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Relational Evangelism Road Trip: We need more people to witness!
By chris | May 12, 2008
Today I am in Highland, California (ONT) talking to some leaders in a blended church about relational evangelism. I asked one of the leaders, “What is missing in evangelism today?” He said something that rang very true, “What’s missing in evangelism today is the gospel.” What a great quote!
How to Make Evangelism More Organic
That made me think about how some seem want to make evangelism so “organic” that they tend to downplay the more confrontational parts of the message—even neglecting the gospel all together in some ways. They take a “laissez faire” approach to conversion when it comes to relational evangelism. Just let it happen. To them, it’s not relational enough if the evangelist has an agenda to share the gospel.
I don’t agree with that approach, but I do see it has become the view of many. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for organic, but if we want to keep an agricultural motif when it comes to talking about evangelism, I think we would be better served if we follow the same agricultural analogy used in the Bible.
In the Bible the work of reaching people with the gospel is compared to farming and not as organic weeds growing unattended (incidentally, weeds, or tares, are a symbol of sin in the NT). Paul refers to the harvest analogy when he said “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Cor. 3:6 NIV). Jesus referred to the same imagery when he said, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” (Matt 9:37 NIV).
The Bible compares our evangelism to farming. Think about what a farmer does when he farms. No farmer can say, “I make corn” or “I make wheat” or whatever else he grows. At the most the farmer can only say, “I am a partner with God in an amazing process, which produces a harvest.” The fact is the farmer cannot produce a crop unless he relies on God. There’s nothing more “organic” than relying on God to move a process forward.
At the same time, the farmer’s reliance on God does not mean his part of the harvest process is completely passive. There are many things the farmer has to do, to do his part of the process. He has to till the soil, plant the seeds, cultivate the crop while it is growing and in the end he has to harvest the crop. There is plenty for the farmer to do. Even the most organic garden needs to be tended by a gardener. All this is true, but the farmer still has to rely on God if he is going to see a harvest.
In the same way, in Christian “organic” evangelism communication, the reliance on God is not a passive do-nothing approach. There are plenty of things God expects us to do if we are going to partner with Him in the harvest of souls.
Do We Over Complicate Evangelism?
Another quote from the church leaders I talked to today was,
“I think we over complicate evangelism today. We need to simplify our evangelism so that people sense how easy it really is to share the gospel. Also, we need to help people stop seeing evangelism as just trying to get people to come to church and get them to understand they can take the gospel with them everywhere they go. They need to see they are the ‘vehicle’ for carrying the gospel to their friends, not the church service.”
Another great message! One of the things I have noticed about evangelism training is it seems almost counter-productive to our stated goals of mobilizing more people for evangelistic outreach. We know we need to get more people in our churches talking up faith in Christ, but a lot of the evangelism training we do adds new issues to our problem of getting more people active by creating the impression with church members that talking about your faith is something that is hard to do unless you have a lot of skills.
Think about common evangelism training resources you have seen. Many of them require three months of memorization and practice within the context of the group training. When I was trained to share my faith, I had a three ring binder given to me by my group leader. Each week as I attended my training, I received a little more of my notebook, when I was “ready” for the next level. The system created in me the impression I was not ready for “prime time” evangelism until I had completed my training.
Before you jump on that traditional church and ridicule their approach, think about this. In the contemporary church movement it is just as possible to create the same impression that it is hard to reach people. When new churches use expensive technology and uber high quality production values in outreach, they may be sending the unintended message that you have to be a polished communication expert and marketing guru to really reach out.
[Side note: I wonder how many potential evangelists (and church planters) are out there now thinking about getting a tattoo and learning to micro-brew their own beer because they think that’s what it takes to reach people today? Just a thought….]
Keep it Stupid Simple!
In short, in relational evangelism, we need to simplify the education process and lower the learning curve for people so we can mobilize more people with the gospel.
In missions the mantra is, “make it reproducible.” That is, we need to help people reproduce the gospel in their lives and make it simple enough for them to know how to take it to their friends. Whatever we can do to remove barriers to getting the gospel to spread naturally through relationships and kinship networks we should do it.
As a missionary, I hope we can begin to use approaches that require less expertise and dependence on technology and make it something that flows more naturally in people’s everyday lives. We need to develop resources and plan evangelism training in our churches that help people get active sharing their faith.
But also, we need to focus on helping them see that people will be more receptive than they imagine. Jesus said, what is lacking is not receptive people but instead, workers in the harvest. We need to make ourselves more available to God as witnesses. You don’t have to be a minister or traveling evangelist to be a work in the harvest. You simply need to answer the call from the Lord of the Harvest. Anyone can be a witness for Jesus!
Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Matthew 9:38)
Topics: Evangelism |
May 13th, 2008 at 4:45 am
I like the analogy of the farmer who has to work.
There is a process of cooperating with God’s work in evangelism, so we can’t get off scott free (who’s Scott, anyway?).
I’m doing a series now on scripts because they are helpful, and it won’t be three months of training. The point of the script is to use one.
Yet how can one develop an evangelism training resource that is both simple and complete? That seems to the be the larger question.
For those of us who conduct training sessions, how can we keep it simple without keeping it stupid? Keep it simple without complete reductionism?
Alpha’s training is simply three sessions (last time I did it). Other programs to 10 weeks (about 20 hours). Live trainers may have 3-16 hours depending on how much teaching time is provided.
Finally, you write “we need to focus on helping them see that people will be more receptive then they imagine.” This I think is the key to all training — give a simple model, give them time to practice during the week, and come back to share.
I write about such an idea at Personal Evangelism Coaching
Pastor Chris
EvangelismCoach.org