It all depends on whether you’re a glass-half-full, or a glass-half-empty kind of person.
One way of looking at it is to say that more than half of Sydney/Illawarra/Mountains doesn’t know a Christian, and so we need to get out there and contact and connect with them. And there’s a lot going for that. But right from the git-go, it feels overwhelming – even massively so. The glass is way less even than half empty!
I come at it from the other side. There are 60,000 odd members of Sydney Anglican churches, each of whom has varying degrees of contact and connection already with unbelieving friends and family members. The building blocks are (mostly) in place. Overwhelmingly, we believe in the uniqueness of Christ, the necessity of conversion, and the reality of hell. That’s what happens when you have a great theological college and expository preachers.
So to raise the evangelistic temperature several notches, we need to do 2 things:
- Teach a prayer. The single most important thing to increase our outreach is to pray. At CCIW, we have started embedding this prayer in our culture – we pray it at services, in growth groups and individually (hopefully daily). Gracious God, you desire all people to be saved. Please open the hearts of people in this area to you, open doors of opportunity for the gospel to me, and give me the courage and wisdom to walk through them.
If we pray a prayer like this regularly, I find it hard to imagine that the Living Lord won’t answer it.
2. But second, what happens when God does answer this prayer? We need to put a resource in the hands of regular non-expert church members, so that if and when someone does pipe up because God has opened their heart, the Christian knows what to do.
The resource needs to be a clear statement of the gospel, as well as:
- designed for a non-expert (most of the courses around are designed for experts – ie. theologically trained people);
- designed for a 1-1 context (most of the courses are designed for groups);
- less than 7 sessions;
- if it’s a book, less than 100 pages (much more is too intimidating for both Christian and inquirer).
Two resources come to mind: John Dickson’s new course The Life of Jesus looks terrific – incredible production values, focussed on Jesus (obviously), and meets all the criteria except length (the book is 200 pages).
On the other hand, I wonder whether in a post Christian society, that no longer has even the whiff of the Biblical world-view within which Jesus makes sense, we need to start further back. And so I have written a course/produced DVD called God’s World, which starts with creation and sin, and moves along a thematic trajectory.
In the end, the resource doesn’t matter so much.
But do these 2 things – pray and resource – and the evangelistic temperature will go up hugely!
The God’s World videos are also on YouTube.
Timmis and Chester have an excellent resource called ” the world we all want” which I can recommend.
I also wonder whether give people a bible reading methodolgy is important so that they can read the bible with their interested friends in a non expert way.
for the gospel I use a three question approach
I call it MIC.
mission, identity, calling.
take any passage and ask
what did Jesus do?
who is he ?
what call does he make on people’s life?
but check out Timmis Chester if you want more of a establishing in Christ and community course.
Dear Andrew,
“I wonder whether in a post Christian society, that no longer has even the whiff of the Biblical world-view within which Jesus makes sense, we need to start further back.”
I think you are spot on here. Don Carson in his series of sermons “Reaching an Untouched Generation” on evangelising generations of postmodern and post-Christian society (free download at Sydney Anglicans.net audio section – “Worldview Evangelism”) makes the point that we need to explain the Chrisitan/Biblical worldview first before gospel can make sense to a person of a different worldview.
He says that most of the evangelistic strategies of 20 to 30 years ago are not effective now because they depended on people have a Christian worldview.
I agree that there is not much out there that fits what you need, easy, 1 to 1, short.
Don Carson suggests the Chronological Bible Stories by New Tribes Mission but it is too long.
You might want to look at God’s Story (http://www.gods-story.org/). It is video based.
There is an Australian missionary in Taiwan who has summarised the Chronological Bible Stories down to 7 stories of 3-4 pages long. It is meant to be told orally. She has used to good effect in Taiwan. I am in the process of translating them into Thai to use in the Thai context and it has worked better than straight Biblestudies with Thais.
Carson argues that stories work well with Postmoderns.
Richard
Here is the link to Don Carsons series: ‘Reaching an Untouched Generation’, a series on evangelising generations of postmoderns by Dr. Donald A. Carson (http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/media/audio/speaker/P100/)
Don Carson: Postmodernism and Biblical Illiteracy
Don Carson: First Steps Toward Regrouping
Don Carson: Worldview Evangelism
Don Carson: Apostolic Evangelism of Biblical Illiterates
Don Carson: Faith in the Cross of Christ
Rico Tice (who I think is a brilliant evangelist)
his material is great.
I’ve used -both his Christianity Explored ‘study booklet’, & also at times his condensed ‘book version’ of the course 1-1, they both have worked wonderfully, & participants loved the material.
Just been watching Life of Jesus tonight with a baptism couple. They’re reading The Essential Jesus between sessions. Its very good.
Prayer and resources? I thought there were going to be some things inbetween those two things.
I don’t think just by producing resources, the evangelistic temperature is going to go up more than a few degrees…
Mike,
what happened to prayer in the second paragraph – ‘just by producing resources’? No way.
MJ not sure what you mean.
surely fervent, frequent, heartfelt prayer will lift the evangelistic temperature?
I recall this is the first policy of the diocese and seems right – call upon God to pour out his spirit in such a way that God’s people are assured of his love and moved in sacrificial compassion for the lost.
what would you suggest in between?
Would it be acceptable to say that we don’t teach
the uniqueness of Christ, the necessity of conversion, and the reality of hell enough? Because if we did as a Christian culture, why wouldn’t the temperature of Evangelism go up?
Isn’t evangelism a result of a deep appreciation of Christ and a transformed heart + world view? I guess, then we could fall into the danger of measuring where one is at by acts of evangelism.. thoughts?
BTW… the prayer is a great!
I take back part of what I said..first and foremost I see that it is a spiritual thing, so prayer is good and necessary.
Having said that though, logically evangelism should follow if one understands those things.. so maybe we need to teach robustly again and again those doctrines.. rather than telling people to do evangelism.
I find it a bit ironic how we need to tell people how they ought to tell others about JEsus when they already know him personally, assuming that they already are believers. Yet at the same time.. I see the gap in which those resources are necessary.
Jenny,
thanks for joining in.
I guess not stressing those things enough is a possibility, and I may be wrong, but my feeling is that they are right at the center of what we preach. Is your experience different?
NO … you’d kick me out of church if i said yes..
I guess doctrine always governs preaching.. and when you’re faithful in preaching those key doctrines should always be implicit. Also, I take it that putting evangelism on the agenda is based on sound doctrine.
My question is more methodology. I get a bit nervous when we focus on tasks…I see the danger of legalism due to our forgetful hearts on the grace of God.
I’ve been a Xn for now about 9 years … and I can’t recall hearing a sermon, specifically on the reality of hell. ( I look forward to hearing one from you! or maybe I missed it while I was away). I did read a book about Hell and it really did make me want to go and tell others about Jesus.
Which brings me to the next question:
Theologically what drives evangelism?
Is it the command to proclaim Christ’ Lordship and extend his Kingdom?
Is it God’s heart for the lost?
Is it my heart for the lost?
…etc?
Is there a priority? and if there is what difference does it make.
Jenny,
no kickin’ out for you! Are the sermons on hell a function of the number of passages on hell?
Great question about what drives evangelism – I think probably ‘all of the above’, as well as a concern for God’s glory.
Good question jenny
I’d say the most fundamental or irreducible reason for evangelism is that there is only one God.
That has lots of implications cf psalm96.
So evangelism is not just a rescue mission from judgement and hell, but primarily a reality mission.
Positively it’s about the joy true worship
Negatively it’s about the implications of false worship.
Which is also why the best evangelism and evangelist are an outworking of joyful worship.
Andrew, I’m loving this series, and love this post. For me, the most powerful part of the prayer is asking for the courage and wisdom to respond. It reminds me of the challenge of Romans 12:1 – offering ourselves, every day, for God to use.
And now for a question! (This seems to be a blog read by excellent scholars, apologies in advance for my very uneducated question…)
You wrote “Are the sermons on hell a function of the number of passages on hell?”. I have to ask – are they? One criticism leveled at some churches is that they preach “love” too much and don’t preach “hell” enough. I assume you can count the number of times each is mentioned in the bible and come up with some ratio for this, and then preach accordingly. My question is, over what time period does the ratio need to be maintained? Someone told me it’s each sermon, someone else said each series. I started wondering it could be even longer – a month? a year? a career?. And then I wondered if it could be even broader – that as long as the ratio was maintained across a church, a denomination, or even the entire church on the earth, it was OK?
Interesting way to put the question! I suspect that the answer should be something like ‘let the text guide you’ which was where my previous comment was coming from. Otherwise, we end up imposing on the text. One of the advantages of sequential preaching through books of the Bible.
In JOhn 11 we see Jesus greatly disturbed and weeping when he sees the reality of the death through Lazarus’ death. As he stands before the tomb of L, though he knew that he would raise L back to life in a couple of minutes he was greatly disturbed.
God’s is still glorious and remains the One LORD YHWH even when sinners rebel against him. His being, glory is not contingent upon our response to him. So what drove Jesus primarily to the cross was.. I think, the reality of Hell which death gives us a little taste of.
If, I didn’t believe in Hell, would I bother to tell people about Jesus? I say this with hesitation.. but frankly, GOd would still be the glorious GOd, and the lost will be out of relationship with GOd which won’t bother them that much.. So maybe I won’t try really hard to tell them about JEsus.. because by GOd’s grace without Hell right now… they are kind of ok.. though I do think that it is far better to know and be in a relationship with GOd in the here and now.
Apparently there are 1870 verses which talk of the reality of Hell, Jesus spoke of hell more than any other author of Scripture, and 40% of the parables which he taught were about eternal punishment ( ‘Whatever happened to Hell’ John Blanchard). Though many texts may not mention Hell.. I do feel like it was a significant part of what drove Jesus to the cross. God desires no one to be perished (Thes?? ) . For God so loved the world that no one should perish…(John 3:16)
Shane, would it be more precise to say.. one GOd who is the Judge ( v13 ) ? Hell, punishment, judgement seems to be a key motivation for calling people to faith and repentance..( Acts 17)..
I would appreciate if you unpacked a bit more on reality mission vs. resuce mission. Thank you.
Perhaps the desire to save someone from hell comes from a concern, compassion or indeed love for people?
In any case, if the motivation for evangelism is to save someone from hell, does that mean we also have a responsibility to stop people dying until someone has been able to bring the gospel to them? ie support organisations that provide food, shelter, health care such as World Vision, Compassion, Red Cross, Salvos, Anglicare etc etc?
Upon reflection.. I think I should have nuanced what I said. Telling people about Jesus so that they can escape Hell.. I think there are some dangers in this if this is the whole picture, in this way of thinking, Jesus becomes a mere ‘system’ through which one gets saved. But salvation is a relational thing, where its far, far better to be a Christian now.. even before the final day where Hell and The New Creation will be a consummated reality.
Notmensa, I don’t think i want to just help those organizations so that people can hear the gospel before they die.. even if I can help them for a day..without the prospect of them hearing the gospel, I think we should love them ..in the way they need help. But ultimately it would be awesome if God somehow reached them through whatever means.
Can I add an idea on raising the evangelistic temperature.
Do more evangelisitc courses for the non Chrisitians. Pick a course and run it every term and just keep ticking it over.
One of the reasons Alpha has been so successful is because people have done it and talked about it and there is an awareness of it both in and outside of churches.
Jesmond Parish Church in Newcastle upon Tyne has just finished leading 130 non Christians through Christianity Explored. That from a church of 1000, meaning about 1 person in 8 had a non Christian friend studying the Bible with them over 8 weeks.
They didn’t get there over night, they’ve been running the course every term for about 6 years. Everytime they run it they see more people becoming Christians and getting baptised. Every time the church hears a testimony that includes ‘I went to Christianity Explored’ they grow in confidence in the course and it’s potential to convince their friends, and so momentum grows.
I think too often we try and do everything this week or this year, when most things need time to grow and develop.