It’s like that old D.L. Moody quote, to a woman critiquing his methods: “I like my way of doing evangelism better than your way of not doing evangelism.” I think that’s the key thing. Many Christians today get more traction making fun of “outdated” evangelistic methods than they do evolving to meet the same needs. That’s wrong.
Tell me about the heart behind this. Why has even the word “evangelism” soured in the mouths of many Christians today?
I wrote about that not that long ago, asking, “Where have all the evangelism conferences gone?”
I think that part of it is simply, us. We saw what we did and became—in many instances, words without the deeds or life to back them up. But part of it also is that we need a regained confidence in the gospel. We need to get to the place where people again are doing all the things that matter. But at the same time, they think at the end of the day that the world needs Jesus—hear about Jesus and decide for him. How Jesus changed and saved us should actually cause them to tell others of this.
Second Corinthians 5 talks about how we are agents of reconciliation. We use that term a lot horizontally, in regards to human relationships, and I love it. I think we should do it more, and talk about it more. But there is also a vertical element—the context of that verse is that people need reconciliation to God.
I’ve spent 20 years encouraging people to be missional. But to be missional without sharing the message of Jesus is to deeply misunderstand the message of Jesus.
Tell me how this looks in the research. If we are misunderstanding the necessity of proclamation, do you see that in the numbers?
You bet. When I was at LifeWay Research, which I used to lead, we asked churchgoing Protestants—one demographic subset that describes most of the readership of Outreach—this question: “In the past six months, how many times have you personally shared with somebody how to become a Christian?”
Sixty-one percent said “zero.” Sixteen percent said “one.” If you combine those two together—expecting some halo effect among the 16 percent, you get 77 percent of regular churchgoing Protestants who say that they share their faith “zero” to “one” time in a six-month period. The most common answer by far, though, is “zero.”
“Well, maybe they’re inviting people to church!” some might say. Well, the common answer, when asked, “In the past six months, how many times have you invited an unchurched person to attend church?” is “0.” About 48 percent of people. So, we’re not even inviting the unchurched to church in any kind of wholesale numbers, let alone sharing with them directly how they can become a Christian.
And yet, when you look to the New Testament, we see that the last words of Jesus between his resurrection and ascension were consistently driven by an evangelistic intent. The church needs to realize that Jesus’ last words should be our first priority. And these numbers certainly don’t show that.
Are there any generational trends to note here?
We didn’t get deep into those numbers. Other studies break it down more—one study even indicating that millennials evangelize more than generations preceding them. I feel that we need other data to back that up before touting it too loudly though.
So what do we replace older models of evangelism with in our day? What is the path forward?
Well, first we need to know that we have power here. We can move the needle on these numbers.
The idea of being a person who lives a life that is thoughtful and winsome, and shares the gospel with their neighbors, is powerful. But we can and should use a lot of different opportunities to turn the temperature of our evangelism and outreach up. Those kind of diverse approaches are needed. I want to set a broad table. I want people to have personal energy to share the gospel. I want them to go to events. I want them to be part of a celebrating community that shares the gospel. I want churches to do outreach and events.
There’s not just one thing. We need to do multiple things. But we need to do all of them in ways that are missiologically appropriate, faithful to the gospel, but also fruitful for that gospel. I don’t want people to stand up yelling about Jesus and punch their neighbor in the head in some kind of misguided evangelistic passion. That’s neither faithful nor fruitful.
But one of the things that people often miss is that there is also fidelity to the gospel involved here. There is no such thing as the gift of evangelism. People often miss that. The Bible never talks about evangelism as a gift. The evangelist is a gift to the church, but all of God’s people are responsible for evangelizing. It’s all of our responsibility. We’ve been reconciled to be agents of reconciliation. Throughout the church and Christian life, through many different means, we need to share the gospel. We need to share it often, graciously and winsomely.
In Part 2 of the interview, Ed Stetzer discusses what evangelistic success looks like, as well as how pastors can meet the unique evangelism needs in their particular community and culture.