Friday, March 06, 2009
The Evangelism Myth...
If you talk enough about sharing our faith, and do enough things related to sharing our faith... then it is easy to believe we are evangelistic. Even when you are not. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I have done evangelism training and seminars for years. I do them for Herald of Truth. And now we are planning a major emphasis at Southern Hills to equip our people to do evangelism. Our elders are so committed to this that we are going to have Phil preach on it and we are going to spend major class time in the fall teaching our people how to share their faith. I am heavily involved in this so I have been thinking about it a lot.
At Southern Hills, some of us realized that we have been doing a lot of things relating to evangelism, but that is not the same as being evangelistic. We spent a year crafting a mission statement about God's front porch to the community in Abilene and in the world. We have crafted worship services that communicate to different generations. We are spending millions to make sure our buildings are conducive to community outreach. We sponsor lots of activities where the community is exposed to us.
And we are getting a lot of people onto the front porch. Now we have to figure out how to invite them into the house. We have opened many doors for evangelism, but we haven't done much with them yet. Doing community service, locally or around the world, is not evangelism. Communicating the old message in vibrant meaningful ways is not evangelism if the lost are not there to hear it. Functional buildings are meaningless if not used for the function they were built for.
Evangelism happens when we tell someone about Jesus. If that doesn't happen, are we really any different than a social organization dedicated to serving people?
I don't want to just talk about evangelism. I don't want to pat ourselves on the back for doing a number of things to help us evangelize. I want people to hear the good news of Jesus.
I'll share more about this over the next few weeks, but it is really on my heart. Love to hear your thoughts about evangelism. Is anybody out there really doing it?
At Southern Hills, some of us realized that we have been doing a lot of things relating to evangelism, but that is not the same as being evangelistic. We spent a year crafting a mission statement about God's front porch to the community in Abilene and in the world. We have crafted worship services that communicate to different generations. We are spending millions to make sure our buildings are conducive to community outreach. We sponsor lots of activities where the community is exposed to us.
And we are getting a lot of people onto the front porch. Now we have to figure out how to invite them into the house. We have opened many doors for evangelism, but we haven't done much with them yet. Doing community service, locally or around the world, is not evangelism. Communicating the old message in vibrant meaningful ways is not evangelism if the lost are not there to hear it. Functional buildings are meaningless if not used for the function they were built for.
Evangelism happens when we tell someone about Jesus. If that doesn't happen, are we really any different than a social organization dedicated to serving people?
I don't want to just talk about evangelism. I don't want to pat ourselves on the back for doing a number of things to help us evangelize. I want people to hear the good news of Jesus.
I'll share more about this over the next few weeks, but it is really on my heart. Love to hear your thoughts about evangelism. Is anybody out there really doing it?
