A lot of evangelistic zeal goes for nought because it is exercised haphazardly. James F. Engel and H. Wilbert Norton collaborated on a study of Christian communication from the standpoint of stewardship. They separate the good and the bad in their book, “What’s Gone Wrong With the Harvest?” (Zondervan, 1975), and call for “a research-based, Spirit-led strategy to reach people with the Good News and to build them in the faith.” Dr. Engel, head of the communications program at Wheaton College Graduate School, holds the Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, has taught at Ohio State and Michigan, and is the author of several standard texts in marketing and consumer behavior. Dr. Norton, dean of Wheaton College Graduate School, holds the doctorate in theology from Northern Baptist Seminary and is a veteran missionary educator, having served as a missionary to Zaire and as president of the Evangelical Free Church college and seminary. They were interviewed by Senior Editor David Kucharsky.
Kucharsky. It caused me some theological concern to read your plea for “adapting” the Bible. Is this not a rather obvious marketing approach to evangelism.
Engel. It is true that the heart of marketing is adapting to a changing consumer environment. “Marketing” has business overtones, so we do not use it. We do describe what we are doing as “adaptive” in the sense that this unchanging biblical truth is communicated to people where they are in terms they can understand.
Norton. And that makes sense to a businessman. But as a missionary I found that I also had to adapt in order to make my witness and ministry effective.
Engel. We find in church history that where the Church has been effective, it has been quite adaptive to its environment. When it has lost effectiveness, it has replaced the adaptive orientation with program orientation, straying from people.
Norton. The whole theology of the Incarnation is God’s adaptively revealing himself in human form to people where they are. The mere fact that secular marketing research has appropriated the principle of adaptation does not diminish its validity. The whole anthropological approach is also to address people as they are so that they can understand.
Kucharsky. In the spiritual realm, the “product,” if I may call it that, is a given. In business, you try to find out what people want and then try to give it to them.
Engel. Positively. We have to make a distinction. The biblical message is important. This is not true in the secular world. This is why I do not use the term “marketing,” because it implies you can take the biblical message and vary it. Otherwise you have the problem of syncretism and the heresies it entails.
Kucharsky. So what are you adapting?
Engel. We are adapting the methods. The issue is not the truth but how it is communicated.
Kucharsky. Well, your book also suggests a certain selectivity. For one level of people you would advocate a preaching of law, for example, and for another, grace, depending on how much background they already have in the Word. That’s the what as well as the how, right?
Engel. No question that we’re putting tremendous demands on a proper hermeneutic—interpreting and applying the Word. We must have both fidelity and relevance. John R. W. Stott has said that it’s very easy to be faithful if you do not care about being contemporary, and it’s also easy to be contemporary if you do not bother to be faithful. It’s the search for a combination of truth and relevance that is demanding. The Church seems to have a tendency toward making its methods as well as its message a constant.
Norton. The life of Christ models the “what” and the “how” for us. In the third chapter of John we see that Jesus approached the Jewish ruler Nicodemus in terms of who Nicodemus was, and brought the message (what) to him. The message was not compromised by the method (how). On the other hand, the very next chapter tells us how he approached the woman at the well who had no theological frame of reference. He did it so dynamically that she left her water pot and brought out a group of semi-pagan Samaritans who then announced, “You are the Saviour of the world.” Now to me this came about because, according to John 2:25, Jesus knew who these people were.
Engel. Have you noticed that the only time Jesus was recorded as saying “you must be born again” was with Nicodemus? Yet we have made that one quotation so normative. We as evangelicals miss the model of Jesus; we fail to see how adaptive and sensitive and empathetic he was. I used to think of Jesus only as divine and not as human and therefore as having a pipeline to God which I don’t. It’s biblically sound to say that Jesus really understood people. For us to follow his example today demands the use of research. He knew his people. He was walking with the same Spirit that we have, and he said that with the Spirit we would do greater things. I seriously wonder if we have taken his example seriously.
Kucharsky. How do you correlate the need for research about people’s needs with the principle that the Bible defines people’s needs?
Engel. What does it mean that the Bible is a two-edged sword? The Bible is God’s revelation to answer the needs of man. Paul, for example, was not simply writing theological treatises but was also speaking to given situations. On the other hand, I see what you’re driving at. There is a sense in which the Word of God should be used normatively, to help people see the real dimensions of their needs. We’re not for a moment denying that. Our whole emphasis on felt need is merely to stress that this is where you touch a person. It’s the entry point, the point where he’s hurting, and a felt need is a real need. But that does not always define the full spiritual dimension. That’s where the Word must be used as it’s intended, as a two-edged sword, to cut to the heart, to the marrow.
Norton. I suspect a lot of our problem is that we are Westerners. My African friends had a lot less trouble living with that paradox.
Kucharsky. What’s the paradox?
Norton. The paradox is whether the Bible is subjective-experiential or objective-normative. Why can’t it be both? Jesus is very God of very God and very man of very man. When we think of Jesus as the incarnate Word, he brings together both the objective and the subjective. Take First Corinthians, which is certainly normative. But Paul took a look also at what that church’s needs were, and it was falling apart with divisions and carnality. Yet out of that we have First Corinthians 13. We find both a dynamic and a normative standard. God is bigger than we are. To live in that kind of paradox is not evil, because this is where faith comes in. We know that the greatness of God in his revelation transcends our human limitations.
Kucharsky. The Bible covers the whole gamut of human experience. Everyone can find himself in the Bible and learn who he is. Now if the Word is faithfully preached, why do not the hearers recognize that they are being challenged and confronted? Why do we have to become behavioral analysts before we can effectively evangelize or communicate to the believer? Why do people see their needs as different from those that are being proclaimed?
Engel. Not behavioral analysts, no. Every man’s need is covered in the Word of God—I fully agree. But one can take a passage and exposit it in great depth on an abstract level and it may or may not speak to the need of the moment. We often exposit the Bible in a relatively academic sense, and we’re not letting it touch life. In a recent pastors’ seminar, I was asked, “Are you against expository preaching?” I replied “Absolutely not,” because I think topical preaching can be a dead end, too. You can take any lengthy passage and it can touch life if you know your people’s needs and if the applications are pinpointed. But today we have pastors crying for help because they apparently have not been taught to understand people.
Kucharsky. Let me get at it just one other way, at the risk of belaboring a point: do you agree that people’s needs are conditioned by the time in which they live?
Engel. Oh, yes.
Kucharsky. So what they perceive as their need is not necessarily their need.
Engel. Still it’s real to them. What we are advocating is that felt need is the touchpoint through which the full truth of the Word of God enters.
Norton. Does the farmer in Florida use the same fertilizer as the farmer in North Dakota? No. Plants are fed after the farmer checks soil samples, which nutrients are naturally available and which are not. But it concerns me that the Church insists so often that what works in Florida should be duplicated in North Dakota.
Engel. It is necessary to drop out of method orientation—you have to preach a three-point sermon, or it has to be so long, and so on. It might even be fair to ask why you have to have a sermon. In all these have-to’s we’re perpetuating methods which may work in one situation and not in another. What bothers us is all the formula books: you have to do this, and you have to do it this way. We’re talking about the need for a people-centered thrust, it being understood that the Word of God in its normative implications also must be preached, whether there’s a felt need for it or not. The need-oriented approach does not exhaust the options. It’s a matter of balance. So much of our preaching has been, “You ought, you ought, you ought!” People on the other end respond, “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,” and those in the pew are consumed with guilt. Who is showing how to live the Christian life? Who is speaking where we are? Here at Wheaton Graduate School we are simply trying to bring the pendulum back to a biblical center.
Kucharsky. I guess what I am a bit worried about is appealing to people to receive Christ or grow in the faith for bad reasons. Sinners should repent because God wants it that way—not because it is going to relieve individual tension or bring on a spiritual high, but because it is the right thing to do.
Norton. We are living at the end of a generation of fighting for the faith, reacting to liberalism in theology. Evangelical theology is clearly visible now, but we are not relating our biblical theology effectively to contemporary man. The Lord Jesus spoke directly to the needs of two disappointed and frustrated disciples when he identified with them at their point of need on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. He led them into an understanding of the Old Testament in the light of his death and resurrection. Their attitudes were revolutionized. They took off with the Great Commission as they rushed back to Jerusalem to witness to their colleagues. The Lord Jesus had satisfied their felt needs. They immediately shared their newly found truth of Christ with others in similar needs, and the evangelization of the world by Jesus’ disciples had begun.
Engel. But note that they saw the life of Jesus, and that’s the side of witness that has gotten downplayed. We find in survey after survey the credibility gap that the Church has. They see our life-style, which to a large degree reflects middle-class America. What is it about our life-style that is going to induce people to question us? When Peter says we must be ready always to give an answer for the hope that we have, that implies that people have seen something and are going to ask. We have let the Great Commission get totally out of perspective with the rest of the Word of God, as if it were the sole marching order for the Church of Jesus Christ.
Norton. Well, if we understand what the Great Commission really is … that’s not a biblical term in the first place. Jesus said he expected people to identify with him as he identified with them. That’s in John 6. Then in John 15 and 17 we have the “abiding” principle, that the world may know that the Father sent the Son. The Great Commission is established in the assumption that we are abiding in him; therefore “going, we make disciples.” That’s a participle in the original Greek. This whole thing of the objective and the subjective is brought together by the Word in the person of Jesus. Fulfilling his purposes in the world, wherever we are in the world, “going, we make disciples.” Hence we are lifted out of the limitation of having only one command. Instead we become involved with Christ in the ongoing witness of the life in Christ.
Kucharsky. The essence of your philosophy would appear to be success. You feel that God expects results from us just as a businessman demands signed contracts from his salesmen. Are you convinced this is biblical? If Jesus is a model, how do we account for all the time he spent talking with the scribes and Pharisees, upon whose closed minds he never had any discernible influence? The essence of our philosophy is not success but proper stewardship.
Engel. The “fertile-field theory,” which is widely accepted, says we should concentrate on those who are receptive to the Gospel now. I don’t disagree with that. But it does not say we are free to avoid the others. The number of those who are genuinely antagonistic to the Gospel is limited. Our surveys show that about two-thirds of the people around us are just satisfied with life as it is. They are uninterested in the Gospel. They do not see a life-style in Christians that is appealing to them. They must have new light, and this is the great challenge to the Church.
Kucharsky. There again you are presuming that good works generate an appeal. History shows plenty of times that fallen man is repelled by good works and makes martyrs of those who try to practice them.
Norton. Jesus did not restrain himself from doing good works, helping people in their felt needs, simply because some were repelled by his miracles and healings. In fact, he gave himself unto death to meet the need of their obstinate resistance as fallen men.
Engel. There is a time for exhibiting harshness and shocking people who are hostile, perhaps so they may be without excuse, just as Jesus did with some. I see that, however, as an exception rather than the rule. Most people are reached through a more empathetic approach, based in a Christ-centered life, characterized by good works and appropriate words.
Norton. There is another angle. God is graciously allowing the Pharisees to oppose Jesus, and remember that Paul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, who was present at the stoning of Stephen, indicates later that he heard every word that Stephen said. He who was the greatest opponent of Jesus became the greatest proponent.
Kucharsky. It suggests that even when the Word is preached before apparently deaf ears, it can still, ultimately, have a great effect. Does not that seem to put the emphasis on attitudes, process, and perseverance rather than a success orientation?
Engel. What we are calling for is disciplined thinking about our problems. Essentially this is a corrective to the common notion, “I’ll sit back and let the Lord do it.” We put a lot of emphasis on the doctrine of stewardship, which I think has been forgotten by much of the Church today. But that by no means implies “success” in the sense that the world uses that term—great numbers and the like.
Kucharsky. To shift gears a bit, your book contends that the body-life movement in the churches is bringing a revolution. What has brought it on?
Engel. There is a generation today that is much more sensitive to relationships. Perhaps it is because of the great alienations of the sixties. There is a craving for the acceptance of others, a reaching out beyond the traditional non-demanding social relationships that have long characterized the evangelical community. Many Christians now feel that they need one another in a dimension that American individualism has not previously countenanced. They see this “body life” as greatly increasing the Church’s effectiveness. I understand them better because my conversion came out of the relational context. My life was turned around after hearing a guest speaker at Marble Collegiate Church in New York. I was led to the Lord by Bruce Larson of the Faith at Work movement. I believe this is what Ray Stedman and others are manifesting in the body-life movement. Relational theology is looked down upon in many quarters, but movements such as this are touching areas that the evangelical church has previously been unable to touch.
Norton. The Keswick movement was serving a similar purpose back in the thirties, and had a profound influence on me, pointing up my relationship with God, fellow believers, and the world of men needing Christ.
Kucharsky. Now let me ask you about mass evangelism. You don’t say anything about it in your book.
Engel. Many today tend to dismiss it far too quickly. I had the privilege of attending two of Billy Graham’s crusades in the past year—the first I have ever attended—and seeing the unique ministry of Billy Graham. He has credibility as no other evangelical spokesman in our time does. But yet in the United States mass evangelism in other forms by other people has far less drawing power than it used to. We can say on the one hand that Dr. Graham is having a fantastic ministry, but there are few others who are having such an effect in North America. In other places in the world, it’s a different story. People like Luis Palau are very dynamic, and the results speak for themselves. It is a legitimate method to consider. We must ask whether our North American environment is such that people will come to meetings. To give you an illustration of where it did not have such a dramatic effect, let me refer to Vancouver, British Columbia, in the “reach-out” with Leighton Ford. The Wheaton Graduate School Communications staff did a large study of the non-Christian population in that community. And the primary work there was in helping the church to establish a life-style. The major emphasis was on friendship evangelism in the churches. But the mass meetings held by Leighton Ford were not huge. The total impact of the strategy, however, will go on for years to come through churches which have grasped outreach as a way of life.
So much of our preaching has been, “You ought, you ought, you ought!” People in the pew respond, “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,” and are consumed with guilt.
Kucharsky. How does your system recognize that any mass evangelism ever can work in the light of your argument that the needs of a broad spectrum are so varied that they cannot be reached in the same way?
Engel. I’ll give you a hypothesis, and it’s one that’s yet to be verified. We’re doing a study in Germany in which we think that people came to evangelistic meetings prepared to receive Jesus Christ. Quite likely there was extensive prior work in their lives that was the trigger to a decision. Others not similarly prepared will not respond.
Norton. In Billy Graham’s crusade in Sweden this past January, people were walking across town in the snow to get to the meetings. Apparently there was a tremendous hunger. The church leaders were amazed and gratified. People were expressing themselves in a way that built upon what was happening in the local churches but was not coming to full fruition there.
Engel. The exciting thing I have seen in Graham’s work is his centering on the Church. I think the greatest effect his crusades have is the revitalization of the local church. Para-church groups can and should be catalysts to the Church. If this is not taking place, I seriously question their relevance.
Kucharsky. How confident are you about the spread of your outlook and seeing it take hold?
Engel. We are very optimistic. A lot has gone wrong with the harvest, but plenty is going right, too. Attitudes of church leaders all over the world are now at the point of “Help us.” I think that in the next five or ten years, change is going to come through the kind of disciplined planning we are advocating. We are just now seeing the age of the evangelical in which the Church is beginning to take seriously Jesus’ injunction that it is our task to help bring about the Kingdom of God—God’s progressive Lordship over all phases of our lives. And some tough new thinking directed by the Spirit of God will be demanded.
Norton. All this as we pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.
