By Minister Moses – January 2012
Picture this: an enthusiastic group of local churchgoers have assembled on a blustery Saturday morning in their local town-centre. It’s half-past one in the afternoon, hand-written leaflets had advertised the event to start at midday, and banners are still being put-up – “JESUS LOVE’S YOU, HEVAN IS WEIGHTING’ – the zealous Pastor is arresting the unsuspecting passers-by, demanding to know “If you die today, now, right this instant, will you be going to heaven or hell friend!?”.
A timid worship team are finding their voice through the depressing chorus of a slow song about the ‘blood slain by the lamb’. To top it off, the outreach ends with an announcement about their local assembly meeting point – somewhere in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by eleven other similar sized churches.
Not very inspiring is it?
When Jesus ascended into heaven in Matthew 28:19, after a lifetime of speaking in parables, he left his disciples with an unambiguous mandate – ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations’. We often refer to this as ‘soul winning’ or evangelism: a term often used to describe the process by which we share the gospel to others so they in turn receive Jesus into their lives. Christ’s rallying cry has echoed through over two-thousand years of world history and inspired the achievements of great evangelists from the Apostle Paul to Billy Graham.
I’m clear that the scene I described above isn’t necessarily a bad approach, but it has, in my opinion, lost its effectiveness. Soul winning through evangelism is a profound responsibility and is therefore a process that requires forensic preparation and world-class execution. However, growing up in the church, I have seen so many times that precious little thought goes into much of what we do as ‘kingdom’ minded believers.
In Matthew 13 Jesus compares ‘soul winning’ to farming, the parable of the farmer who sows his seed on hard, thorny and good ground then reaps harvests of varying bounty.
I don’t think the metaphor is coincidental. Farming is a highly specialised trade; it requires a dynamic and committed approach to succeed. And it’s exactly the same for expanding the kingdom of God through ‘soul winning’. It takes careful thought, creativity and consistency. Proverbs 11:30 calls it wisdom:
‘The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and the one who is wise saves lives.’
Many of us now live in wonderfully diverse societies where one size emphatically does not fit all. It takes God given wisdom to present the gospel in a way that society can palatably assimilate. We would do well, therefore, to take the time and effort to reconsider how we express God’s gospel in a relevant and, more importantly, effective way within our respective societies.
Jesus, for example, did not obstinately follow the same traditional methods of sharing the kingdom as his contemporary teachers of the law. He was creative, accessible and, most importantly, again, effective: ‘When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.’ (Matt 7:28-29)
The Apostle Paul certainly learnt the lesson of shrewdness; he changed the colour of his evangelical approach with chameleonic adaptability. Throughout the book of Acts we see him changing tact to suit the culture and religious influence of the people he was addressing, most notably on Mars Hill where he preached Christ to a gathering of superstitious philosophers by using an idol (of all things!) consecrated to the ‘Unknown God’ (Acts 17).
But for me, the most timeless example of wisdom in action is offered by Peter, who instructed the approach wives with unbelieving husbands ought to take. Instead of bible bashing, he writes: ‘if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over, without words, by the behaviour of their wives’ (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Behaviour is a powerful thing, as Mark Twain well put it: ‘few things are harder to put up with than a good example’. Our day to day conduct can actually be used as a powerful tool of evangelism, where actions speak louder than words or choruses sung in a shopping centre.
My prayer is that all of us grow to gain wisdom in ‘soul winning’. May your actions, words, values and beliefs work together like a force-field that magnetises the attention of the people around you so that they are ultimately able to consume God’s gospel through your truly precious life!
MM
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