Evangelistic Ecclesiology

Body

(1) Evangelism as both a corporate and individual responsibility

It is not until every individual within the local congregation understands that evangelism is a part of their commitment to the local church that we truly adopt Truth-Grounded/Gospel-Centered/Mission-Oriented values as a church.

“to assume that salvation is just for us “is as though the postman were to imagine that all the letters in his bag were intended for him” (N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity, p. 108)

We must be Christians who have set the table for unbelievers in both a corporate and individual sense. This means adopting a church vision that keeps the lost in mind in preaching, teaching, praying, giving, and living. In other words, we are prepared to encounter the lost in our church, jobs, hobbies, and homes.

“Being saved to serve, Christ-confessors must sense keenly that Sunday’s worship is unto Monday’s work.” (Reformed Ecumenical Synod, The Church and Its Social Calling, p. 24).

(2) Evangelism as a lifestyle

Stop praying for opportunities, God has placed you in an area with nearly 50,000 citizens and growing. I think it’s safe to assume he has already answered that prayer for opportunities. Pray for boundaries. When you pray for boundaries, you will find way more opportunities and less excuses to witness to someone. Say, “God, I’m just gonna go and witness, if there is someone you don’t want me witnessing to, let me know, otherwise, I’m just gonna get after it”. Then, don’t be surprised if he never tells you no. Save the surprise for when and if he finally says not to witness to someone.

This means adopting a bold and relentless mentality.

James Hudson Taylor: 14,000 conversations, tracts, New Testaments, etc.

Christians today as whole, share the gospel 0.086% of the amount of times one man did in one year back in the 1800’s. They didn’t have social media, an efficient mail system, cell phones, I mean they hadn’t even discovered bread ties yet, and somehow with all of our advancements, we’ve managed to become more than 99% less efficient at sharing the gospel as whole versus one man with a missional burden in China.

Now this turns some mentalities on top of their heads, because people ask “what about relationships. Shouldn’t we take time to get to know people and establish a friendship with them, so that they are more likely to listen to us when we share the gospel”. Time is a very funny thing. Something we don’t have much of, and so I find time to be to short and precious and the reality of eternity to long to gamble with God if I’m gonna have time to build a relationship with someone before they or I enter into eternity, because once they pass on, my chance to win them to Christ is done, and once I pass on, my chance to win as many possibly is done.

We treat the rules of evangelism like its the rules of dating: you never kiss on the first date, so surely you don’t share the gospel on it either.

(3) Evangelism as confidence in the efficacy of the Gospel

(4) Evangelism as church service

In other words, the greatest way you serve the church is by being the church among the lost.

This has been turned around as the church has become more of an institutionalized business rather than the Body of Christ

We begin asking questions like “whats one thing your church can do better than 10,000 other churches” or “how can we market the church better on social media, in the neighborhood, etc” and suddenly the church becomes a product to sale and not a people who serve.

We start creating all of these different ministries and jobs that require more bodies to serve in the church, and suddenly our understanding of serving is completely inward focused.

My ongoing feud with Baptist churches is we are desperate for laborers in the church more than we are desperate for laborers in the harvest. We get so hyper-fixated on trying to help people discover their spiritual gifts so they can better serve the church, that we overlook equipping people to be better laborers among the lost.

We have become more inward focus, as we determine the servanthood of the believer as that which they do for the body rather than those they win into the body. When we think about the “servants” of the church, we tend to think in terms of attendance, tithing, cooking, chaperoning, cleaning, etc. Rarely do we think in terms of benevolence, generosity towards outsiders, proclamation in the work place and so on.

We view servanthood as meeting the tangible needs of the building and it’s ministries instead of viewing servanthood as utilizing gifts to edify believers so they can meet the spiritual needs of our communities

How do we fix this? We see what we do in the church as a means to shape and transform our efforts to win those outside of the church. The church becomes a training ground where we teach people to become all things to all people in hopes of saving some.

(5) Evangelism as a metric of maturity

Conclusion