Evangelism (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

Announcing Jesus

The prophet Isaiah was speaking about John when he said, “He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming! Clear the road for him!’ ”

—Matthew 3:3 NLT

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” says Keyser Söze in the movie The Usual Suspects. I argue one of the greatest tricks the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians they only need to hear the gospel once. The pastoral practice of evangelism has eroded into a skeleton of itself and seemingly only has relevance for our skeleton days too. Evidence of hit-and-run evangelism is rampant. Many people have tucked into their back pockets what they think is their “get out of hell” free card to retrieve later. Other converts were sold an evangelistic bill of goods that makes promises for God that God never made. Ministers often have the difficult task of going backward with converts to retrace their initial steps in order to move forward into the life of faith. When ministers do this repair work, the evangelistic task is not finished—instead, it repeats. The devil never takes a day off. Like the roads in my city, repair is needed constantly. The church requires a revival of lifelong evangelism to nourish the souls God brings into our midst. The Lord gives us the great privilege of announcing and reannouncing Jesus Christ, the word of God, as the good news.

Pastors have at their disposal a myriad of words to care for souls. The announcement that the crucified Jesus has been raised from the dead—Jesus is Lord of all—is the balm, ointment, and cure for our hearts throughout life. This announcement is central to the beginning of the Christian life: Christ carried our sins to the cross and conquered them through his resurrection. Our baptisms remind us of this. This announcement is central to the life of faith; whatever our path, joy, or trial, Jesus is Lord. Our regular partaking of the Lord’s Supper reminds us of this. This announcement is central to the end of our life: our resurrection day awaits, as it did our Lord; our funerals celebrate this fact. Evangelism is not a special task outsourced to a unique group of people, though it can be. Evangelism is not a one-time confrontational conversation, though it can be. Evangelism is at the heart of the ongoing work of pastoral care, inviting outsiders into the flock of the church and reminding insiders of the heart of the ongoing life of faith.

FRONT ROW SEATS

Front row seats are the best. You hear and notice things that you would never experience from farther back. When I’m in the front row of a basketball game, I hear the chatter of the players and referees, the gasping for breath between plays, the sweat falling on the hardwood—those in the front row get to absorb the humanity of the moment. When I’m in the front row of a theatrical performance, I feel the power and delicacy of a voice nurtured through years of guidance and practice. I notice the tape marking the stage to help performers shine in the spotlights. I see the intricate patterns woven into garments that are hardly noticeable from the section behind me.

One of my favorite front row seats is one that you can’t purchase. In fact, it’s priceless. I get goosebumps just thinking about the anticipation I get when I walk up to take my place at this occasion. The music begins, everyone rises from their seats, and then it starts: the bride walks down the aisle. I hardly believe that I get to see the bride in the same moment her groom sees her. I see the two of them in their first glimpse of each other on their wedding day. In that moment, I often look over my shoulder at the groom as he is in awe of his long-awaited bride. Then, I look back at the bride with her eyes locked on her groom. One of the rookie mistakes I made in officiating marriages was to forget to tell the audience to sit down afterward. All my focus was on what was happening right in front of me; I couldn’t think about anything else. I was overtaken, as if only the three of us were standing there. In a flash, I pronounced them husband and wife. Shortly before, they arrived single, but now they depart united.

My role in a wedding ceremony isn’t merely a front row seat; it is by far the best seat in the house. When I officiate a wedding, I play a short-term role in a life-changing event. I repeat some words I chose for the occasion; I recite a few Scripture passages relevant for the event, but most of all, I watch and try to get out of the way of the story that God has written in their lives. The last thing I want to do is have their memories of that moment be about me.

This book is not about weddings; it is about evangelism. But, for a moment, I’d like you to think about evangelism through the lens of officiating a wedding. Evangelism can feel like you control the eternal destiny of another person’s life. Not true. In a wedding, the officiant enters a story that is advanced, complicated, and well underway. The characters have gone through many twists and turns, and the wedding is merely a short chapter in a much longer story. Now, don’t get me wrong, the wedding is important and essential to the story—without it the rest of the story would have a much different path. Yet, I often tell my engaged friends to put more energy into planning their marriage than their wedding.

Officiating a wedding is exciting; it is a front-row experience as an attendant. Evangelism is exciting; it is also a front-row experience as an attendant—but just as an attendant. God saves; we do not.

I have been a vocational evangelist for the last three decades. I never intended to devote my professional life to this task, though I’ve been grateful and blessed to minister in this way. I grew up with little knowledge of Jesus and rarely stepped into a church in my childhood. When I was a junior in high school, a youth worker showed up at my school on a Monday at lunch with free pizza. That was one of the most important days of my life. A year later, I had been baptized, discipled, and was serving weekly in my church and reaching out to students at my old junior high school. The youth worker, Mike, was on his weekly route to deliver much more than pizza. He hoped and prayed to deliver a message that kids needed to hear: the message of the good news of Jesus Christ. The message landed right where it needed to: me.

After graduating college and working for a great technology company for a few years, my wife and I decided to quit our jobs and devote ourselves to recruiting, training, and equipping people to evangelize teenagers. I’ve learned that the ministry of evangelism is complex. The message of Jesus Christ is so simple that a child can understand it and repeat it, yet it is so multilayered and powerful that I rarely feel that I can communicate it fully. The experience of the messenger (the evangelist) is a simple task: to tell God’s story. Yet, my announcement of the good news interweaves with my own hesitation, doubt, and pride. Evangelism is an emotional roller coaster, at least for me.

Evangelism is never a self-initiated task. Evangelism, as we will see, requires a sender and a messenger. God is the sender, and the real messenger is not who you think it is. The real messenger is God. God sends the Holy Spirit, and people enabled by the Holy Spirit, as messengers appointed by God for this task. God told Moses to deliver a message to the Israelites when they were in bondage, at the foot of Sinai, and many other times. The message and the messenger were from God and delivered to the people of God through God’s Spirit. Similarly, God used other prophets to deliver God’s message. The Father chose his Son, Jesus of Nazareth, to deliver God’s message: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19).

At the outset of this book, I need to make a confession. I am embarrassed and ashamed that, for me, evangelism can be a self-serving activity. It can also be a self-defeating activity. Let me explain this a bit.

TEMPTATION

For whatever reason, I’m competitive. In sports, I strive to win and improve. In school and academics, I always strove to get 100 percent. I have thought a lot about my competitive and determined nature and have concluded that it is morally neutral—it is just a feature of how I think and work. The part that gets me in trouble is when my competitive nature interacts with my heart, my self-worth, my interactions with others, and with the Lord. This is why evangelism can be a dangerous task for me.

When I think about my impulse to evangelize others, my motivation exists somewhere in the overlap of my thankfulness to the Lord for saving me, my obedience to God’s word to preach the gospel, and my competitive desire to “win” souls. It is the last part that is most dangerous for me because it could be morally neutral, or even noble in some way, but my impulse to evangelize requires a confession that I do it sometimes for selfish purposes: I want to win.

I work frequently at outreach camps as a speaker and camp director where a report is due each time students depart from their time at camp. One of the questions on the form is: “How many students this week made a decision to follow...