What is "evangelism?" Is it preaching the gospel, disseminating knowledge about the gospel, convincing people to believe in the gospel, or demonstrating the gospel in action?
This brings up another question: What is the "gospel?" Is it Christian teachings, a set of Christian facts and knowledge, a Christian worldview, or God's ultimate desire restore all things to perfection and how we can become partner and friends (i.e., disciples...?) with God's in his desire for the world?
For some ten to fifteen years now, I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the definitions for both "evangelism" and "gospel" that I've too frequently heard. Evangelism is too often limited to "preaching the gospel." The gospel is nearly always defined to be something like "a set of doctrines." In other words, we evangelize because we believe that if people don't know and believe a set of doctrines, they will be lost and doomed to punishment. After all, isn't this what Matthew 28:19-20 says?
If indeed the ultimate goal is to make sure people listen to and accept doctrines, then any means used to maximize the ends are acceptable, right? It doesn't matter if the means employ some "white lie" deceptions, or a bit of bribing, or coercion, or manipulation -- as long as people can be placed in a position to hear (because the message content is primary), then we've done our part in evangelism, right? No, because I believe the means is the message. How we live and how we relate to others says more about what we really believe than any seminar or sermon will.
I refer you to two external blog entries. Both reflect my reservations and strong discomfort with evangelism as frequently practiced. Both are authored by Seventh-day Adventist pastors and raise issues regarding the current state of evangelism within the church. The second (as the title suggests) proposes some solutions to the crisis.
- Loren Seibold, Truthful Evangelism on Spectrum Blog
- Ryan Bell, Missional Church: Recovering Evangelism as Authentic, Credible Witness (click PDF link in the post)
This is why I am rather uncomfortable with evangelism initiatives coming from "up high" in the church hierarchy. Most of these administrative initiatives assume the only really valid form of evangelism is meetings and preaching, or that any personal evangelism must eventually lead to mass evangelism. It puts unnecessary pressure on local churches and their leaders to outwardly do something and to employ godless measures to make their reports look good.
I intend to do what I can to resist both the pressures and temptations to employ any means other than genuine love and honesty in genuine evangelism. To do otherwise would be to give into, employ, and support the methods of the devil (c.f., Desire of Ages, pp. 22, 678, 759).
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