Plan to stop not evangelizing

Last month I read an extraordinarily practical and potentially revolutionary book: The Gospel & Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever. I say potentially revolutionary because I believe if many of us made this book part of our spiritual DNA it would change lives and churches. To that end I bought an extra copy to give away at my church and I'll probably be buying more to give away in the future. It's a small paperback ($9.99 on Amazon) and can be easily read over the course of a few days. Dever writes in his introduction that one of his main aims in writing the book is to "help your church to develop a culture of evangelism. What do I mean by a culture of evangelism? I mean an expectation that Christians will share the gospel with others, talk about doing that, pray about it, and regularly plan and work together to help each other evangelize. We want evangelism to be normal--in our own lives and in our churches."

There are people that have the gift of evangelism. I don't. The thought of it makes me very uncomfortable. However, as Dever makes clear that doesn't get me off the hook. The Great Commission is binding on every member of the church. As an aside, the same is true of all of Jesus's commands. Just because someone scores low on a spiritual gifts test doesn't absolve them of practicing mercy or prayer or teaching or evangelism. These are universal imperatives. We won't all be Billy Graham, but perhaps there's one person that God has uniquely placed in your life for you to share the good news of Christ with. But back to the book.

Dever's book is divided into seven chapters all posed as questions. 1)Why Don't We Evangelize? 2)What Is the Gospel? 3)Who Should Evangelize? 4)How Should We Evangelize? 5)What Isn't Evangelism? 6)What Should We Do After We Evangelize? 7)Why Should We Evangelize? The answers to some of these questions seem obvious, and they are, but Dever has a knack for digging deeper and sharing insights gleaned from scripture and the experiences of soul-winners of the past. Dever is a "people person" and evidently a keen observer of human nature. Some of the best insights in this book come from Dever recounting his own encounters with various types of people and then discussing what went right or wrong in his efforts to evangelize in those situations.

Immediately this book made me see that my evangelistic efforts are woefully lacking. Dever writes bluntly in Chapter 1:

"Flunk" is a word we don't use much anymore. It's a hard, sharp inflexible kind of word. But it's probably a good word to use to quickly summarize how most of us have done in obeying the call to evangelize. Jesus says to tell all nations the good news, but we haven't. Jesus calls people to be fishers of men, but we prefer to watch. Peter says to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have, but we are not. Solomon says he who wins souls is wise, but we flunk.

But if you're anything like me, you're probably not quite so blunt about your failures in evangelism. You've altered your mental records. In fact, even at the time you're not witnessing, you're busy spinning, justifying, rationalizing, and explaining to your conscience why it was really wise and faithful and kind and obedient not to share the gospel with a particular person at that time and in that situation.

Ouch! Another word for "flunk" is disobedience and another word for disobedience is sin. Dever goes on to discuss several basic excuses that Christians give not to evangelize and then gets to the "heart of most of our non-evangelism"...we simply don't plan to evangelize. The basic message I took away from this book is the title of this post: plan to stop not evangelizing. That admonition launches the back bone of this book -- the who, what and why of evangelism -- which I hope will be read widely. It's written in a way that will benefit everyone from pastors to businessmen to stay-at-home moms. Dever doesn't offer a new formula or step-by-step program that promises to revolutionize our evangelism (in fact he has some trenchant criticism of that approach), but he does offer some practical suggestions.

One example--Dever shares how being a pastor has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it's an obvious conversation starter that can lead to evangelistic opportunities, but on the other hand, since you're spending most of your time with fellow believers, it can be hard to build relationships with unbelievers. Dever tries to counter that by intentionally frequenting the same restaurants and businesses in order to build relationships...for instance with the Muslim couple who run the Subway restaurant near his Capitol Hill church. A couple of years ago I was involved with a group that was trying to plant a church in downtown West Palm Beach. The pastor and I would have breakfast every Wednesday at the same local diner for the same reason. Unfortunately, just as we were building a fruitful relationship with the manager he took a job elsewhere. This kind of relational evangelism can work, but it often takes a long time.

Perhaps the most provocative part of this book is the chapter on what isn't evangelism: it isn't imposition, it isn't personal testimony, it isn't social action and public involvement, it isn't apologetics, and lastly, it isn't the results of evangelism. Dever explains:

...one of the most common and dangerous mistakes in evangelism is to misinterpret the results of evangelism--the conversion of unbelievers--for evangelism itself, which is the simple telling of the gospel message...evangelism must not be confused with its fruit.

He goes on to give a revealing example of how this error manifested itself in one church.

I sat across the table from a 'big' preacher. His church had five thousand on a Sunday morning. I asked him about his evangelism strategy. He said his church employed two seminary students, each of whom was required to have two people come forward for baptism each Sunday. Therefore, a minimum of four people would 'profess faith' each Sunday--208 a year. He added, 'You can't get invitations to evangelism conferences unless you baptize 200 a year.' I was dumbfounded! I probed a bit. 'What if Sunday comes and the seminarian doesn't have two who will profess faith?' He responded, 'I will get students who can get the job done.' I questioned, 'What if these fellows are forced to cut some theological corners to meet their quota?' He was unconcerned and thought my question trivial, pesky, and the child of a too lively conscience.

Yes, it's wonderful when people immediately respond upon hearing the gospel. This has often been the case during times of spiritual awakening when the Holy Spirit's convicting power has been most evident. But the results of evangelism are always dependent on the Spirit's working whether they are immediate or many years in the future, as they were in the life of Luke Short.

It took a long time for the conversion of Mr. Short. He was a New England farmer who lived to be one hundred years old. Sometime in the middle of the 1700s he was sitting in his fields reflecting on his long life. As he did, "he recalled a sermon he had heard in Dartmouth (England) as a boy before he sailed to America. The horror of dying under the curse of God was impressed upon him as he meditated on the words he had heard so long ago and he was converted to Christ--eighty-five years after hearing John Flavel preach." The preacher, John Flavel, had been a faithful evangelist eighty-five years earlier. And he was wiser than to have thought that the day he preached the sermon, he would quickly see its fruit.

Evangelism is not an imposition of our ideas upon others. It is not merely personal testimony. It is not merely social action. It may not involve apologetics, and it is not the same thing as the results of evangelism. Evangelism is telling people the wonderful truth about God, the great news about Jesus Christ. When we understand this, then obedience to the call to evangelize can become certain and joyful. Understanding this increases evangelism as it moves from being a guilt-driven burden to a joyful privilege.

So what is the "great news about Jesus Christ"? What is the gospel message? This is always a pressing question for the church. Never more so than now. At Dever's church, Capitol Hill Baptist, he asks prospective members to explain the gospel (in their own words) in one minute or less. Here it is in Dever's words.

...the good news is that the one and only God, who is holy, made us in his image to know him. But we sinned and cut ourselves off from him. In his great love, God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law himself and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn and trust in him. He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ's sacrifice and that God's wrath against us had been exhausted. He now calls us to repent of our sins and to trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness. If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are born again into a new life, an eternal life with God.

Now that's good news.

If you've never done that (repent of your sins and trust in Christ alone), you've just been evangelized.