Evangelism Archive

Reframing Succes: Success in Our Evangelism

Sadly, people are treated like projects, not meaningful, long-term relationships

Margaret Fienberg tells the story of her best friend in high school. Her friend was Jewish.  They truly enjoyed being around each other and had only one issue that created tension between them – the Messiah-ship of Jesus.  Margaret believed he was the Messiah.  Her friend did not.  Margaret confesses that during this time, “Though I didn’t talk to her about God, I did talk to God about her.  A lot.  More than anything, I wanted my best friend to know Jesus.” (1)

One semester, Feinberg believed her prayers had been answered when her friend began coming to her youth group meetings on Sunday evenings.  Though a lot of talk and discussion occurred, her friend decided to maintain her Jewish beliefs.  A crevice occurred in their relationship.  And it only grew wider.

Fienberg recounts a phone conversation between the two one evening:

I remember one evening she called me to talk about our different beliefs. She pointedly asked me what I believed would happen to her if she died without choosing to follow Jesus.  I dodged the question, but she persisted.  So I finally told her what I thought, and I can still remember the deafening silence.  In that moment, she uncovered the naked truth of my heart:  I was more concerned about her eternal destiny than I was about her.  When she finally spoke, she asked me to stop trying to convince, convert, or coax her into believing something different. (2)

Because of this conversation, their relationship began to fade.  Though they have spent time together since then, the friendship is not the same.  And it may never be.  Margaret, reflecting back over that time, shares:

I care for her deeply and pray for her more than she will ever know, but looking back, I realize that she was right – my motives were mixed and complex.  I wanted her to become a Christian more for me than for her.  I wanted her to have what I had, whatever the cost.  My agenda became more important than our relationship, and I became more concerned with my own righteousness than with her redemption.  The salvation I was offering her was centered on myself – making her believe what I did – rather than having her believe God. (3)

This story has haunted me, as it still does her.  I have thought about the times when the sole purpose for my eating at a restaurant or going to a business or building a relationship was to be involved in seeing a person or persons engage Jesus in a relationship.  I have spent lots of time and money specifically targeting people.  And the question I have to ask myself now is this:  would I hang out with those people if my purpose didn’t involve leading them to Christ? Were they easy and convenient or did I truly care for them as people, not as a project?

I grew up in a denomination that prided itself on evangelism.  We were the soul winners!  We were going door to door with our handy presentations trying to argue people into believing what we believe.  We were developing one program or plan after another.  Some of these were and still are theologically questionable.  But the whole goal was to get them to a point to profess an intellectual belief in Christ. That way, we could mark them on a report, drag them into a baptismal pool, and proclaim that we had helped people experience a relationship with God through Jesus. Unfortunately, I truly believe we have failed. We have caused people to think they have a relationship with God, but all we may have really done is given them a false sense of security.

In 2008, I was looking through the roster of people who were going to be voted on as leaders at our denomination’s general meeting that year.  The statistics of one pastor’s church were amazing.  Over the past ten years they had averaged 140 baptisms per year under this particular pastor’s leadership. In that same time frame, attendance grew from 700 to 1,100. (4)  I sat speechless.  Over ten years they have averaged 140 people baptized per year.  140 x 10 = 1,400.  Do you see the problem?  Where are the 1,000 people who are not at church now?  If you would accept the possibility that there was zero transfer growth that means that only forty of the one hundred forty that they did baptize were still regular attenders in that church.  One hundred are not consistently involved in that church. That is a retention rate of less than thirty percent. The question must be asked if the 1,000 people who are no longer participating in that church’s worship gatherings really have a relationship with God through Jesus.

Despite this incredibly low retention rate, however, this pastor is considered a success and his church is considered a successful church because of the 1,400 people they baptized over a ten year period. We have created an environment where success is getting people into the baptismal pool.

I have said in a previous post that what is celebrated is measured, and what is measured determines success.  In my tribe, success is found in how many people a church has baptized.  It is found in how many people are members.

Our attempts at evangelism have become attempts to make us look good and to make us feel good through the use of numbers.  It is ruining our churches and creating environments where those who toil and labor in smaller venues struggle. They feel that they are standing before God as failures.

Evangelism has become a matter of productivity.

We all want to get the most done in the least amount of time.  The more we get done, the better we feel about ourselves.  It makes us feel great to accomplish tasks.  What is even easier, is when we can accomplish those tasks with minimal effort.  The less effort we have to put into something, the less time it takes and the more we can get done.  Evangelism has become a matter of productivity for our cultural Christianity.

Think of all the plans that exist for sharing the Gospel.  The Romans Road has five verses.  The Southern Baptist Convention’s F.A.I.T.H. plan is also five verses.  You have the colored beads plan, made up of five colored beads.  You have Evangelism Explosion, which back in the day was made up of four points.  Then there is Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws.

So we are sent out with these nice packaged plans that we are to memorize.  But they do not help us deal with one thing:  we were never taught to do apologetics (among a lot of things we are not taught).  These plans were supposed to get you in and get you out of a spiritual conversation.  If people didn’t accept Jesus, then move on.  The goal is to share the message and if they don’t accept he message, shake the dust off your feet and go to the next house.

It’s easier to pick low hanging fruit than the work the soil.  But if we don’t work the soil, there can be no fruit trees planted.

The parable of the soil in Matthew 13 has as many different understandings as translations of the Bible it seems.  So while I do not wish to spend time on the interpretation, I do want to make what appear to be obvious statements about the passage:

“Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! (Matthew 13:3b-8, NLT)

The one thing that strikes me as being more important to the productivity of the seeds is the quality of the soil.  It is obvious whether we are trying to interpret this passage or grow tomatoes that the soil makes the difference.  The seeds do not take root and bear fruit until they find good soil.  Whatever else Jesus is saying here, He is making a direct observation about the need to work the soil so that it is productive.  Hard soil must be broken up.  Rocky and overgrown soil must be cleaned out.  Shallow soil must be properly built up.  Of course Jesus could also be making another point, one of even greater importance.  Do not plant the seeds in soil that is not ready for it.

If that last statement is true, we have a determination to make.  We have to determine if the soil is ready for the seed of the Gospel.  How do we do that with a hit and run, share and move on experience?  It seems to me that if we are going to make a soil determination, we have to know the soil, examine the soil, and spend time with the soil.  If the soil is not ready for seed, do we still try to plant the seed anyway?  Or do we work the soil until it can handle the seed? In other words, are we just broadcasting the seed with no regard to the heart of the hearer or are we developing the relationships with people because we love them and want to be around them?  Then if the soil becomes ready, we make the effort to plant the seed when the time is appropriate and God opens the opportunity.

Evangelism must be a love relationship, not a project

Evangelism requires an investment in the lives of people. Success in evangelism is in doing your part to develop the soil so that the seed of the gospel is ready for planting, not a drive-by sharing of the Gospel. I Corinthians 3: 5-9 reminds of how Paul viewed success in evangelism:

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. (NIV)

For each person that comes into your life you have a responsibility to simply do the task assigned to you by God. Again, this is a matter of obedience, not a matter of seeing conversions or a matter of presenting some plan of salvation. Success for you may be simply preparing the soil, creating a true picture of Jesus and the transformative change and perfect love He brings in to a person’s life. Some people are more oriented to soil development while some are more oriented to picking the fruit. For some relationships you may be the fruit picker and for another you develop the soil or water the seeds. Success in evangelism is fulfilling your role in the life cycle of the person’s life. Success in not presenting the gospel message to every one you know through a canned presentation, often attempting to guilt them into a decision. This requires us to be in tune with the Holy Spirit, depending on Him to help us see our role and to see and take advantage of the opportunities presented to us.

Paul wept for those who did not have a relationship with Jesus. But he also knew his role in the lives of those he met.

The danger of numbers and evangelism as indicators of success

Success in a church is not seeing thousands get baptized. It is not a numbers game, and failure to let that go creates an environment where we view ourselves as failures when we may be successful in God’s formula. All this talk of numbers is an attempt to take on the role of the Holy Spirit and convict people to present a presentation and get people into a baptistery.

It is true that over 3,000 men became Christ-followers at Pentecost. Many more became Christ-followers along the way, but in the 60 years following, the estimates about the total number of Christians in the Roman Empire range from 7,535 (5) to 50,000 (6) at the end of the first century. Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that Christians first passed the 100,000 mark around 180 a.d., 160 years or so after Pentecost. (7) That means that Christianity had a net growth each year of 625, going from 0 to 100,000 in 160 years. By our current standards, the early, first century church was a complete failure.

However, the soil was being developed. Those early Christ-followers laid did the hard work of soil development, creating an environment for a movement start. They had no plan of salvation, no revivals, no Christian movies or them parks or global media. They simply loved God with all their heart and loved those they came in contact with the same way, serving them through the love of Christ. The result was that by 350 a.d., there were over 33 million true Christians. They went from .36% of the population of the Roman empire to over 50%. (8)

Were the Christians who lived from 200-350 more successful than those from the first 160 years of Christianity? No. Each one did their part.

Success in evangelism is not seeing a lot of people baptized. It is being obedient to task laid out for you by God for each person as they journey toward a deeper relationship with God.

Notes —

1 The Organic God, 45.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, 46.
4. Ed Litton to be Pastors’ Conf. nominee, http://baptistpress.com/bpnews.asp?id=28044 Accessed June 4, 2008
5. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History by Rodney Stark, 9.
6. The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius by Paul Trebilco, 592, note 10.
7. Stark, 9.
8. Ibid, 9-10.

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