekend. A man was once street preaching in downtown Ft. Worth Texas with a sign that read, “…God is angry with the wicked every day…” –Psalm 7:11. This is true. This is Scripture. What was missing however was the other side of the story… the grace of the gospel. While these people have good intentions and seem to miss the mark we can’t judge all of it and say it’s wrong or that only some people are gifted for street evangelism. Anyone can do this and it will be a rewarding experience that will challenge your personality and perceptions. We can correct this stereotype without ignoring both the truth and the grace of the gospel and do so in an attitude of earnest loving concern for souls.
With that in mind, I have a question for you. Are evangelism and sharing the gospel the same thing? It's not a trick question. For much of modern Christianity while we may verbally admit they are the same... we end up denying this in our practices. We've made evangelism less than sharing the gospel in our contentment with methods that fall short of actually sharing the message. Evangelism can be more than sharing the gospel, but it can never be less than that. There are generally four ways contemporary Christianity approaches evangelism:
1) Lifestyle Evangelism (Matthew 5:16, 1 Peter 2:11-12): This is probably the most popular form of evangelism today. It’s often expressed by saying something like, “We should live in such a way that the world takes notice that we have something they don’t have.” The hope is that they would approach us and ask us about our lifestyle and our Jesus. It’s presented as a noble calling to share your faith "by the way you live." While Scripture does elude to our lifestyle having an effect on a watching world, it’s doubtful that the Lord intended us to base our evangelism in a passive hopeful expectation that unbelievers would grow interested in our way of life without us taking an active step in verbally making Christ known. At the end of the day we must admit that we don’t live as perfectly as Christ did nor do we have His fanfare. We all still sin and sometimes badly. Our lifestyle shouldn’t and ultimately can’t determine our chances to share.
D. L. Moody was once street preaching and a woman approached him and criticized his method of evangelism. He asked her how she shared her faith. She admitted that she didn’t. He replied, “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.” Often when this approach is our default we think we are obeying the Great Commission when in reality we are rarely sharing at all. It becomes more an effort at being kind than sharing Christ. If anything it translates to a brief abstract mention of church, Jesus, Christianity in general, or a Bible verse… with no clear and honest explanation of sin, hell, judgment, the reason Christ died, the resurrection, and the biblical response to be saved. St. Francis of Assisi is quoted when he said, “Preach the gospel and if necessary use words.” He founded the Franciscan Order of Friars and preachers. Francis said this in reaction to the fact that some of the preachers in his order were involved in some things a preacher of the gospel should not be involved in. He certainly didn’t intend for it to be used as it commonly is today to support the idea that words aren’t necessary to communicate the gospel. The gospel is a message and a message requires words. God chose the text of Scripture and the preaching of the apostles to pass the gospel onto us and we need not neglect using words ourselves. One of the major tenets of the Franciscan Order was “A godly life must support the witness of preaching.” The issue then for Francis and even today at the heart of this form of evangelism is fundamentally a desire for holiness. We are to live holy lives because Scripture calls us to do this. That must however be married to our proclamation of the gospel to “support” it not to replace it. If we don’t share the message we cannot call what we’re doing “evangelism” in any legitimate sense. Romans 10:14 asks, “…how can they hear without a preacher?” St. Francis also said, "Unless you preach everywhere you go, there is no use going anywhere to preach." Do we follow this advice?
2) Servant/Social Evangelism (Matthew 25:40, Luke 10:30-37): This generally places an emphasis on helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and meeting the tangible needs of the less fortunate. A common contemporary expression of this is a mission trip to build houses and do manual labor. This can extend to efforts at political and moral reform or Dominion Theology (a desire for a Christian government/one in which God is the head). A church once made a youtube video titled, “Servant Evangelism.” The video showed a pastor and a number of youth hitting the local park with coolers filled with canned soft drinks. They distributed the drinks with something to the effect of saying, “Jesus loves you” and that was all. Is this evangelism? A larger church once hit the streets of a downtown area on a warm day with cold water bottles. These bottles had a custom designed label on them with their church information (service times, address, website, etc.) and circling the top of the label a line that read, “God so loved the world that He gave…” (John 3:16). The question becomes... what did God give? Bottled water? His Son? Why are we afraid to say that? A group of college Bible students once wanted to make an impact on the surrounding community and fulfill a class assignment. One of them baked cookies. The group met together and packaged them with small cards that read something to the effect of “The students of Moody Bible Institute thank you for what you’re doing for the community” and went about handing them out to the employees at local restaurants up and down Chicago Avenue. Will this alone reach those people with what they need to hear?
The heart of Servant Evangelism when done well is needed on many fronts. There will always be those whose hearts burn for the needy and who thrive on a principal of justice and care for the oppressed. Jesus Himself said we will always have the poor among us. At Moody we have another group/PCM on campus called Frontlines specifically to the homeless on the streets of Chicago. Through all of these things however we cannot forget that the gospel must go forth. The trouble is that service projects usually begin with the goal of serving and they stop there. The pressure on participants then becomes to end the same way it began. Success on a practical level turns into how much fun you had and maybe how many smiles you got from those you served. These things must also support our preaching of the gospel, because if the temporal replaces the eternal we have lost sight of the main thing God specifically, biblically, and assuredly chooses to use to bring men and women to Himself. A man had the desire to preach under a tent one hot day. It was a large tent on the lawn of a Baptist Mega-church. The church volunteers were aiding the victims of Hurricane Katrina that we all remember so well. Under that tent as the environment resembled an outdoor flea market he caught the crowd’s attention and began to preach the message of salvation. Afterward he reflected on the experience and later wrote these words, “God forbid we clothe their backs, feed their stomachs, and send them off to hell!” May we never forget what the apostle Paul also said, “For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” -1 Cor. 15:3. Again there is nothing wrong with helping those in need, but we can’t ignore their eternal needs and in fact should make those needs of "first importance."
3) Relational Evangelism (Acts 8:27-39): This is usually expressed in the form of Friendship evangelism. Someone desires to build a relationship with a person and once they’ve developed credibility to then discuss spiritual things and/or share the gospel. For some out there this is the best way to reach them. Some have so much animosity toward anything close to Christianity or even religion in general. Perhaps they’ve been burned by a church or see most “Christians” as hypocrites. These things can over time form a hardened exterior that can often best be broken down over a longer span of time and regular contact. This is most easily accomplished when working or going to school in a secular environment that brings us in the vicinity of the same non-Christians regularly. Moody Professor Clive Craigen who teaches Introduction to Disciplemaking makes this emphasis his primary method of evangelism, but makes a timely point when he says, “You can be relational without having a relationship.” Very often we believe we need to build a friendship before we can ever share the message they need to hear. This usually degenerates to a situation where we develop many friendships with non-Christians and some of them for years without ever discussing the hard question of where they will go when they die. They may know we are a Christian and try to curb their profanity when in our presence, but they may not know how they can be saved as well. The fact remains that the longer we leave it the harder it gets. Colossians 4:5 says, "Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity." There must be bottom-line urgency in our efforts. May we fear the Lord enough for our wisdom to begin and may that wisdom motivate us to share, for our listener may not fear the Lord.
We can develop a fear of offending someone or losing the friendship and time goes on and on. A man once worked in a high rise building and he worked near the same woman each day. He tried and tried to work himself up to sharing his faith with her, but just couldn’t do it. One morning as he walked up to the building he found that this very woman had been overcome with depression and had jumped from her high level of the building only to meet the pavement below before his very eyes. He never shared with her. We must admit that death is possible for anyone at any time. We don’t know the future and if we really do care about the eternity of a person we can build a relationship in a few minutes. Philip did witness relationally with the Ethiopian Eunich, but he didn’t wait a year to share with the guy! One of the ways Student Outreach does this is to do 1-2-1 witnessing. We offer a gospel tract and begin a spiritual conversation with someone on the streets. This will be discussed in detail later. Once again the point is that the gospel goes forth. Our goal should not simply be to get to know the lost (while we should be genuine in that also), but to share the actual message of salvation.
4) Confrontational Evangelism (1 Cor. 9:16, 1 Cor. 15:3): The word “confrontational” is used out of convenience, but it usually has a negative connotation. It would be more accurate to call it Active or Intentional Evangelism. This is the kind of evangelism that is direct and purposeful in going out to share. This is where you’ll find Student Outreach (another ministry group at Moody) lands out of the four. We are primarily a proclamation ministry. While we have incorporated various aspects of some of the others mentioned above from time to time (and are open to new ideas and anything you would bring to the table), we primarily focus on sharing the message. We do of course have conversations (some of which can last well over a half hour). We don’t restrict anyone or force them to end a conversation prematurely. There are precautions taken however and we do remain responsible to see that everyone arrives back on campus safely.
We aren’t just advocating a “hit and run” kind of evangelism where we have a monologue, shake their hand, and leave. The context in which we minister is usually one in which you see different people each week and don’t have a lot of time with them (while that isn’t always true of course). This is what we’re training others to be able to do so you can share the gospel in a reasonably short amount of time, with anyone you meet, at anytime you meet them, and in a clear concise way. This is also one of the most challenging forms of evangelism because it forces you to leap out of your comfort zone, speak to strangers about the truth of God’s Word, and enter the night not knowing who you’ll meet or what questions you’ll be asked. In this we want to encourage you to pray for an urgency in reaching the lost. Don't let fear or popularity determine your evangelism. When our perspective is truly informed by the reality of Hell, the severity of sin, the fate of the lost, and the offer of the cross it will influence our methodology. Regardless of how you’ve shared your faith in the past we want you to have the urgency and zeal of the apostles and the early church who could not but testify of what they'd seen and heard. (1 John 1:3)
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