An Australian born Chinese, converted in High School at age 14 and on staff of the Chinese Christian Church in Sydney, had this to say. ‘Stop organising evangelistic events and start evangelising.’
November 26, 2009 by Pastor Ying
I was talking to someone about their ministry and their plans for next year. They spelt out their bible study program for the group, the topics they’ll be working through, and what they hope to train people in. Oh, yes they also talked about organising some evangelistic meetings during the year. At this I asked if they had thought through a mission/evangelism strategy to engage with our community to which he said “They hadn’t thought much about this.”
The tragedy I observe in many churches is that we spend more time organising an evangelistic event than actually doing the evangelism itself. Now I’m not against organising these events. I’ve organised heaps and will probably organise many before I go to glory. However my beef is when the event consumes all our time and energy so much so that very little time is given to helping people engage with our community. Organising an evangelistic event is a great thing. It can certainly give us a real sense of being part of God’s work in reaching the world. However it can also subtley distract us from reaching the world. Organising an event is cushy. But talking to friends about Jesus is scary stuff. Organising an event can give you a real high particularly when it’s well run, but explaining why people are under the judgement of God and in need of rescue can be very costly, particularly in terms of personal relationships. So it’s no wonder that it’s far easier to get people to help organise something that to go and talk to people about Jesus
Think of all the man-hours we spend setting up an event and then translate that into hours that could be used to train and help people share the gospel with their friends? Now again, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against having well run evangelistic events. I think some of the evangelistic meetings I’ve seen are so poorly run it could be used as a solution to insomnia. (Ok I need to remember that God’s is sovereign and works inspite of us. Thanks for the reminder. ) But I think something is seriously wrong when all the energy is put into this and very little is directed to training people to engage with those around them and to proclaim the gospel in a clear, relevant and interesting way.
In fact when you think about it, evangelistic events work best when the congregation is fired up to do evangelism. When the congregation is NOT doing their part, in most cases, the evangelistic event will merely be preaching to the converted. Yes it’s great that the converted hear the gospel preached regularly and frequently. But that being said, as an event for unbeliever, I think often times it seems we’re doing a very poor job.
So the please is don’t let the Evangelistic event become the excuse not to evangelize.Don’t let the event overtake the evangelism.
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