Page 5369 – Christianity Today (2024)

It is now clear that large numbers of people have become Christians through peer group discussions of the Bible. And when unchurched participants become serious about the Christian faith, they normally begin attending church-often the church of their group’s initiator.

Whole churches have been built using this method, and the gospel has penetrated neighborhoods and workplaces that likely would not have opened up to other evangelistic strategies.

What are the keys that make these groups succeed, causing the local church to grow? Here are five:

A “safe” invitation

Instead of being asked to “join” a Bible study, people are invited to a home to hear about an idea: a discussion Bible study group for adults who aren’t experts. After dessert and coffee, the host or hostess explains how the group will function, using the method of inductive (investigative) study. A twenty-minute sampler-one incident from the gospel of Mark-gives a taste of what’s ahead. Those interested set a time and place to start studying Mark 1.

The same thing can happen on the job. Any group that meets on neutral territory is less threatening for newcomers than meeting in a church. Lunch-hour groups currently meet every week among business people on Wall Street, research scientists at a pharmaceutical corporation, executives and clerical workers at a chemical firm; there’s also an after-work study among garage mechanics with their Christian employer, and breakfast studies (weekday or Saturday) among small-town tradesmen and professionals. Workers who know one another through their jobs but meet in homes range from lobstermen on an island off the Maine coast to astronauts and their spouses in Houston.

A structure that protects those new to the Bible

An ideal ratio is six to eight people studying the Bible for the first time with only one or two firm Christians. Groups with too many “experts” do not appeal to raw beginners.

A group of six to ten is large enough to stimulate interaction and new ideas but small enough to let everyone speak and respond to the comments of others. If a group is twelve or larger, the discussion tends to split into two or three competing conversations. The moderator has to exert strong control and may be tempted to lecture. The quiet people and those who know the least sit back. Sometimes they stop coming.

But when everyone has a fair chance, each participant is greatly influenced by what he discovers and shares in the group. What he hears himself saying about Jesus’ claims will be remembered long after he forgets what someone else tells him. We recall only 20 percent of what we hear but 70 percent of what we say. That’s why discussion Bible studies are powerful agents of change.

Studying whole books of the Bible

Newcomers to the Bible need to lay a foundation before they can handle studies that skip around. Using selected verses here and there to present the gospel message confuses the person who cannot set them into a meaningful context. They also put the person at risk when approached by a cult using a thematic presentation. If methods are similar, the biblically untaught person has a hard time distinguishing between what is authentic and what is counterfeit.

Those new to Bible study should start with Mark; it’s clear, concise, full of action, and does not require familiarity with the Old Testament. No wonder missionary translators usually begin with Mark.

A well-prepared set of study questions

Groups function best with questions that help them observe, interpret, and apply what they find in the Bible text. The questions should be forthright enough to allow each person to take a turn as moderator, moving the group paragraph by paragraph through a chapter. The material must not assume that everyone understands Christian jargon or can easily comprehend a religious mind-track.

Three operating guidelines

The following ground rules protect a group against misuse of Scripture:

1. Confine the discussion to the chapter being studied. This keeps the newcomers at equal advantage. As the weeks go by, of course, everyone’s scope of knowledge enlarges, and the group is able to refer back to chapters previously studied.

2. Expect everyone to be responsible for pulling the group back from digressions. The moderator’s job is greatly eased if others in the group help say, “We’ve gotten onto a tangent. Let’s get back to the chapter.”

3. Agree that the document (Mark, for example) will be the authority for the discussion. People should not be coerced into believing the Bible, but they can be encouraged to be honest about what it says and to refrain from rewriting it. As a group continues to study week after week, most members come to recognize the Bible as authoritative.

These guidelines keep a group on the path of orthodoxy. It is difficult to promote heresy in a group studying a book of the Bible in context.

Not every church member should attempt an outreach Bible study. A wise pastor will not try to get “the whole church” into this approach to evangelism. Some Christians tend to tell others too much too soon. The discussion approach requires patience and a willingness to let the non-Christian build a framework of Bible knowledge and discover Christ’s claims for himself.

But once this has happened, the person is much more likely to hear and believe a gospel presentation from the pulpit or a Christian friend.

For those the church wants to encourage in this kind of outreach, a preparation series of four or five Wednesday nights or an all-day Saturday workshop may be used. Such a training program should include:

an explanation of inductive study,

instruction in sensitivity to the non-Christian,

practice in introducing the idea of a Bible study to friends and colleagues,

participation in an actual Bible study discussion.

Copies of the study questions for Mark should be available as well. (For a handbook How to Start a Neighborhood Bible Study and study guides, write Neighborhood Bible Studies, Box 222L, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522.)

At one such workshop, two men were role-playing the initial invitation. Jim later reported, “When Charlie asked me how I’d like to ‘join a group and study the Word of God,’ he lost me. I was suddenly aware that a person who had never studied the Bible would not call it ‘the Word of God.’ It would have been better if he’d simply asked me if I’d like to be in a Bible study for nonexperts. I would have said yes to that.”

Outreach can start in a neighborhood with one or two young mothers from the church inviting women on their block. The daytime group becomes so valuable that they want their husbands to share the experience, and an evening couples’ Bible study begins. Next, business men and women start studies at work.

Those who come to Christ through a discussion Bible study are able to reach out to their friends in the same way. Meanwhile, church members mature spiritually and become more effective leaders in the church. Small-group Bible study is a ministry multiplier.

-Marilyn G. Kunz

Dobbs Ferry, New York

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

People-Centered Administration

Your Gift of Administration by Ted W. Engstrom, Nelson, $9.95

Reviewed by John A. Huffman, Jr., St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, California

Some who write about administration have all the theory but not the practice. I read their writing, and I’m impressed; I talk to their associates, and I’m let down.

Ted Engstrom, however, is one who practices what he preaches.

Thirty years ago, as a teenager, I lived across the street from him and watched this large bundle of a man energetically drag his body, chronically pained by a hip injury, through a schedule that wouldn’t stop. He was then president of Youth for Christ International, traveling the world carrying spiritual and financial burdens and administering a huge team of creative mavericks.

Read his books, observe his accomplishments, and you wonder whether he really has time for people. He does. And not just the people who are part of his organization. Thirty years ago, he had time for the kid across the street who had observed phoniness in other Christian leaders.

It wasn’t a lot of time, but it was enough to make an impression. A wave hello, occasionally stopping his car, rolling down the window, and asking a specific question or two about my life affirmed me and convinced me of his authenticity. He not only ran an organization committed to loving the teenagers of the world; he actually loved the teenager across the street and was no small influence in helping me grow in my faith and willingness to serve Jesus Christ in full-time ministry.

In the years since, our paths have crossed a few times, and I’ve continued to watch his work. Now head of World Vision, he knows how to get things done, and he knows how to care for people in the process. And personal relations is a theme echoed throughout the book.

“A cheery ‘good morning’ is not enough,” he writes. “Neither is an infrequent pat on the back. Nor can an administrator forget about employees all year long, then expect to win their confidence during the camaraderie of the annual picnic . . . We must take a genuine interest in them.” It’s this people dimension that makes his book so helpful.

I wouldn’t say Engstrom’s is the best book if you’re looking for exhaustive help in specific administrative areas. In that case, consult his bibliography, which lists the most helpful books and monographs, both secular and religious. You’ll want to round out your library with titles off his list, such as The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, Megatrends by John Naisbitt, The Time Trap by Alec Mackenzie, and In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman

What Engstrom does is provide a helpful primer in administration for those who want an overview.

He integrates biblical teaching about spiritual gifts with management theory. What I found most refreshing was the way he acknowledges that some of us who must administer are not necessarily naturals at it. He distinguishes between “charismatic” administrators, the born leaders, and “official” administrators, those in the hierarchy with authority and a job to do.

“My purpose,” Engstrom writes, “is twofold: to help official leaders develop and strengthen their administrative gifts; to help gifted leaders become more thorough and effective in their official and administrative responsibilities.”

Perhaps you’re a natural administrator with good intuitions that have worked up till now. If so, this book will prepare you for situations you haven’t yet faced.

Others of us, however, have stumbled into our positions. We’ve been promoted, and despite the fact we’ve never had a course in administration, we find ourselves in charge.

This book reassures us that we can learn and provides the practical, creative, and spiritual resources we need to grow in our administrative roles.

A Case for Muscular Pastoral Leadership

Leading Your Church to Growth by C. Peter Wagner, Regal, $6.95

Reviewed by James D. Berkley, pastor, Dixon Community Church, Dixon, California

I have seven Peter Wagner books on my shelf and notebooks bulging with Peter Wagner class notes. What more has Wagner to say?

Much, indeed. As professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary and prot‚g‚ of Donald McGavran, the patriarch and founder of the Church Growth Movement, Wagner serves as the movement’s chief apologist and popularizer.

Church Growth is not without its opponents, nor is Wagner without his detractors. However, few people remain as congenial at the eye of the tempest as he. He refuses to canonize his theory, often recommending to students books by his chief critics. He welcomes criticism, scientific study, revision, but he will also spar ably to make his point.

Wagner’s newest book, Leading Your Church to Growth, presents the latest Church Growth thinking in a palatable, down-to-earth package. He does have something new to say, especially about the role of the pastor.

“Strong pastoral leadership is regularly affirmed as a positive growth factor but an in-depth analysis is yet lacking. My intention is to begin to fill that void,” he writes.

In the past, mainline Protestant churches have given mixed reviews to Wagner’s school of thought. Although lured by the promise of growth and revitalization, they have also turned a cold shoulder to the perceived hype and clamor. In this book, Wagner woos the mainline church, answering many of their complaints.

Take this unexpected Wagnerism: “It is okay not to be a growth pastor in a non-growth situation,” or “These three kinds of churches-small churches which value their single-cell nature, terminally ill churches, and churches in areas of unusual mobility-should not be expected to grow. It is recognized that God can direct them in other avenues and bless them and use them for His glory. If God is so leading them, it’s okay not to grow.”

Answering the charge of a preoccupation with numbers, Wagner writes, “As I see it, those who object to numbers are usually trying to avoid superficiality in Christian commitment. I agree with this. … But I am vitally interested in lost men and women who put their faith in Jesus Christ and are born again. … When numbers represent these kinds of people, they are much more than a ‘numbers game.’ “

He emphasizes the totality of ministry-both the evangelistic and cultural mandates. “Saving souls is the first step, but it is not enough. Concern for the whole person is essential. Loving your neighbor as yourself means becoming involved with people’s health, welfare, and human dignity.”

One of his most controversial principles-the hom*ogeneous unit-also warrants new attention. Wagner states that some “have understood church growth leaders to say that hom*ogeneous churches are the right and true way for churches to grow, when they haven’t been saying this at all. They have simply been describing the observable fact that, worldwide, most unchurched men and women are first attracted to Christ by hearing the gospel from those who talk like them, think like them, and act like them.” Speaking of Donald McGavran, Wagner continues, “His ideal and mine is a church where lines of class, race, and language are completely broken down.” Is this the Wagner egalitarians love to castigate?

Wagner also answers the charge that Church Growth is overly pragmatic. He contends that his pragmatism is not the kind that “compromises doctrine or ethics or the kind that dehumanizes people by using them as means toward an end. It is, however, the kind of consecrated pragmatism which ruthlessly examines traditional methodologies and programs asking the tough questions.”

I appreciate his distillation of Church Growth to the statement: “Church growth is not some magic formula which can produce growth in any church at any time. It is just a collection of common sense ideas that seem to track well with biblical principles which are focused on attempting to fulfill the Great Commission more effectively than ever before.”

Even with all its excellent material refining Church Growth in general, this is not a generalized book. Wagner focuses on the kind of leadership that produces growing congregations.

To begin, he mounts a frontal assault on the idea of the pastor as enabler-one who is out to actualize personalities-an idea whose time, he says, is past. With tongue firmly in cheek, Wagner cracks, “If you asked a pastor with this training what time of day it was, you would get one of two answers: ‘Why do you ask?’ or ‘What time would you like it to be?’ ” Wagner affirms the concept of pastor as equipper, who prepares lay people for ministry, but the enabler is anathema for a growing ministry.

Next Wagner distinguishes between authoritarian and authoritative ministry. He will not condone the authoritarian tyrant, but he does urge pastors to be authoritative.

When I asked him what keeps the one from slipping into the other, Wagner replied, “A leader must earn his role by being a servant among people. Most of us define an autocrat as ‘anybody who leads in a style outside my comfort zone.’ If people perceive the leader to be a servant, then he is not a tyrant.”

He added that it’s wise for strong leaders to temper their own biases and blind spots with a small reference group from the congregation and a peer group of fellow pastors. This precludes the abuse of power while allowing a leader to lead.

Not every ministry suddenly blossoms into growth. Assuming that solid growth comes from lengthy pastorates, he gives definite suggestions for laying the groundwork for growth. Working on morale and building loyalty among parishioners is not wasted time for the growth-minded pastor.

Technical Church Growth jargon arises when Wagner hauls out the modality/sodality nomenclature. A modality is a wide-open organization that anybody can join, like a church or a sandlot baseball game. A sodality concentrates on a given task and makes special requirements for participants, like a mission organization or a championship team.

Wagner’s thesis is that churches would be more effective operating with sodality leadership.

When I pressed him, Wagner conceded that many churches would not take kindly to sodality leadership. (The chapter is titled “Why Bill Bright Is Not Your Pastor”!) He felt that new churches and congregations willing to pay the price for survival are the best prospects for intentional, sodality-type leadership.

Wagner concludes with practical chapters on getting the right start, including calling the right pastor, and on keeping growth on course. He postulates four levels of faith, which go from Robert Schuller’s possibility thinking all the way to “fourth dimension faith,” which “trusts God for supernatural signs and wonders.” About the latter, he lamented that where once he was criticized for being too sociological and not spiritual enough, now he is criticized from the other end for venturing into overly spiritualized things.

Leading Your Church to Growth is well-done Wagner. He ducks, parries, and thrusts, all with a Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., half smile on his face. And he hits home. With a wealth of practical ideas and with a good first stab at proposing a theory of Church Growth leadership, this book is a winner, readable and witty.

I now have eight Peter Wagner books on my shelf. I look forward to coming attractions on signs, wonders, and Church Growth, and on Church Growth in the Gospels and Acts. Wagner definitely has more to say.

What Makes a Church Thrive?

Twelve Keys to an Effective Church by Kennon L. Callahan, Harper and Row, $11.95

Reviewed by Doug Beacham, pastor, Franklin Springs Pentecostal Holiness Church, Franklin Springs, Georgia

This is not just another simplistic how-to book. Kennon Callahan is charting a new direction for ministry.

For nearly twenty-five years, Callahan, until recently minister of finance and administration at Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas, studied and practiced the content of this book.

Not primarily concerned with church growth, Callahan focuses on “effective” ministry, which he describes with six functional and six relational characteristics.

His six functional keys are (1) several competent programs and activities, (2) accessibility, (3) visibility, (4) adequate parking, land, and landscaping, (5) adequate space and facilities, and (6) solid financial resources.

These chapters help pastors gain a sense of the issues that many lay people focus upon. Callahan doesn’t violate his integrity by removing these bricks-and-wallpaper issues from his underlying theology of the church. Many of us can benefit from increased sensitivity in this area.

But Callahan also makes it clear that the crucial elements in the life of the church are the relational characteristics: (1) specific mission objectives, (2) pastoral and lay visitation, (3) dynamic corporate worship, (4) significant relational groups, (5) strong leadership, and (6) streamlined structure with a solid, participatory decision-making process.

In determining the mission of the church, Callahan cautions against the “data-collection” method-relying too heavily on surveys, community trends, or chamber of commerce projections. Focusing on factors outside the church “tends to enslave local churches to the alleged inevitability of demographic trends of population growth or decline,” he writes.

When I asked him why, he said, “If a church looks at the demographic data and finds it’s in a declining community, and they base their goals accordingly, the church will decline. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Callahan prefers a “diagnostic” method, with churches identifying the strengths within the congregation and basing their mission on those, not the factors outside the church.

The most important question, according to Callahan, is not “How many members do you have?” but “How many people is your church serving?” His focus is upon the work of the Holy Spirit in developing specific missions where lay people can offer concrete help to specific hurts. This “grapevine” approach can be a local congregation’s best means to spread the Good News.

He consciously uses the term mission rather than ministry because “the task of the church is mission . . . the emphasis on the fact that all people in the church are called to labor in the kingdom, not just those ordained.” The most effective way to develop mission, he says, is to “grow it up from within.”

The chapter on strong leadership is noteworthy for two reasons. First, he rejects the “enabler” approach to pastoring-passive and nondirective-which he claims worked during the fifties and sixties because our society was basically churched. Today, however, we’re essentially an unchurched culture and thus in need of pastors willing to be strong though not dictatorial leaders.

Second, he urges the church to reorder its priorities when looking for leadership. Often churches plan their programs, he writes, “as though they had an unlimited reservoir of leaders,” and if those leaders don’t readily step forward, churches make the foolish assumption that leaders would emerge “if only the people in this congregation were more committed.”

Instead of looking for more committed people, suggests Callahan, recognize that leaders are in limited supply. Only a certain number are able to lead. Assess the existing leadership strength and design the church’s mission around that, says Callahan.

When looking for leaders, he suggests, reorder priorities to seek competency first (spiritual gifts, talents, and abilities), compassion second, and then commitment. Seeking more commitment won’t solve anything if the basic problem is a lack of competency or compassion.

Throughout the book, the people of God are invited to view their work from the perspective of the Resurrection with its life and hope. There is an ongoing sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence through people focusing on the gifts of God in their midst.

His emphasis is based on a theology that says, “Hope is stronger than memory.”

Perhaps the fundamental issue can be summed up by his watershed question. “Do you believe your best years are behind you, or do you believe your best years are yet before you?”

Callahan’s book can help a church move forward with confidence.

A Young Pastor’s Intro to A. B. Dick

The First Parish by J. Keith Cook, Westminster, $8.95

Reviewed by Mike Coughlin, pastor, Clough Valley Baptist Church, St. Francis, Kansas

First pastorates are often like the first years of marriage: we realize how little we know only after we’ve committed ourselves.

In an attempt to make the passage a bit easier, J. Keith Cook, senior pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Master, Omaha, Nebraska, devoted his doctor of ministries project to the subject, and this book, “a pastor’s survival manual,” is the result.

“We know a lot about the Pauline epistles, but very little about church trustees. We know how to handle H. R. Niebuhr, but we don’t know how to handle A. B. Dick,” he writes in the introduction. “This book is meant to help the minister survive for years of fruitful and personally fulfilling service.”

The book’s usefulness applies beyond just the first pastorate.

Cook divides his book into five sections, each dealing with different ministerial functions.

“Getting Ready to Go in the Parish” covers getting church and pastor together, including effective resume writing, but more important, how to find a church that fits you.

“Finding a church that fits your needs, interests, and abilities will make a big difference in whether you will remain in the ministry, as well as in whether your congregation feels served or cynical about ministers and ministry,” he writes. He provides questions to ask during the candidating process and signs to look for, such as “Weeds around the church say, ‘We don’t care’ ” and “Leadership that is much older than the general membership says, ‘We don’t want new ideas . . . don’t rock the boat.’ “

Bad signs may not be all bad, he notes. Perhaps the church simply needs leadership. “Try to sense whether that is true and whether you’re that leader,” he writes.

The second section discusses the role, style, image, and relationships of a pastor.

Cook’s first ministry, two congregations in northeast Nebraska, where he stayed for ten years, provided him the experiences from which to draw.

“I had some painful relationships in my first parish,” he said in an interview. “But I learned unconditional love as well.”

In the book, he gives concrete tips for communicating love to the congregation, even such down-to-earth things as smiling while talking on the phone, and doing business (when possible) in stores where church members work.

The third section, “Getting the Job Done,” focuses on administration, preaching, visitation, counseling, evangelism, and social action. He stresses personal time management as a key to effective ministry.

“One thing common to most success stories is the alarm clock,” he writes.

The fourth section details problems and solutions in handling personal conflicts both within the family and the church.

He encourages spouses to be themselves. Pastors are not called to sacrifice their families on the altar of ministry. When asked how he sets aside time for his own family, Cook says, “I’m not busy more than half a dozen Sunday afternoons and evenings a year.” In addition, he confines evening obligations to two nights a week, a goal he says all pastors can reach if they really want to.

He also deals frankly with how to talk about salary with those responsible for setting it. Since the book was published, he’s already gotten a call from a Methodist pastor in Omaha who said, “Your book has already saved me money.”

Perhaps the book’s most helpful passage, however, is the section on discouragement, ineffectiveness, and loneliness.

“We thought we were called to lead a mighty army of Christian soldiers eager to march . . . but we find we’re chaplains to old warriors long since withdrawn from the front,” he writes. He suggests seeking solace in recognizing God’s call for us and in a few trusted friends who honestly reveal the impact our ministry is having.

The book’s final section, “Getting Out,” discusses when and how to leave a pastorate. The key, says Cook, is being sensitive to what you’ve accomplished in the past and what can be done in the future.

What sets this book apart is Cook’s personal, direct writing style: “I write the way I talk. It shortens the distance.”

Cook readily agrees that this book is but one approach to parish ministry: his own. He also admits not all the ideas will transfer to other situations.

But if we are successful in what Cook calls “the transfer of affection” (communicating the love of Jesus to others), then we’ll not only survive in ministry but thrive.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

A man who liked C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters went on to read Mere Christianity-and was infuriated. He wrote the author a scathing letter.

Lewis’s response, in longhand, shows a master evangelist at work:

“Yes, I’m not surprised that a man who agreed with me in Screwtape . . . might disagree with me when I wrote about religion. We can hardly discuss the whole matter by post, can we? I’ll only make one shot. When people object, as you do, that if Jesus was God as well as man, then he had an unfair advantage which deprives him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, ‘Oh, but you have an unfair advantage.’ It is because of that advantage that he can help. But all good wishes. We must just differ; in charity I hope. You must not be angry with me for believing, you know; I’m not angry with you.”

What impresses me about that exchange is the light touch. Lewis acknowledges the man’s complaint, he gives him one thing to think about-and he stops. He steps back as if to say, “Your move,” which opens the way for the man to write again.

Journey evangelism

Evangelism, like sanctification, takes time. Therefore, we must take the time it takes.

When we relate to people, we must remind ourselves that we are on a long journey together. The idea that this is my only chance to talk to this person is a great detriment. Even on an airplane, we should speak as if we’re going to know that seatmate for the rest of our lives. After all, to use another line from C. S. Lewis, “Christians never say good-by.”

When we share the gospel, it is part of a larger whole. Let me illustrate with small-group Bible studies, which our church has found to be our most authentic and exciting evangelistic event. What is fascinating is that we don’t try to be evangelistic. Our goal is to let the text make its own point and then enable the group to express their feelings about what is being read together. We consciously try not to cover everything the first week, but only what the text says. Our approach is this: “Read this book like you read anything else. When you start into Mark, don’t give him an inch. Make him win every point. Don’t worry about whether this is supposed to be the holy Word of God or not; just read it with the same seriousness you apply to your own thoughts.”

The amazing thing is that the text inevitably reveals its Living Center. Some weeks Mark (or Paul, or John) wins, some weeks he loses. But over time, the text comes out ahead, and the Christ of the text wins respect.

Too many of us preachers try to say too much all at once. Especially at the end of sermons-we throw in the kitchen sink trying to get somebody to make some sort of decision. We rattle off the most precious facts of our faith-the blood of Christ, the cross, God loves you-and reduce them to hasty, unexplained sentences. It is far better to let the text make its own point.

I’ve found the same tendency in counseling. Somebody comes into my office and begins sharing his life. I listen very closely, trying to listen with my heart as well as my head. My mind is soon flooded with impressions, statements, Bible verses that I can hardly wait to unleash as soon as my turn comes. “Look at this . . . let me tell you this story . . . read this book . . . what you need to do is . . .”

As I’ve grown older, I’ve been asking God in such situations to help me say one or two things-not twenty-three. The poor person is already troubled, highly emotional-what is he supposed to do with a flood of input? He can only nod and say, “Oh, yes, thank you, Pastor,” and before long he’s nodding just to get out of the room.

In evangelism, people do not need admonishments as much as they need to be carefully heard. Once I’m listening, I range through their arguments to find out where I can agree with them. Very often the “God” they’re rejecting I would reject, too. Why not let them know that?

A Christian friend of mine was a high school principal in Los Angeles. One day a father came charging into his office, irate over the F his son had received in a certain course. The man had dreams of his son going to an Ivy League school, and now this teacher was destroying the plan. He wanted the grade changed.

My friend listened to the threats and demands for a while, and finally when there was a pause, he said quietly, “I can see that you care a great deal about your son.”

The man suddenly began to cry. The mask came off. He was strong but aloof, and the only way he knew to do anything for his son was by bullying. When the principal spoke about relationship, the point of deepest hurt was exposed. Now the father was ready to be helped.

My friend knew he wasn’t going to ask the teacher to change the grade. So why be defensive? Instead, he listened with his heart until he got in touch with the man’s underlying journey.

I remember going to a Navigators conference in Colorado Springs during my student days. As part of our training, we were all going to go out and hit the city with a great witnessing blitz; Colorado Springs would never be the same. Jim Rayburn of Young Life had been invited to talk to us, and he said, “Well, I know what you’re headed out to do . . . you’re going to go out there and say to people, ‘Brother, are you saved?’ and you’ve got to say it real fast, because you may never see that person again. . . .” He paused a moment before continuing.

“And you won’t. You won’t.”

Then he shared his philosophy of evangelism, which was to take the time it takes to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with people.

I’m not saying we should not be urgent. But the gospel has its own urgent edge and does its own convicting of sin. Isn’t it good that the Holy Spirit takes care of that as we simply witness to the truth?

A crusty engineering professor in our city was shattered when his wife died of a sudden heart attack just as they reached retirement age. She had been a Christian, and after the funeral, he came to see me. I steered him toward the gospel of Mark and some additional reading. After several weeks, I could see the New Testament was gradually making sense to him. My closing comment in our times together was usually, “Let me know when you’re ready to become a Christian.” (I rarely say, “Are you ready?” Instead, I ask people to let me know when they have enough information to put their weight down on the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ. I believe the most central evangelistic question is “Are you able, on the basis of what you’ve discovered about Jesus Christ, to trust your life to his faithfulness and love?” This draws together repentance from sin and response to his love.)

One Sunday after church, with a lot of people milling around, the engineer stood in the back waiting for me. He’s not the kind of man who likes standing around. Finally he got my attention so he could call out, “Hey, Earl . . . I’m letting you know.” That was it; he became a Christian at age sixty-five.

We have to make room for people to struggle, because the stakes are so big. We should not be too pleased if someone comes to Christ with little struggle-it may mean this is simply a compliant person, and the same compliance that eases them into Christianity may also ease them toward the next thing that calls for their obedience.

The next-to-the-last word

The more sensitive we are to journey evangelism, the more we will recognize pre-evangelistic preparation. So many things in our culture are pre-evangelistic. Whether Robert Frost was a Christian I don’t know, but “Mending Wall” is most definitely a pre-Christian poem. It raises all the right questions. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the movie Apocalypse Now both raise huge questions that the gospel speaks to.

Now-as Bonhoeffer said, “You cannot hear the last word until you’ve heard the next-to-the-last word.” The next-to-the-last word is the law; it makes us feel guilty, trapped, judged. Only then are we ready for the Good News.

Evangelists who ignore the person’s journey are missing something important. Or, we make the mistake of listening once-and then freezing people in that state of rebellion. They may have spoken more outrageously than they believe; they may have only been trying to shock us; or they may have moved on from their first rejection of Christ. We must keep hearing the clues and moving along as they move.

G. K. Chesterton writes in Orthodoxy about five steps in his journey as a young man:

“One, I felt in my bones; first that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation, it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanation I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false.

“Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it. …

“Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons.

“Fourth, the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint. We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.

“And last, and strangest of all, there came into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe had saved his goods. He had saved them from a wreck, and all this I felt, and my age gave me no encouragement to feel it.

“And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.”

What a slow but elegant orbit he makes toward the Living Center.

Our part in the mystery

In the Bay Area where I live, I sometimes make jokes at the expense of a small town called Milpitas. Once while speaking on radio, I said, “You know, Beethoven is not on trial when the Milpitas Junior High Orchestra plays the Ninth Symphony. And Jesus Christ is not on trial when you or I or even C. S. Lewis tries to express the faith in a conversation or a sermon.”

Then about a year later it occurred to me: But were it not for the Milpitas Junior High Orchestra-who would hear Beethoven? Even if badly played, it is better than no playing at all. Who plays Beethoven perfectly?

Some people trudge from church to church looking for the perfect rendition. They’ll never find it. W. H. Auden once observed that even though the line is smudged, we can read the line, and that is the mystery of evangelism: even though we smudge the line, it can still be read. You can whistle the tune of the Ninth Symphony even after listening in the Milpitas gymnasium.

Evangelism is far greater than any of us. That is why it takes time. But without us, it would take an eternity. And human beings do not have that long to make up their minds.

-Earl Palmer

First Presbyterian Church

Berkeley, California

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Fruitful churches, like fruitful trees, don’t usually spring up on their own. Someone-whether a Johnny (Appleseed) Chapman or a church pioneer-has to sow the seed.

What are the secrets of starting churches? LEADERSHIP brought four experienced church planters together in Minneapolis to talk with editors Dean Merrill and Marshall Shelley. The participants:

-Arthur Fretheim recently retired after planting six Evangelical Covenant churches in Minnesota, New Mexico, and Illinois.

-Victor Fry planted Missouri Synod Lutheran churches in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Maple Grove, Minnesota, before accepting a denominational position, where he has overseen the development of six new congregations.

-Kaye Pattison, who supports himself as a businessman, has planted four Conservative Baptist churches in the Denver area and is currently leading a Bible study he hopes will develop into number five.

-Robert Ross planted two churches-in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Austin, Minnesota-before going to his present congregation, First Church of the Open Bible in Waterloo, Iowa.

Leadership: Does church planting demand a special breed? What kind of person is cut out for pioneering a new church?

Arthur Fretheim: Anyone who intends to plant a church must have three things: (1) vision, the ability to visualize the future church, which will provide a goal to strive for; (2) enthusiasm, because as Paul said, “If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare for battle?”; (3) perseverance, because there will be many lean days-lonely, small days. You have to remember those are God’s days, too.

Robert Ross: A positive attitude helps, too-being friendly and able to genuinely enjoy your people.

Kaye Pattison: When Jesus told his disciples that the greatest among you would be the least, I think he had church planters in mind. A church planter has to accept the humble, unglamorous role. He won’t be asked to speak to many missionary conferences; he won’t be recognized in denominational meetings. A church planter gets his strokes from doing Christ’s work.

He must be the servant of all-to minister, not to be ministered unto by a congregation. He must be imbued with power, Spirit-filled, able to encourage people to use their gifts of ministry.

Victor Fry: Another essential is that you must have the right spouse and, if there’s a family, supportive family members.

We started our second mission congregation when our children were in sixth grade, second grade, and kindergarten. They were involved delivering fliers and even got the neighborhood kids to help, too. They were caught up in the excitement of starting a new church.

Fretheim: You also need a special kind of laity to make a church go. They have to really want a church, because they’re giving up many privileges. You only raise your family once, and when you put them into a new church, you’re putting them with a limited number of people. Your children won’t make a great number of friends.

We’ve all lost families because they had a teenager, and our church had no other teenagers.

Leadership: Is church planting risky? People who have never done it say, “My goodness, I’d be scared to death.”

Ross: Sure, there’s fear. But that’s where our faith in the Lord comes in. He hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but of power and a sound mind. You know you may not be totally capable, but God is, and you go on, and the job gets done.

Fry: Church planting isn’t a totally unselfish thing, however. Making calls on people, sharing Christ with them, seeing them folded into the kingdom, seeing a church beginning, and you a tool of the Holy Spirit-there’s no greater joy than that.

In fact, once you’ve tasted that challenge and seen something grow out of nothing, it’s hard to go back and pastor an established church.

Pattison: I can think of nothing more dull than going to an established church and taking care of Aunt Susie’s problems, though I suppose someone has to. I’d much rather be involved in a group of people struggling with more important issues.

Most church planting involves evangelism. Seeing people come to Christ and seeing the growth that results makes it all worthwhile.

Fretheim: I have a high view of visitation, and whenever I go out I pray that I’ll bear the presence of Christ into that home-in a sense “be Christ” in that place. To me, that makes the ministry alive and vital.

Pattison: When you have nothing to offer but Christ, it gets you back to basics. Churches down the street may have stained-glass windows, padded pews, youth pastors, buses-all the reasons people should go to church-and you have none of these. But to see Christ put it together, to realize God is at work-not those great programs-that’s the greatest seminary, the greatest training, the greatest experience anyone in the ministry can have. You learn God can be depended on to build his church.

Leadership: What’s been the reaction of your family when you’ve taken this risk?

Pattison: It’s been a positive experience for us. All of my daughters ended up teaching Sunday school and doing other things they couldn’t have done in a large established church.

They were so involved in ministry that even today, married and with their own families, they’re active in their local congregations. It became part of their blood. I’d love to have them in any congregation I was starting because they’re experienced and well trained.

I’ve even found being a church planter is easier on one’s spouse. It eliminates many of the rigors of being a “pastor’s wife.” If your spouse fears the limelight and always having to have every hair in place, church planting is a more relaxed alternative.

Church planters also have more time for family. If you’re in a church of five hundred, someone’s always calling, and the kids think Daddy loves the congregation more than them. That’s not a problem in the early stages of a church.

Fry: It does create family pressures, though, especially if you’re using your home for meetings and classes. Wives can feel like permanent hostesses.

But at the same time, it’s true-there isn’t that double standard so many churches have for “the pastor’s wife.” She can be much more like anyone else. And the flexible schedule does let you spend some mornings and afternoons with your family.

Leadership: Often the assumption seems to be that church planting is a job for young pastors. They’re hungry, brave (or foolhardy), and have less to lose. Is that true?

Fry: My first assignment out of seminary was to start a church in Las Vegas. There was no nucleus, no building, nothing. I survived, but I really lacked experience and knowledge of church structure and how to do things.

Pattison: Church planting can be devastating for a young man. If he fails in his first charge, it can damage his future ministry.

Fretheim: I agree. If you want to put numbers on it, I’d say church planters should be between thirty-five and forty-five, with ten years of experience.

Why? Because their personal spiritual lives will be severely tested, and they carry the responsibility for people’s immortal souls. In this kind of work, you often face individuals who have theological eccentricities (to put it nicely), and you’ve got to have the maturity to deal with them.

Leadership: If you are young, how can you overcome these obstacles?

Pattison: In our first church, we had a deacon who had been studying the Bible longer than I’d been a Christian. I learned to depend on him in some of the tough situations.

It also helps if you’re under the guidance of an older pastor or a “mother” church.

Leadership: Generally speaking, is the “mothering” strategy better than starting a church on your own?

Fretheim: I’ve done both, and to me the mothering concept is preferable because you have fellowship, which is so important, especially for young pastoral couples.

Second, you have a source of help. New churches don’t usually have adequate teaching staff or musicians, and mother churches can help. They can also help financially.

In addition, the mother church is blessed because often it has been around for fifty or sixty years, and they’re hungry for a new challenge. They’re able to get involved in a grassroots operation.

Pattison: You also get their prayer support.

Fretheim: I’m glad you mentioned that, because there’s nothing more lonely than hoping God will open up a work here and feeling you’re the only one praying. I’m definitely in favor of a mothering, or parenting, church.

Pattison: I’ve also done both, and I agree that a mothering church offers a lot. When a family with teenagers comes into your congregation, you can tell them you tie in with the youth activities in the mother church.

The only disadvantage in a mothering situation is if there are problems in the mother church.

Leadership: Why don’t more established churches do it?

Pattison: I suspect many are so involved in their own ministries they become short-visioned and think, What’s important is what I’m doing. To start a mission church might mean the loss of some people or part of their program.

Is the goal of ministry to build my church, or is it to reach the community for Christ? If we want to reach the community, it’s better to do it with many platoons than one centrally located army.

Leadership: Are there any advantages to pioneering without a mother church?

Fry: There is a spirit of adventure and romance in starting something where no one else has been involved. And there’s a tremendous need for each individual who comes to be involved, which can provide lots of excitement and motivation.

Ross: Being out there by yourself means you can’t pass off the responsibility. There’s no waiting for someone else to do it for you. You have to get the job done.

Fretheim: I suppose it’s possible for a mother church to exercise too much control, and that would be bad. They can support a new operation, but they shouldn’t dictate policies and programs.

Leadership: How strategic is door-to-door prospecting? Do new churches live or die by this? Or are there alternatives?

Ross: You’ve got to get to know people, and the best way is getting into their homes. You’re right where they live.

Fretheim: In a recent book, Lyle Schaller wrote that after twenty-five years of the church growth movement, we have found, in spite of all the new plans, the single best way to build a church is through personal visitation.

So many people are trying to find some other way, but I feel you must ring doorbells for two reasons. First, for your own information. You can’t drive up and down streets and learn much about the community; you have to meet people where they live.

Second, the best way for them to learn about the church is by seeing a face and hearing a voice say, “We’re here to serve in the name of Christ, and God bless you whether you come or not.”

Fry: I’m not sure Lyle Schaller is necessarily referring to door-to-door canvass. Personal visitation is necessary, but door-to-door contacting isn’t always productive.

At one of my churches, I made twenty-three hundred door-to-door calls before we began the ministry. All we gained from those calls was one family. And they didn’t come till two years later.

I think there are better ways of publicizing your ministry, and then you personally follow up those who show an interest.

Pattison: I would concur. Door-to-door visitation is an excellent method, but we never have time to use it. You make better use of your time developing your nucleus. They have better contacts in the community than you’ll ever have. Then, as the church begins to function, you spend your time visiting those who come because of the nucleus.

If you scratch where people are itching, you’ll be surprised how much free PR you get. People will begin to respond to that.

Fry: They have to see you in action in their community. Of course, you need to know the needs of the community, and door-to-door is one way to find out what those needs are.

Pattison: That’s where my approach as a “tent maker” has been especially fruitful. I learn the community the same way the congregation does-not as “the minister” but by my part-time work.

Fretheim: Admittedly, in some communities, because of condos, apartment buildings, and locked doors, you can’t go door to door. You must use direct mail or newspaper ads. But I do think door-to-door visits are important even if the payoff is slim. One of our church planters says he averages one solid contact in two hundred calls.

Ross: I agree cold-turkey calling nets very little . . . initially. What you have to do is note the people who aren’t committed to a church and follow up on them, maybe four or five times.

That’s worked for me, especially with a busing ministry. As we continued to visit the parents of a child attending our Sunday school, sooner or later we would see a majority of them in church.

Fry: One of the best ways to establish rapport and reach out to a community is through a Vacation Bible School, and then following up on parents of the children who come. Those are key prospects: people concerned about having a church in their community.

Pattison: You’re best off “farming” those people you have contacts with-whether through the nucleus, Bible school, youth ministries, or whatever.

In the beginning stages, however, if you haven’t got anything else to do, you might as well go door to door.

Leadership: How do you decide where a new church is needed?

Fretheim: We look for an area with seventy-five thousand population and growing, and which has no church of our type. (Not our denomination, but our type. We’re not anxious to compete with spiritual cousins.)

Then we bring in a nucleus builder who gathers names from our denominational periodical’s subscription list, the alumni directory of North Park College, and other Covenant churches in the vicinity. He tries to assemble a nucleus, a fellowship group that meets and prays together about starting a new church.

After six to eight months, if the group concludes they want to launch a church, that’s where we begin, and we assign a developer/pastor.

Pattison: The best areas for planting churches are (1) those with no other ministry of your style, and (2) those with population growth.

Some communities have decreasing populations. That’s probably not a wise choice for a new church. The strategy there is to revitalize an old church.

Planting a church in a growing area allows the church to grow with the community. You can discover where a city’s growth will be by asking for studies by the planning commission, the state government, county government, and chamber of commerce.

Fry: We’ve found you can get good demographic information from the school districts and corporations like McDonald’s. They work hard at knowing the population trends. If a McDonald’s is going up somewhere, it’s almost certain lots of people will be moving into the area.

Pattison: Land developers often want churches in their subdivisions, and they’ll offer you a tract at reasonable prices-but be careful where they stick you. They may offer an out-of-the-way corner they can’t use for anything else.

One way to get an advantageous location is to approach the developer and explain your church would like to start a day-care center. Then you’ve got his attention.

If you’re in the inner city, where apartment towers are rising and traditional churches are leaving, you may have to be creative, perhaps by using the community room of a high-rise. A cluster of high-rises may have two hundred families; that’s more than many towns that support several churches.

In Colorado, we’ve also had industries move into rural areas and create a boom town. There you can move in with a trailer chapel and start a ministry immediately.

Fry: Once you’ve decided on the general proximity, then location is important. The church has got to be visible and accessible.

Leadership: In picking your site among other churches, how close is too close?

Ross: In my case, circ*mstantial factors helped determine the church’s location. In Tulsa, I went where the nucleus families were already located. You build a church near your nucleus.

In Austin, Minnesota, we were able to purchase a building a Lutheran group was vacating. So again, circ*mstances and the availability of land helped determine our location.

Fretheim: As a general rule in an urban area, I’d say half a mile is a good, safe distance from another church. If you get any closer, you hurt your own cause, too, because the area is already serviced. That’s foolish if there are other wide-open areas.

Fry: There are thousands of Lutherans in Minnesota. So why do we keep planting more Lutheran churches? Because the styles of ministry vary, and our style will reach some while another style will reach others. If our goal is reaching people with the gospel, we can’t be concerned about professional jealousy.

Leadership: With people often driving twenty minutes to church these days, do churches really have territorial claims? If style of ministry is what distinguishes churches, theoretically you could be next door and not cut into another church’s ministry.

Pattison: That depends on what happens to our economy. If we ever have another fuel shortage, one of the first things to stop running will be church buses. Next will be the people driving ten miles to church-they’ll find one in their community.

It is true, however, that in rural towns you’ll find four churches on the same corner. That’s all right if they have four different styles of ministry.

A friend of mine started a church in Colorado near several other evangelical churches. Yet he aimed his ministry at the tremendous number of unchurched people in that area. He wasn’t sheep-stealing; there were people yet to be reached.

Fretheim: Last year, we ran a house-to-house survey in our area trying to determine who was churched and unchurched. By our results, the community was 60 percent Catholic. We took our list to the Catholic priest and checked it against the parish records, and we found only 50 percent were bona fide Catholics. Ten percent were just using the name to get rid of Protestant doorbell ringers.

Pattison: We have something like 80 million people in the United States who do not go to any existing church. That’s a larger mission field than almost any nation to which we send missionaries. Church planters need to see themselves as missionaries reaching the lost.

Leadership: How do you keep your sanity in rented facilities?

Fretheim: Recognize the benefits: they’re cheap. We met in a school for $44 a Sunday. Now that congregation is paying $5,000 a month for its own building.

Also, be honest and deal in good faith with those you’re renting from. I still shudder when I think of a school we used in Minnesota. Another church had preceded us in renting the building, and they had a clever way of leaving tracts throughout the building so on Monday the school personnel would be evangelized. All it produced was ill will.

Pattison: I’d suggest: (1) hire a custodial service-either from the school, the landlord, the community, or even from within the congregation to solve the problem of what’s left on Monday morning. (2) Try to secure storage space in the building you’re renting so you don’t need a caravan of station wagons to haul equipment every Sunday. (3) Get into your own quarters as quickly as you can.

Fry: We’ve used gyms, cafeterias, even a lodge hall with a moose head gazing down from the wall. We found it helped to use banners-items that were “ours”-to enhance the visual effect that this is the place of God for us.

Leadership: What are the financial facts of life in a new church?

Pattison: Don’t lay a financial burden on a small congregation if you want it to grow. That’s essential. People struggling with the family budget don’t want to come to church to hear about more financial problems. Take positive action to dispel the fear that all this church wants is my money.

What we have found as a workable solution is to not take an offering; we simply let people know where the offering plates are located and remove the fear that all we want is their money.

Ross: The only emphasis I’ve ever put on finances is to preach about tithes and offerings and then give people an opportunity to respond.

I was speaking at a religious school one day, and a young boy asked, “Why do you make people tithe?”

I challenged him, “Just try to make people tithe. You can’t do it.” I explained that when it’s presented properly, tithing doesn’t offend; people respond.

Pattison: Two other things are important. First, don’t neglect missions. People in a small church especially need to give to something besides themselves.

Second, establish rapport with a lending institution that will eventually finance your building. Start your savings account there. Let the banker know about your assets, that you have twenty-five families and they all have savings accounts, that you’ve been able to lay aside funds in excess of your needs, and that as soon as you construct a building, figures indicate you’ll double in size. That talks to bankers, and they’re willing to help you.

Fretheim: What I stress is information and confidence. In financial matters, one breeds the other. Keeping people informed about the needs and the status gains their confidence. That’s why we make clear financial reports available every month.

Our church also tithed its income. We felt if we preached it, we should practice it, so a tenth of our income went to causes outside the local area.

Leadership: What’s the pastor’s role in a young church’s finances? Are you personally involved?

Fretheim: In budgeting and policies, yes. But I’ve never seen the financial secretary’s books. I don’t want to know what anyone gives. When I preach, people know I haven’t looked them up in the book.

Leadership: How many people do you need to start a church? Traditionally, the old Jewish custom required ten heads of household before establishing a synagogue.

Ross: That’s not a bad rule of thumb.

Pattison: We’ve started ours with five families in the nucleus, approximately twenty-five people. When it grows to ten families, you know it’s established. And it usually grows pretty quickly.

If each of those five families, who are really enthused, can bring one family, suddenly you’ve doubled in size, and you’re the fastest-growing church in the community!

Fretheim: There are two times when you really grow: when you begin the Sunday program and when you enter your own building. So you want to begin the Sunday program as soon as you can, even if it’s only with five families.

Fry: You need something to which you can invite people.

Leadership: What can new churches offer that established churches can’t?

Pattison: In searching for a church, most Christians look for what a church can do for them. In church planting, however, the people who are willing to commit themselves have a higher level of spiritual commitment. They’re asking, “What can I do for the Lord?”

Pioneer churches give laity an opportunity to minister that they don’t get in larger congregations.

Fry: In addition, mission churches have higher percentages of new and/or reclaimed Christians, which produces a different vitality.

Fretheim: A new church has a very clear goal in mind: to build a congregation and, eventually, a building. That provides remarkable motivation.

Leadership: Should the founding pastor move on when the church is established? If so, when do you know it’s time?

Fretheim: For me, I feel my job is to gather the congregation, build the building, and install the program. Then my phase is finished, and it’s time for someone else to integrate the people into the program-and to wrestle with the debt I’ve incurred. (Laughter) A new voice at that time is good.

Leadership: Did you announce that in advance?

Fretheim: Yes. In Illinois I said, “I’ll take you through the building program,” but I was sixty-five when I began. And I stayed two years longer than I’d planned.

Fry: Congregations reach certain plateaus, and new leadership is important. We also need to make use of those gifted in church planting, freeing them to go out and do it again.

Pattison: I think that was Paul’s ambition when he said he didn’t want to build “on someone else’s foundation” (Rom. 15:20).

Fry: On the other hand, some plant a church and feel no need to do it again. They stay with that flock forty years.

Leadership: What should the founding pastor do to prepare the church for his successor?

Pattison: Emphasize the ministry, not the minister. Let them know the goal is reaching the community, and that the next pastor will do things differently.

I’ve found it’s best to let a young congregation go for a while without a pastor, which means you have to leave them in sound financial shape. But that six months or so with an interim is important for them in finding the first pastor of their choosing.

Leadership: How do you handle discouragement? Have you ever felt like pulling the plug on a failing new church?

Pattison: If the need is there, you never pull the plug-you correct the problem. That’s an area where small churches have the advantage over large ones: it’s easier to turn a rowboat than an ocean liner.

Christ will see his body grow. If the initial reason for planting the church is still there, then fight through the problems and go on with the ministry.

Also, recognize the problems inherent in a small congregation. There are twelve Sundays in summer, for instance, and most people will be on vacation for three of them. So, at best, a fourth of your congregation will be gone on any given Sunday. Don’t be discouraged. We don’t need big numbers to keep us going; encouragement comes from seeing people respond to Christ.

Ross: I agree. If you go by your emotions, you’re always facing the question “Will this make it or won’t it?” But if you’re determined to hold on, to keep fighting those spiritual battles, things have a way of working out.

Your encouragement comes in retrospect as you look back and see how far you’ve come since you started. Even a little progress makes a big difference in church planting, and seeing that helped me through the rough places.

Fretheim: At the beginning of my ministry in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, we were very, very small. One day I met the local Catholic priest, who asked me, “How many people will you have at church next Sunday?”

I wasn’t proud, so I admitted, “Oh, maybe a dozen.”

“Don’t feel badly,” he said. “I know a man who had twelve followers, and he did all right.”

That insight helped me, and it’s stayed with me ever since.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

We are highlighting Leadership Journal's Top 40, the best articles of the journal's 36-year history, presenting them in chronological order. Today we present #33, from 1984.

The Book of Jonah is the tale of a reluctant preacher. Jonah's message, as we have come to know it, is: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (Jon. 3:4).

A brief eight words. Surely there is more: some clever and imaginative introduction lost in the oral manuscript. There must have been iterations, poetry, and exegesis. But they are gone, and those eight words are all we know.

Such a miniature message seems anticlimactic. Even the king of Nineveh had more to say than Jonah (see vv. 7-9). But the lost sermon was preached and bore a stern word of necessity. Verse 10 states its effect: "And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."

The results of sermons in the Bible seem to be of great importance. This is true of either Testament. Acts 2:40-41 speaks of the dramatic results of Peter's Pentecostal sermon, and a few days later we are told, "Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand" (Acts 4:4). While Jonah omits the statistics of his sermon, Luke was careful to note Simon's.

Preaching in the New Testament seems to emulate the authoritative style of the Old Testament prophets. Ever cloaked in other-worldly authority, preaching became the vehicle the early church rode into the arena of evangelizing the Roman Empire. As common people of Galilee once marveled at Christ's authority in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:28-29), so the authority of Scripture-based sermons became the defense-sometimes the sole defense-of the men and women who pressed the strong alternative of the gospel.

No Time to Waste

From John the Baptist to the end of the New Testament era, the sermon, like the church itself, flamed with apocalyptic zeal. The prophets had preached strong declarations of the direction of God in history. Following Pentecost, the sermon was possessed of a new spiritual union, where the preacher and the Holy Spirit were joined. The sermon, like Scripture, was dictated by the Spirit. Because of a direct alliance with the Trinity, the preacher had the right to speak with God's authority, demanding immediate action and visible decisions. This "right-now" ethic saw the sermon in terms of the demand of God. When God demanded decisions, they could be tabulated as soon as the sermon was finished. Sheep could immediately be divided from goats.

The specific message was delivered by those who possessed the call. The rules of primitive homiletics were not defined. The sermon was the man; the medium, the message. The product was instant and visible. Faith could be tabulated by those who cried in the streets that they believed, admitted to baptism, and showed up for the breaking of bread and prayers.

Following the first head counts in Jerusalem, the fire of evangelism spread, pushed on by the hot winds of Greek and Aramaic sermons. Congregations sprang up as sermons called them into being. Without institutional structure, programs, or buildings, the church celebrated the simple center of worship-the sermon and that which the sermon created: the company of the committed, the fellowship of believers.

The sermon was not celebrated as art, though doubtless, art may have been an aspect of delivery. Art was not so important in the panicky apocalypticism of Century One. Zeal raged in the bright light of Pentecost, not art. The sermon was the means of reaching the last, desperate age of humanity. One needed not to polish phrases or study word roots-the kingdom was at hand-there wasn't time to break ground for a seminary. Church administration went begging. On the eve of Armageddon, committees and bureaus were unimportant. There was only one point to be made. All human wisdom was one set of alternatives: repent or perish.

This was also Jonah's sermon: repent or perish. Like those of the New Testament era, his was not a notable document. The sermon was the workhorse of urgent evangelism.

Jonah's sermon was powerful simply because it was not ornate. He who cries "fire" in a theater need not be an orator. Indeed, he is allowed to interrupt the art of actors. It is not an offense to the years of disciplined training to be set aside for the urgent and unadorned word: "The theater is on fire!" The bearer rates his effectiveness on how fast the theater is cleared, not on the ovation of the customers. The alarmist is not out for encores but empty seats. His business is rescue.

The Book of Jonah concerns such reluctant and apocalyptic preaching. The royal family sitting at last in the ashes of national repentance illustrates how effective his urgency was.

This zealous declaration is the Word of God as it is preached today in growing churches. Those who would speak an artistic word must do it in churches already built. Further, those who admire the Fosdicks and Maclarens-and they are to be admired-must see that their artistry would be passed by in the slums of London, where Booth's drums and horns sounded not a "trumpet voluntary" to call men and women to the queen's chapel but the "oom-pah-pah" of the cross. "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" was an urgent question that nauseated Anglicans even as it intrigued the poor and downtrodden of England with its zealous demands.

What did Booth say? Who knows? Who cares?

What did Whitefield say? What Billy Sunday? What Finney, what Wesley, what Mordecai Ham? To be sure, some of their sermons survive. But essentially they viewed their preaching not in the Chrysostom tradition but the tradition of the Baptizer of Christ: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance" (Luke 3:7-8), or Simon Peter, who cried, "Save yourselves from this untoward generation" (Acts 2:40).

The Coming of Art

Here and there were men like Jonathan Edwards who combined the best of literary tradition and apocalyptic zeal. But there was a real sense in which Edwards, the Mathers, and the other Puritans supplied a pre-soap-opera generation with a cultural center. The better their apocalypse, the higher the other-world fever of their gospel contagion. Their fiery tirades began to resemble the spirit of a matador, and the amens were the enthusiastic ol‚s, where the champion was not Jehovah but the preacher. Kate Caffrey writes in The Mayflower:

A strong style was favored-in 1642 John Cotton recommended preaching after the manner of Christ, who, he said, "let fly poynt blanck"-and the hearers judged each performance like professional drama critics. Two sermons on Sunday and a lecture-sermon or weeknight meeting, usually on Thursday, were the custom, with fines of up to five shillings for absence from church. Only those who wished need go to the weeknight sermon, which was accompanied by no prayers or other teaching. Yet they were so popular in the sixteen-thirties that the General Court of Massachusetts tried to make every community hold them on the same day, to cut down all the running about from one town to the next. The preachers protested that it was in order to hear sermons that people had come to New England, so the court contented itself with the mild recommendation that listeners should at least be able to get home before dark.

Even condemned criminals joined in the vogue for sermons. On March 11, 1686, when James Morgan was executed in Boston, three sermons were preached to him by Cotton and Increase Mather and Joshua Moody (so many came to hear Moody that their combined weight cracked the church gallery), and the prisoner delivered from the scaffold a stern warning to all present to take heed from his dread example.

Sermons were so important that it is impossible to overestimate them. Hourglasses, set up by the minister, showed the sermons' length: a bare hour was not good enough. People brought paper and inkhorns to take copious notes in a specially invented shorthand; many thick notebooks filled with closely written sermon summaries have been preserved. The meeting house rustled with the turning of pages and scratching of pens. Sermons were as pervasive then as political news today; they were read and discussed more eagerly than newspapers are now.

These intellectualized, zealous Massachusetts Bay sermons were celebrated by sermon lovers throughout New England. In these meeting houses the sermon grew in performance value. And yet the zeal and urgency were viewed as part of the performance.

The tendency remains. Now the zealot is a performer and the sermon a monologue celebrated for its emotional and statistical success. The burden is urgent but also entertaining. The preacher feels the burden of his word as the fire-crier feels the pain of his office. But he feels also the pleasure of its success, which is his reputation.

Ego being the force it is, the urgency of the cry often becomes a secondary theme. Artistry eclipses zeal.

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville tells us of Father Mapple's sermon on the Book of Jonah. Listen to Mapple's artistic treatment:

Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land'; when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten-his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean-Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Yea, woe to him who, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!

But perhaps Father Mapple's art can afford to be more obvious than his zeal: he is preaching in a church already there and is not delivering urgency but a sermon on urgency!

How Shall We Then Preach?

For years I have felt myself trapped in this quandary. Growing a church causes me to speak of redemption, frequently and earnestly. My sermons often sound to me too Falwellian or Criswellian or Pattersonian, my sermons more zealous than artistic. It is their intent to draw persons to Christ, in which pursuit my church is engaged.

But you may object, "Is it only sermon that creates your church? Do you not use the manuals and conventional machinery of the church and parachurch?" Yes. There have been mailing programs, and such radio and newspaper ads as we could manage. In fact, has not the sermon become second place in the church? Bill Hull once said in a denominational symposium:

Let us candidly confront this chilling claim that the pulpit is no longer the prow of the church, much less of civilization, as Herman Melville visualized it in Moby Dick. Ask any pulpit committee after months of intensive investigation and travel: How many pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention are even trying to build their careers on the centrality of preaching? . . . Subtle but excruciating pressures are brought to bear on the minister today to spend all of the week feverishly engineering some spectacular scheme designed to draw attention to his church, then on Saturday night to dust off somebody else's clever sermon outline (semantic gimmickry) for use the next morning.

Is this not so? To some degree, I think it is.

But there are some of us who don't want it to be. We feel called to do the work of an evangelist and believe urgency can have some class, and be done with some artistry and/or enlightenment. For years I have listened to the sermons of Richard Jackson, pastor at North Phoenix Baptist Church, with great debt to his example. After he finished a long section in the Passion passage of Saint John, I had seen the cross in a new light. During more than a year of sermons from that Gospel, more than six hundred were added to his church by baptism. Perhaps Pastor Jackson has taken the burden of urgency to the Greek New Testament and the credible commentators and has emerged to say, "Here is enlightened urgency."

Perhaps Swindoll has done it with certainty. Perhaps Draper did it with Hebrews in his commentary. The sermon by each of these, I believe, is a declaration of urgency that at the same time takes giant strides toward homiletic finesse.

A secular parallel commends itself, again noticed by Bill Hull:

With disaster staring him in the face, Churchill took up the weapon of his adversary and began to do battle with words. From a concrete bomb shelter deep underground, he spoke to the people of Britain not of superiority but of sacrifice, not of conquest but of courage, not of revenge but of renewal. Slowly but surely, Winston Churchill talked England back to life. To beleaguered old men waiting on their rooftops with the buckets of water for the fire bombs to land, to frightened women and children huddled behind sandbags with sirens screaming overhead, to exhausted pilots dodging tracer bullets in the midnight sky, his words not only announced a new dawn but also conveyed the strength to bring it to pass.

No wonder Ruskin described a sermon as "thirty minutes to raise the dead." That is our awesome assignment: to put into words, in such a way that our hearers will put into deeds, the new day that is ours in Jesus Christ our Lord.

I am not talking about dogmatism. Dogmatism is authority-sclerosis. It is an incessant filibuster-never mute, always deaf! Talking is easier and much louder than thinking. The growing church too often cannot celebrate new truth, for it is too long screaming the old ones. The familiar is the creed, the unfamiliar is liberalism and dangerous revisionism. The thinking person off the street may want to ask questions and enter into dialogue, but he finds that trying to ask a question is like shouting into the gale or trying to quote the flag salute at a rock concert. His need for reasons seems buried in the noise.

I have always applauded Huck Finn for deciding to go with Tom Sawyer to hell than with the fundamentalist Miss Watson to heaven:

Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad, then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I wasn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble and wouldn't do no good.

Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and, she said, not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

The logic of the streets is doubly plagued by such images. Why would a robust, open-minded Christ so love an overcorseted, dyspeptic, neurotic Scripture quoter as Miss Watson? Hell, for all its fiery disadvantages, seems a quieter and kinder place than her heaven.

It is not that saying "Thus saith the Lord" is wrong, and yet we are all drawn by the counsel of a friend who says, "Let us look together at what the Lord saith"! When we become more authoritarian in dialogues, we need to be sure we are really speaking the mind of God and not merely strong-arming our own agenda in another's more mighty name.

What Matters Most

Still, as crass as it sounds, unless the preached word encounters and changes its hearers in some way, artistry and enchantment cannot be said to have mattered much. The sermon must not at last be cute, but life-changing. As Somerset Maugham said of certain writers, "Their flashy effects distract the mind. They destroy their persuasiveness; you would not believe a man was very intent on ploughing a furrow if he carried a hoop with him and jumped through it at every other step."

When the sermon has reasoned, exhorted, pled, and pontificated; when it has glittered with art and oozed with intrigue; when it has entered into human hearts and broken secular thralldom-when all of this has been done, the sermon must enter into judgment at a high tribunal. Like the speaker who uttered it, the sermon must hear the judgment of the last great auditor. If, indeed, every word is brought to God, one can imagine the last great gathering of the sermons of all ages-the march of the cassettes past the throne. Every word tried … a thousand, thousand sermons-indeed, a great multitude which no man could number: Peter Marshall, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Apostle, Peter Piper, Peter Paul, Popes, Carl McIntire, Oral Roberts, Robert Bellarmine, John R. Rice, John Newton, John Hus, Prince John-a thousand, thousand words from David Brainerd to Origen, Tertullian to Swaggart, Jack Van Impe to Arius, all at once replying to one issue: Which sermons really counted?

The God who is the ancient lover of sinners will cry to those sermons at his left hand, "Why did you not serve me? Why did you not love men and women enough to change them? You took their hearts, commanded their attention, but did nothing to change them. Be gone, ye cursed sermons, to Gehenna-be burned to ashes and scattered over chaos-for better sermons would have called chaos to unfold itself in strong creation."

Calvin Miller is pastor of Westside Baptist Church, Omaha, Nebraska.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

PURITY

A farmer went each week to the Farmers’ Market to sell, among other things, the cottage cheese and apple butter made on his farm. He carried these in two large tubs, from which he ladled the cottage cheese or apple butter into smaller containers the customers brought.

One day he got to market and discovered he’d forgotten one ladle. He felt he had no choice but to use the one he had for both products.

Before long he couldn’t tell which was which.

That’s the way it is when we try to dispense the good news of Christ using hearts, minds, and tongues too recently immersed in the coarseness and one-upmanship of the world. Nobody gets any nourishment.

– Beth Landers

Waterloo, Ontario

PSEUDO-CONCERN

A lady answered the knock on her door to find a man with a sad expression.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, “but I’m collecting money for an unfortunate family in the neighborhood. The husband is out of work, the kids are hungry, the utilities will soon be cut off, and worse, they’re going to be kicked out of their apartment if they don’t pay the rent by this afternoon.”

“I’ll be happy to help,” said the woman with great concern. “But who are you?”

“I’m the landlord,” he replied.

– Jon H. Allen

Ontario, California

LOVING ENEMIES

In The Grace of Giving, Stephen Olford tells of a Baptist pastor during the American Revolution, Peter Miller, who lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and enjoyed the friendship of George Washington.

In Ephrata also lived Michael Wittman, an evil-minded sort who did all he could to oppose and humiliate the pastor.

One day Michael Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to die. Peter Miller traveled seventy miles on foot to Philadelphia to plead for the life of the traitor.

“No, Peter,” General Washington said. “I cannot grant you the life of your friend.”

“My friend!” exclaimed the old preacher. “He’s the bitterest enemy I have.”

“What?” cried Washington. “You’ve walked seventy miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the matter in different light. I’ll grant your pardon.” And he did.

Peter Miller took Michael Wittman back home to Ephrata-no longer an enemy but a friend.

– Lynn Jost

Hesston, Kansas

ENSLAVED BY SIN

Thomas Costain’s history, The Three Edwards, describes the life of Raynald III, a fourteenth-century duke in what is now Belgium.

Grossly overweight, Raynald was commonly called by his Latin nickname, Crassus, which means “fat.”

After a violent quarrel, Raynald’s younger brother Edward led a successful revolt against him. Edward captured Raynald but did not kill him. Instead, he built a room around Raynald in the Nieuwkerk castle and promised him he could regain his title and property as soon as he was able to leave the room.

This would not have been difficult for most people since the room had several windows and a door of near-normal size, and none was locked or barred. The problem was Raynald’s size. To regain his freedom, he needed to lose weight. But Edward knew his older brother, and each day he sent a variety of delicious foods. Instead of dieting his way out of prison, Raynald grew fatter.

When Duke Edward was accused of cruelty, he had a ready answer: “My brother is not a prisoner. He may leave when he so wills.”

Raynald stayed in that room for ten years and wasn’t released until after Edward died in battle. By then his health was so ruined he died within a year … a prisoner of his own appetite.

– Dave Wilkinson

Oroville, California

COMPLACENCY

Ronald Meredith, in his book Hurryin’ Big for Little Reasons, describes one quiet night in early spring:

Suddenly out of the night came the sound of wild geese flying. I ran to the house and breathlessly announced the excitement I felt. What is to compare with wild geese across the moon?

It might have ended there except for the sight of our tame mallards on the pond. They heard the wild call they had once known. The honking out of the night sent little arrows of prompting deep into their wild yesterdays. Their wings fluttered a feeble response, The urge to fly-to take their place in the sky for which God made them-was sounding in their feathered breasts, but they never raised from the water.

The matter had been settled long ago. The corn of the barnyard was too tempting! Now their desire to fly only made them uncomfortable.

Temptation is always enjoyed at the price of losing the capacity for flight.

– Jim Moss

Hendersonville, Tennessee

SECOND COMING

During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives.

One day in 1789, the sky of Hartford darkened ominously, and some of the representatives, glancing out the windows, feared the end was at hand.

Quelling a clamor for immediate adjournment, Davenport rose and said, “The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. Therefore, I wish that candles be brought.”

Rather than fearing what is to come, we are to be faithful till Christ returns. Instead of fearing the dark, we’re to be lights as we watch and wait.

– Harry Heintz

Troy, New York

COPING

There are two ways of handling pressure. One is illustrated by a bathysphere, the miniature submarine used to explore the ocean in places so deep that the water pressure would crush a conventional submarine like an aluminum can. Bathyspheres compensate with plate steel several inches thick, which keeps the water out but also makes them heavy and hard to maneuver. Inside they’re cramped.

When these craft descend to the ocean floor, however, they find they’re not alone. When their lights are turned on and you look through the tiny, thick plate-glass windows, what do you see? Fish!

These fish cope with extreme pressure in an entirely different way. They don’t build thick skins; they remain supple and free. They compensate for the outside pressure through equal and opposite pressure inside themselves.

Christians, likewise, don’t have to be hard and thick-skinned-as long as they appropriate God’s power within to equal the pressure without.

– Jay Kesler

in Campus Life

VICARIOUS ATONEMENT

I read about a small boy who was consistently late coming home from school. His parents warned him one day that he must be home on time that afternoon, but nevertheless he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing. His father met him in the living room and said nothing.

At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father’s full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed.

The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy’s plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son.

When that boy grew to be a man, he said, “All my life I’ve known what God is like by what my father did that night.”

– J. Allan Peterson

Denver, Colorado

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

In The Last Days Newsletter, Leonard Ravenhill tells about a group of tourists visiting a picturesque village who walked by an old man sitting beside a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one tourist asked, “Were any great men born in this village?”

The old man replied, “Nope, only babies.”

A frothy question brought a profound answer. There are no instant heroes-whether in this world or in the kingdom of God. Growth takes time, and as 1 Timothy 3:6 and 5:22 point out, even spiritual leadership must be earned.

– William C. Shereos

Chicago, Illinois

HUMAN NATURE

A school teacher lost her life savings in a business scheme that had been elaborately explained by a swindler. When her investment disappeared and her dream was shattered, she went to the Better Business Bureau.

“Why on earth didn’t you come to us first?” the official asked. “Didn’t you know about the Better Business Bureau?”

“Oh, yes,” said the lady sadly. “I’ve always known about you. But I didn’t come because I was afraid you’d tell me not to do it.”

The folly of human nature is that even though we know where the answers lie-God’s Word-we don’t turn there for fear of what it will say.

– Jerry Lambert

Findlay, Ohio

What are the most effective illustrations you’ve come across? We want to share them with other pastors and teachers who need material that communicates with clarity and imagination. For items used, leadership will pay $15. If the material has been previously published, please include the source.

Stories, analogies, and word pictures should he sent to:

To Illustrate . . .

LEADERSHIP

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Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Most church leaders believe in evangelism but find it difficult to get their people involved. The resources listed are tools to motivate, train, and guide others in sharing the Good News.

Note: an asterisk (*) indicates a book is not listed in the most recent Books in Print and therefore must be sought through libraries, used-book sources, or the publisher.

Aldrich, Joseph C. Life-Style Evangelism. Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1981. How to use natural relationships to cross traditional boundaries in evangelism.

Brestin, Dee. Finders Keepers. Wheaton, Ill.: Shaw, 1983. A practical model of how to share the faith with friends and neighbors.

Coleman, Robert E. The Master Plan of Evangelism. Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1978. A classic study of Jesus’ methods with his disciples.

“Comprehensive Evangelism Newsletter,” published by the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth, Box 989, Pasadena, CA 91102.* Offers a good list of resources available to train laity.

Conn, Harvie M. Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1982. Balances evangelism with social concern.

Engel, James F. Contemporary Christian Communication. Nashville: Nelson, 1979. Excellent training resource on the process of motivating conversion.

Engel, James F. and Wilbert Norton. What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975. Communications strategy applied to evangelism.

Ford, Leighton. Good News Is for Sharing. Elgin, Ill.: Cook, 1977. A guide to evangelizing through friendship and love. Also available are training films for use in the church.

Gerber, Vergil. God’s Way to Keep a Church Going and Growing. Pasadena: William Carey Library/ Gospel Light, 1973.* A manual for evangelism and church growth.

Green, Michael. Evangelism in the Early Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967.* Examines first-century evangelism and challenges contemporary methods.

Griffin, Em. The Mind Changers. Wheaton: Tyndale, 1976. Describes the art of persuasion.

Griffiths, Michael. God’s Forgetful Pilgrims. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975. A challenge to the church to return to the primary task of evangelism.

Henderson, Robert T. Joy to the World. Atlanta: Knox, 1980. A highly recommended resource on the joyful aspects of sharing the Good News.

Hunter, George G. III. The Contagious Congregation. Nashville: Abingdon, 1979. Offers tools and training for involving the congregation in effective evangelism.

Innes, Dick. I Hate Witnessing. Ventura, Calif.: Vision, 1983. Designed to help people break out of stereotypic witnessing molds to share their faith personally and effectively.

Johnson, Ben. An Evangelism Primer. Atlanta: Knox, 1983. Up-to-date resource with practical principles for congregations.

Krass, Alfred C. Evangelizing Neopagan North America. Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1982. A resource for evangelism addressing the cultural framework of non-Christians in North America.

Little, Paul. How to Give Away Your Faith. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1966. A practical training tool for witnessing and for training others. Often used with Little’s Know Why You Believe.

McPhee, Arthur. Friendship Evangelism. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978. Focuses on reaching out to natural contacts such as friends, relatives, and working associates.

Metzger, Will. Tell the Truth. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1981. A training manual on the message and methods of God-centered witnessing.

Neighbour, Ralph, Jr. and Cal Thomas. Target Group Evangelism. Nashville: Broadman, 1975.* Directing evangelism toward people in certain natural groupings.

Packer, James I. Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1961. A helpful tool for explaining God’s providence versus human decision making.

Peace, Richard. The Church’s Guide to Evangelism. Boston: Evangelistic Association of New England, 1982.* Designed to help stimulate ongoing evangelism in local churches through regular and special programs.

Pippert, Rebecca Manley. Out of the Salt Shaker and Into the World. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1979. Excellent resource for motivating and training in evangelism as a way of life.

Sisson, Richard. Training for Evangelism. Chicago: Moody, 1979. Good for mobilizing laity.

Southard, Samuel. Pastoral Evangelism. Atlanta: Knox, 1979. Emphasizes the need for balancing care with evangelism.

Watson, David. I Believe in Evangelism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976. Perhaps the best general introduction to evangelism available.

Youth Evangelism Explosion, c/o Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, 5555 North Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308. Adapts the adult model for use with teens. One of the only programs available to train and mobilize teens in evangelism.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I have four things to say about stewardship, and only one of them has to do with dollars.

Not that I mind talking about money. I think the organized church is not always honest on the subject-and particularly with people who have it. Several of my wealthy friends who became Christians in midlife have been immediately asked to serve on every board and committee in sight, for the benefit of their “prayers and counsel.” The truth is they hadn’t been Christians long enough to have much of a prayer life, and their counsel certainly wasn’t worth much, since they knew little about religious organizations in America.

What the inviters did want was their money. I wish they had been honest enough to say that. Two or three of my friends went through some very trying times once they realized how they’d been played for suckers.

But first:

We Are Stewards of Relationships

The early church was not famous for how it grew, nor even for its balanced budget. It was known for the way people loved one another.

I learned my relational lesson the hard way. When our son was about to be married, I volunteered to spend some time with him explaining how to build a successful home. He replied, “But, Dad, I’m not going to be an executive. I’m going to be a professor.”

I was totally bewildered. What did that have to do with it?

He said, “Well, if I were going to be an executive, I’d come to you, because you’ve run a business well. You always thought production before relation, and I think that’s correct in a business. But I’m going to be building a home, and frankly, I think our family has been great in spite of you rather than because of you.”

I asked for a replay of that paragraph, but it came out the same way the second time, just like on TV.

When I pressed him to explain, he said, “Dad, you were the president of your company, and when you came home, you were president in the home. You used the same techniques both places. Mother was your vice-president, you took grievances from the kids after they had gone up through the line of command, and you tried to get us to use our time productively rather than relationally.

“What you really never knew was that relationship is the production of the home.”

I suddenly realized he was right. For example, I had seldom watched television with the family. I’d go to my study after dinner-and be bothered as I heard them out there enjoying themselves. I’d feel compelled to go walk in front of the screen a couple of times each evening, making remarks about people who wasted time. Of course, they went right on watching, which didn’t improve the production a bit but did hurt the relation.

My son was kind enough still to invite me to be best man in his wedding, saying, “Dad, I understand, and I love you because you were doing the best you knew.” But obviously, I had to change. I called the family together and told them I was going to try to be different. It was one of the most difficult moments of my life. The five years since then have been frustrating at times but also exciting.

I still want the organization I head to be productive. Nothing makes me angrier than walking into a retail store and finding the clerks so friendly with each other they don’t let the customers bother them. I wish they would at least invite us to join the conversation until they can get around to waiting on us.

But I am trying to be a good steward of my relationships. And I have come to see that the church is more like a family than a business. The relation is more important than the production. We get into trouble if we start borrowing the language of figures from business and measuring the church with it. Relationships cannot be defined by an inventory. We have to use terms like “healthy,” “unhealthy,” “improving,” “deteriorating,” and “spiritual.”

As part of that stewardship, we owe each other encouragement. The president of Sloan-Kettering Laboratories once told a medical convention, “My father was a country doctor. We now know, scientifically speaking, that he didn’t carry a thing in that black bag that would cure anybody. But people got well because he patted them and said, ‘You’re going to make it.’ ” That encouragement released the body’s amazing power to heal itself.

That’s the kind of activity-tending to relationships-where Christians must shine.

We Are Stewards of a Special Identity

I was having lunch with the pastor of the Moscow Baptist Church and asked how many members he had, to which he replied, “Fifty-six hundred.”

“How many attend?” I asked.

“Six thousand.”

I commented that this was a little different ratio than in Texas, where I lived.

“Yes,” he said, “we have about four hundred who come but aren’t ready yet to take on the identity of a Christian.”

Then he used an interesting phrase: “In Russia, we have no four-wheel Christians,” by which he meant those who ride to their baptism, to Easter and Christmas services, and to their funeral.

At this point, I wanted to change the subject!

True Christians have a stewardship of identity within them; they are pilgrims, sojourners, citizens of heaven on their way home. That makes them participants, not observers. I wonder if the Lord will someday say to us observers, “I never really knew you; I only met you while you were observing my participants.”

I asked one of the finest scholars in America what he thought the most important thing was, and he said, “The next question.” Very clever-but it made me realize he was actually an intellectual reporter on life rather than a participant, and in this way he was able to appear responsible while being irresponsible. More than once, I confess, I have played the same game.

In contrast, a Christian I know who really owns his identity and has thought about it is Ron Ritchie of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California. He was telling me how tired he became of the cool reaction he got on airplanes every time he called himself a minister when someone asked what he did. He came up with a far better answer: “I tell people about Jesus if they want to know.” Then he shuts up and lets the Spirit take over.

I began trying something like that. I had always shied away from evangelism visiting teams. But I began telling the Lord in the morning, “Today, I promise not to duck”-in other words, when religion comes up in a conversation, I will deal with it just as naturally as with any other subject. Whenever I do that-somebody invariably opens the door. I was flying home from New York one Monday morning sitting next to a vice-president for one of the overseas airlines. He was headed out for the week, and he casually turned to me and said, “I’m sure glad to be leaving home.”

I remembered that feeling from earlier years, when my children were small, and I used my business responsibilities to escape perpetual parenthood.

“Why is that?” I asked him.

“Because my wife made me go to church yesterday, and all during the service I sat there saying to myself, D— hypocrite! until I couldn’t wait to get out. . . . Isn’t that the way you feel?”

Now-was I going to duck or not? Was I going to be a steward of my Christian identity?

I assured him that at one time in my life I had felt the same way. But then I’d learned to really enjoy going to church.

Suddenly he acted a little trapped there by the window and pulled out a magazine to read. I sat wondering if I’d blown it. He squirmed in his seat, and presently he said, “I’m going to the rest room, but when I come back, I want to ask you a personal question.”

He was a long time coming back. Finally he climbed into his seat, stepping on my feet. He picked up his magazine again and said not a word. By this time I was becoming amused; he was like a fish on a line, hooked but refusing to come alongside the boat. I just waited, because if the Spirit had started this work, he could finish it.

Suddenly he blurted out, “How do you pray?”

I gave a very simple explanation, something that probably wouldn’t satisfy the theologians-I said you just had a conversation with God. That seemed to help him. The upshot of the discussion that followed was an invitation for me to come see him the next time I go to New York. I hope to do that.

If I duck the natural conversation about spiritual matters that God brings across my path, I can’t make up for it by joining the church visitation program and calling on three people he didn’t direct me to. This is the stewardship of identity. I must accept the fact that I am a Christian and behave like one.

And when we do what we do in the Spirit, he has a way of bringing a great deal of light while removing most of the heat.

We Are Stewards of Our Gifts

We Baptists talk a great deal about talents and not much about spiritual gifts. But I am becoming more and more convinced that the gifts are what the Spirit uses. Again, my theologian friends probably wouldn’t salute my interpretation, but I firmly believe that gifts are simply talents that have been unctionized by the Spirit. (Now, grammarians know that unctionize isn’t a word, but you get the point.) Since all of us have at least one talent, we all have a potential gift.

Here are a few that call for careful stewardship:

Teaching. The challenge here is to give people what they desperately need. If we are reaching hungry people with genuine bread, they are going to form a line. Recently I have observed some very large Bible classes. The teachers have certain common denominators: they are good communicators who keep in mind they are teaching people, not a subject; they show how scriptural principles bring answers to everyday needs; and they give people the option of accepting God’s help, just as he does. Where people feel love and find answers, they come, and often in droves. Genuine content is more effective than contests.

Hospitality. Our daughter Brenda is still helping me with this one. Her husband, Rick, had hired a black ex-convict who was then rearrested for something, and Brenda, with her heart of mercy, went to see the woman he’d been living with. She found her and a small child living in a shack without food. She brought food, helped her clean up the place, and formed a friendship, while Rick got the man out of jail.

Eventually Brenda brought up the idea of their getting married. She was told that people in their circ*mstances rarely did that. Brenda explained that it was right before God, and eventually the couple became convinced. But where would they hold a wedding? They had no extra money and no church connections.

So Brenda offered her north Dallas home for the occasion and solicited the help of a minister. It was a lovely evening.

A few days later, Rick got a note from the man saying they had to leave town and couldn’t tell where they were going. It turned out there was an underworld contract on his life. In fact, one of his friends had just been killed. But, the note said, they would never forget Brenda and Rick.

I asked my daughter how she felt. She got teary and replied, “No matter where they are nor how long they live, they’ll know somebody cared.”

Discernment. Too many of us business people leave our brains home when we come to church, voting for things or agreeing to things that make absolutely no sense. I’m not saying the church should be run like a business, but it doesn’t have to be run like a poor business, which is what often happens.

I was leading a singles’ retreat in Florida and met a couple thinking about getting married. She, a stewardess, had lived a very insecure life. He, meanwhile, seemed about as irresponsible as they come. Over lunch, they asked my opinion.

I said frankly they should not marry. She needed security, and he didn’t offer it; he was more interested in going around giving his testimony than in working. (I’m not against testimony, but I’m against it in lieu of work.)

She took me seriously and decided against the marriage. Three years later, I was on a plane to Chicago, when all of a sudden she dropped down beside me and said with surprise, “You’re Fred Smith!” (I was glad to know, because in my stage of senility I sometimes forget.) Then she bubbled out the news that in eighteen days she would be marrying a seminary professor. It sounded like a perfect match.

In a few weeks she sent me a card from Saint Andrews, and anybody wise enough to play golf on a honeymoon must have a rosy future ahead.

The stewardship of these three gifts and others like them is not a trivial matter. We must take them seriously.

We Are Stewards of Money

I’ll say this quickly and pointedly. I resent a great deal of the Christian talk about money. Those who refer to being “blessed” with money give me the impression they think God has made a brilliant decision about where to put his funds. It’s an affront to the poor. I wish they would say “entrusted” or some other stewardship word instead of “blessed.”

I also think it’s wrong to teach that we can bribe God, even with the tithe. Recently I’ve had some fun with one of the ministries that claims if you send them a dollar, God will provide you with ten. I wrote them saying I agreed with their theology-and it would be faster if they’d send me a dollar and keep the ten God would give them back, rather than having me serve as the middleman a dollar at a time. I assured them I would cash their check immediately so God would not be delayed in blessing them, and I’d even provide them with my vacation address so their seed-offerings would not have to be held up.

Evidently their computer hasn’t handled such a letter before, because they’ve been a little late responding, let alone sending their contribution.

I do tithe, even though I do not believe it is scripturally required today. I have never knowingly made a dollar without giving at least 10 percent of the gross to God. That started when I was working a week (six days) for six dollars, and I gave sixty cents. Last year my giving was in the six figures, and that wasn’t as hard to give as the sixty cents. But I’m convinced if I had not given the sixty cents, I wouldn’t have given the six figures.

However, tithing ought not to be used to police people into works instead of grace. To a group of laymen that included actual billionaires as well as several millionaires I said recently, “The tithe is an Old Testament scheme that lets the rich get out of giving.” (I didn’t owe any of them money, so I could be extremely brave.)

All I know about giving can be put in three points:

Those who legalistically give a tithe never really enjoy it. Those who give out of love thoroughly enjoy it and are not worried about figuring on the net or gross, or even more.

Giving is the only drain plug I know for greed. The sin of the poor is envy, and the sin of the rich is greed. I suppose if you have to choose between the two, take greed, because it at least makes you productive! Envy doesn’t produce anything but ulcers. However, neither one belongs in the Christian life. Giving is the way to drain greed out of the soul.

God is basically interested not in our money but our maturity. Some people try to substitute service for giving, while others give to avoid serving. Neither one works; both are required for Christian maturity. That’s why if you show me your calendar and your checkbook, I can write your biography. I will know how you spend your time and your money; that constitutes your treasure.

Trying to substitute one gift for the other is really being dishonest, and God will not honor that. For him, the process is as sacred as the result. We need to remember this when thinking about using manipulation in his work. He is not in favor of cutting corners, and we, as his stewards, must set our policies according to his principles.

Fred Smith is president of Fred Smith Associates, Dallas, Texas.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Shortly after coming to Carl Junction, some generous church members offered to send my wife and me on a trip to the Holy Land. For some reason, I felt I should decline and instead take a group of young people to Mexico. My son David had developed a musical program with the teenagers, and we made arrangements for them to perform in churches on both sides of the border.

Forty-six of us went, sleeping on floors every night and eating the common food of peasants. We experienced the closeness of God as much, I’m sure, as if we’d been standing in Gethsemane.

Typical was an experience on Padre Island when, hot and thirsty, we prayed for some refreshment just fifteen minutes before a truck full of watermelons appeared. Later someone recognized the name on our church bus and offered us the use of his church building to spend the night, thus saving us hours of driving and convincing us that God is a very present help in time of need.

I presume a trip to the Holy Land makes you feel close to Jesus. This trip to Mexico did the same for me.

-Boyce Mouton

Christian Church

Carl Junction, Missouri

In July, 1981, our family of four drove from the landlocked Kansas plains to the majestic grandeur of the Poudre River Canyon west of Fort Collins, Colorado. For the first time, Matthew (age five) and Melanie (age four) encountered the wonders of wild flowers, brown trout, and the rushing Poudre.

One evening on a lark we drove the seventy miles back into Fort Collins just to get ice cream cones at Dairy Queen. Time wasn’t an issue.

That experience on the Poudre was a physical renewal that paved the way for spiritual revitalization in ministry.

-Kerwin Thiessen

Koerner Heights Church of the Mennonite Brethren

Newton, Kansas

Every year some laymen take me on a fishing trip, floating down the White River for three days. We catch trout, camp along the riverbank, and spend a couple hours after dinner each night thinking about the glory of Christ in our lives.

I’ve learned a lot from these expeditions. People genuinely love to hear about Christ, to be reminded of what he means to them, and to recall aloud how they’ve experienced his love.

Sitting on the riverbank with night coming on, one memory spurs another, and when we turn in around 9 P.M., satisfied by the presence of Christ, we’re even ready to endure the snores of others in the same tent.

-Oswald C. J. Hoffmann

Speaker, “The Lutheran Hour”

Saint Louis, Missouri

When I was pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Rome, Georgia, some friends offered us the use of their cottage in Southern California. With four children, flying was out of the question, so we had to find the most economical way cross-country.

We considered renting a “pop-up” tent trailer, but between the cost and the time required for setup, we discovered discount motel chains were just as cheap.

I packed all our outdoor cooking equipment in a lockable box on our luggage rack atop the station wagon. We made reservations at motels where we could park in front of our room. Each morning, with tailgate open and Coleman stove fired up, we had grits, scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast; at noon it was sandwiches from the ice chest; at night, we enjoyed a hot supper at a roadside park or again off the tailgate.

The cost wasn’t much more than tent camping, and it included beds, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and maid service. And each morning at least two dozen motel guests would like to have joined us for breakfast.

-B. Clayton Bell

Highland Park Presbyterian Church

Dallas, Texas

Being on a houseboat for a week with my family brought back memories of reading Huckleberry Finn . . . and a thought or two of Noah.

My wife and I, our youngest daughter and her husband, two grandchildren, and my elderly father rented a houseboat on Lake Shasta, California, just to get away from our busy lives in San Diego.

We cruised the expansive shoreline by day, swimming and fishing from the boat. It was equipped with a galley, so we remained aboard the whole week. Mornings began with devotions and singing. In the evening we tied up to a remote stretch of shoreline and enjoyed another time of worship.

The reward was twofold: total escape from a busy ministerial life and uninterrupted fellowship as a family. The proof it was our favorite vacation? We’re ready to do it again.

-Orval C. Butcher, pastor emeritus

Skyline Wesleyan Church

Lemon Grove, California

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Not a few of us have been turned off by public invitations that offended our theology, our integrity, our sensitivities.

Some “altar calls” I wish I hadn’t heard, and I doubt they altered anyone. I recall a healing evangelist during my younger days who cajoled and threatened his audience until the number of people God had “revealed” to him came forward that night. But I also recall another man with a gift of healing who laid his hands gently but with authority on those who came to kneel at the altar of an Anglican church.

I remember an evangelist in the Wheaton College chapel whose finger swept the audience like an avenging angel; his invitation was so broad we felt we should come forward if we hadn’t written our grandmother in the last week! He squeezed and pleaded as if Jesus were some kind of spiritual beggar rather than the royal Lord. But I have seen Billy Graham stand silently, arms folded, eyes closed, a spectator, as a multiracial throng of Africans, Europeans, and Asians surged forward in South Africa to stand together at the cross.

How do we give an honest invitation?

The Real Inviter

First, we must be honest before God. The only right we have to ask people to commit their lives for time and eternity is that God is calling them. The gospel message is both an announcement and a command: it tells what God has done and calls people to respond. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:19-20). God is making his appeal through us.

I am to present his message faithfully and give his call, trusting him with the response and giving him the glory. My part is to be faithful; his, part is to produce fruit.

During a series of meetings conducted by R. A. Torrey years ago, there was no response the first several nights. Homer Hammontree, the songleader, came to Torrey in distress. “Ham,” the evangelist replied, “‘it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.’ Good night; I am going to bed.”

Then came a service with tremendous outpouring of the Spirit and a huge response. Hammontree was exultant. Again Torrey said quietly, “Ham, ‘it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.’ Good night; I am going to bed.”

I find it hard to be as cool as that, but I do admire Torrey’s sense of honest faithfulness to God.

Why Am I Doing This?

But then I must also be honest with myself. Why do I give an invitation? Because it’s expected in my church or tradition? Because I need the affirmation of seeing people respond visibly?

Or, on the other hand, do I not give an invitation because I fear embarrassment if people don’t respond? Or criticism because it’s not part of my group’s tradition?

The only proper reason to give an invitation is that God calls people to decision. From Moses (“Who is on the Lord’s side?”) through Elijah (“How long will you waver between two opinions?”) to Peter (“Repent and be baptized, every one of you”) and Paul (“I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds”)-the scriptural tradition is crisis preaching that calls for a decision. It has been noted that almost everyone Jesus called, he called publicly. Picture him directing James and John to leave their boats . . . Zacchaeus to climb down from the tree . . . the cripple to rise and walk.

None of us has completely pure motives. We are a mixed people. That is why I must continually pray, “Lord, let me not give this invitation because I need to see results. Let me not shun it because I am afraid or because someone might criticize. I must give it solely because you love these people, you want them to know you, and you have told me to tell them that.”

Up-Front and Open

Then I must be honest with the audience. Many people would like to know God, but no one has ever asked them clearly.

Tony Campolo, a Philadelphia sociologist, was seated at a state prayer breakfast next to the governor and found that he was sympathetic but had never committed himself to follow Christ.

“Why not?” asked Campolo.

The governor honestly replied, “No one ever asked me.”

“Well, I’m asking you.”

To his surprise, the governor responded, “OK, I will.”

The Scriptures use many metaphors to describe the step of faith: coming, following, kneeling, opening, receiving, turning. An invitation is a symbolic expression of that spiritual reality. It is nothing more, nothing less-and we need to explain that.

When I ask people to come forward at the end of an evangelistic meeting, I try to make it clear what I am asking them to do. At the beginning of the sermon I may say something like this: “Tonight at the end of my talk I am going to ask you to do something about it, to express your decision. I am going to ask you to get up and come and stand here at the front. This is an outward expression of an inward decision.

“Just as you make a promise to someone, mean to keep it, and shake hands on it … just as a young couple come to love each other, want to give themselves to each other, and then openly express that covenant in a wedding … so I am asking you to express your commitment. There is nothing magical in coming forward. Walking down here doesn’t make you a Christian. You could come down here a thousand times with your feet, and it would make no difference at all if that’s all it was. But as you come here with your feet, you are saying with your heart, ‘God, I am coming to you and leaving behind those things that are wrong and sinful. I am trusting Christ as my Savior, and I am coming to follow him in his church from tonight on.’ “

People need to know what responding to your invitation means and what it doesn’t mean. They need to know that they must be open Christians, not private believers, and that this is a way of expressing that. It is also important that they know it is not the only way. While confession is required (Rom. 10:9), nowhere does Scripture demand that people raise a hand, come forward, or sign a card to confess Christ.

In my evangelistic invitations, I usually say so. “You don’t have to come forward to be a Christian, but you do have to confess Christ and follow him openly.” Some people are almost too shy even to come to church or be part of a crowd, let alone ever to come forward. Some overscrupulous souls live all their lives with a scar because they didn’t come forward at some particular invitation. They need to know they can come to God in the quiet sanctuary of their own hearts and then express it in the faithfulness of their living. But they also need to know there is something about the open expression that clinches and seals that inner faith.

Others need to be told honestly that they must not put off God’s call. “Not to decide is to decide” may be a common saying, but it is true. To hear the Shepherd’s voice and shut ourselves to the sound is spiritually dangerous. An honest invitation will say with tenderness but seriousness, “Now is the day of salvation.”

Some need to hear that Jesus is an alternative, not an additive to the good life. Through the cross he offers free grace, but not a cheap grace that has no cross for us. Our Lord is not the Great Need Meeter in the Sky. Our invitation is not “You have tried everything else. Now put a little Jesus in your life.” Mickey Cohen, the Los Angeles racketeer, wanted to know why, if there were Christian politicians and Christian singers, he couldn’t be a “Christian gangster”! It was news to Mickey that Jesus didn’t come to ratify his sins but to save him from them.

More than One Method

How then to give the invitation? It should be prepared as carefully as the rest of the message and the worship.

Should an invitation be given at every service? Each pastor and evangelist will need to settle that according to circ*mstances. I think an invitation should regularly be given in churches of a size and situation where numbers of visitors and non-Christians are likely. Almost every Sunday morning at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Lloyd Ogilvie says, “I know that in a congregation of this size, there are those whom God is calling.”

Other preachers may need to sense the leading of the Spirit and extend the invitation at the times and seasons when pastoral work and visitation seem to indicate people are ready. Some churches, particularly in England and Australia, schedule monthly guest services, perhaps the first or last Sunday morning of the month, when members bring friends to whom they have been witnessing. They know an evangelistic presentation and appeal will be made.

Every invitation should be surrounded with specific prayer that the Holy Spirit will direct people to Christ. Both the preacher and praying people in the seats should cultivate a spirit of prayer throughout the entire service. Evangelism is a spiritual battle, and I am convinced that unbelief and indifference can create a field of resistance. Faith and prayer, on the other hand, can contribute to an atmosphere of expectancy and response.

An honest invitation, in my judgment, should begin at the outset of the message. People should know what is going to happen rather than having something sprung on them. Billy Graham begins giving the invitation with his opening prayer. I have already explained my approach. Then the invitation is repeated throughout the message as the truth is applied. I do not mean people are told over and over to take some action, but repeatedly they are asked, “Is this you? Has God been speaking to you about this and this? Are you sensing that God is calling you?”

Many good methods have been used. The simple, straightforward appeal to walk to the front and stand or kneel during the singing of a hymn is often effective. Following the example of some English evangelists, I sometimes use an “after-meeting,” in which the congregation is dismissed and requested to leave while all interested people are invited to remain for a ten-minute explanation of how to make a Christian commitment. In some Lutheran churches, people are invited to come kneel at the altar or to take the pastor’s hand as they leave and quietly say, “I will,” if they are responding to the gospel appeal.

I have seen Vance Havner ask people to stand one at a time and openly say, “Jesus is my Lord,” particularly in an invitation for rededication. At some evangelistic luncheons or dinners, blank three-by-five cards are on the tables, and everyone is asked to write a comment at the same time. Those who have invited Christ into their lives during a prayer are asked to include their names and addresses as an indication of their decision. It may be helpful to have those persons bring their cards to the speaker or leader, which could then open up personal conversation and counseling.

At First Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, worshipers who desire prayer for healing or problems are invited to come at the close of the service and kneel at the altar rail for prayer. It would be easy to add an invitation to those who wish to become Christians to join them.

There is no one way to extend the invitation, but in every situation there is surely some way. The essential elements are opportunities for (1) directed prayer and (2) simple biblical counseling. In a large evangelistic meeting, those who come forward may be led in a group prayer, but that is not enough. They need to express their faith to God individually before leaving.

In my crusades, counselors are instructed to come forward at the beginning of the invitation. Why? Not to prime the pump, but to assist people, for it can be scary to walk forward publicly and particularly to stand alone. So there is no misunderstanding, I explain openly that these are counselors who are coming to lead the way. Lloyd Ogilvie often has selected elders stand at the front during the closing hymn to welcome those who respond. In any case, counselors should be trained ahead of time and provided with simple literature on the basics of Christian faith and walk. Their interaction with people deciding to follow Christ can happen at the front of the church or in a quiet room nearby. Quick and dependable follow-up in the next forty-eight hours both by telephone and a visit in person must also take place.

Some Do’s and Don’ts

In giving the invitation, do pick up the feelings of those in the throes of decision. Empathize with their fear of embarrassment, of not being able to follow through, of what others will say. Hear the inner voice that tells them this is too hard, or they can wait-it’s not important. Don’t berate or threaten. Do explain very simply what it is you are asking people to do. If you want them to get up, walk forward, stand at the front, face you, and wait until you have had a prayer, tell them exactly what will happen.

Don’t use “bait and switch”-asking them only to raise their hand, and then only to stand, and then only to come forward. This is not to say we should never give an invitation in two steps, but it does mean we must not trick people or make them feel used.

Do make the meaning of the invitation clear. I don’t think it’s wrong to give an invitation with several prongs: salvation, rededication, renewal. I do think it’s wrong to make it so vague that it’s meaningless. Don’t, on the other hand, overexplain so you confuse.

Do wait patiently, giving people time to think and pray, knowing the inner conflicts they may be facing. Sometimes those moments seem agonizingly slow for you, but be patient. Don’t, however, extend and prolong when there is no response, saying “Just one more verse” twenty times, until the audience groans inwardly for someone to come forward so you’ll stop. Do encourage and urge people gently, repeating your invitation once or perhaps twice. But don’t preach your sermon again.

Do give the invitation with conviction, with courage, with urgency, with expectancy. But don’t try to take the place of the Holy Spirit.

To find balance in these matters is not easy. I find it helps if I ask God to speak to me as well as through me.

What if no one responds? Do you feel embarrassed? Have you fallen flat on your face? You may. I have felt that any number of times. But the embarrassment passes, and what remains is the conviction that you have given an honest invitation to the glory of God, and even if no one responded, they faced the decisiveness of confronting Christ. Who knows when what they have seen and heard will be used to bring them to faith?

And if people do respond? You can rejoice and pray that they will follow Jesus in the fellowship of his church and the tasks of their daily lives.

Leighton Ford, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, is chairman of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.

Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.