Spirituality From The Bottom Up
Does this imply a return to spiritual basics? To some extent, yes. Southern Baptist pastor Paige Patterson of Dallas, Texas, credits some of the recent Baptist expansion to a narrowing of emphasis. “Almost all of the churches which have great success have moved away from great diversity in programming. They are focusing on Sunday school, on worship, and on music.” Churches that have stressed social ethics are remembering that the church is founded on, and has grown by, telling the good news of Jesus, offering people a new life in him.
Along with an evangelistic emphasis comes, in many cases, a renewed evangelical theology—at least a recognition that evangelism is fundamental to the Christian’s calling. Philip Walter of the American Festival of Evangelism says, “There are leaders in every group all the way across the spectrum who have a concern for evangelization. But in the mainline groups the people who have the evangelistic zeal have been ignored. Nobody has listened to them.”
Declining membership has created greater receptivity to their concerns, however, and there is change in the wind. In the sixties and seventies says the PC(USA)’s Allison, “Presbyterians had not clearly identified the work of evangelism separately from other concerns. The focus was on mission, and evangelism as part of that. It got lost in the shuffle. Evangelism wasn’t given a lot of the energy.” During that same period, the church began to lose members. “If the church had maintained its stress on evangelism as such, then it might have been different.”
But, says Allison, that concern for numbers is not necessarily a negative motivation. “A lot of people thought the church was doing fine until they looked at the statistics and saw that something needed to be done. I don’t think people will continue to exert time and effort for the church unless the church is meeting the spiritual needs of people, which is the one thing no one else can do except the church. The same phenomenon is occurring in every church I know of, from the Church of God, to Missouri Synod Lutherans, to Disciples of Christ. It’s coming from the bottom up.”
The language used for evangelism does not sound theologically ambivalent, either. Says Allison, “Evangelism is introducing people to the kingdom of God through repentance and faith in Christ, and including full participation in the body of Christ.”
Evangelism is changing, though, and not merely returning to a more conservative past. A large number of new programs to help churches evangelize have proliferated. Many were started by individual congregations or by parachurch organizations, but now are increasingly adopted and adapted by denominational bodies. Most of these programs train laymen to do evangelism, or to help pastors and church boards reorganize and renew their churches so that they will grow.
New Techniques
Twenty years ago, “evangelism” brought to mind traveling evangelists, revivals, and crusades. A person was converted by “going forward.” That emphasis is far from dead. Billy Graham is invited to more places than ever before. The Southern Baptist Home Mission Board reports that Southern Baptist churches hold, on the average, 1.5 revivals a year—and interest is growing after a period of decline. But revivals or crusades are no longer the dominant means of evangelism.
“Some churches have gone back to revivals,” says Philip Walter, “but they see it as one arrow in their quiver, not the whole quiver.” While at one time in rural America virtually the whole town would attend revival meetings, churches today find they must do intensive preparation to get non-Christian neighbors to attend. Sterling Huston of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association reports that “75 percent of all who come forward at our crusades were brought by a friend or family member, and 80 to 90 percent of the completely unchurched who make commitments came because someone they knew had done the sowing and watering.” The Graham organization, long known for cooperating closely with local churches, sees crusades as one point in a spiritual process that, to be effective, must both precede and follow the crusade.
That view is widespread. Evangelism is seen more and more as a process whereby people come by degrees to learn about Jesus, follow him, and become responsible members of his church. No longer is evangelism always seen as simply an event leading to decisions. Traditionally evangelists counted decisions. More and more the bottom line has become, “How many of those who made decisions went on to become responsible church members? How many can you count two years later?”
If any particular group has led the way for this change, it is probably the loosely connected promulgators of “church growth.” Pioneered by Donald McGavran of the Fuller School of World Mission, church-growth thinkers early on abandoned interest in “decisions” in favor of active church membership statistics. They did so because they think that, statistically speaking, this is as close as they can come to measuring the fulfillment of the Great Commission, which includes the command to “make disciples.” The pluses and minuses of “church growth” continue to be debated, but on this point they seem to have won the day. Decisions continue to be counted, but “fruit that will last” looms larger and larger in the minds of people involved in evangelism.
That simple change in the “bottom line” carries other changes with it. It makes people think of evangelism as a church-related activity—not something that can be turned over to outside professionals or accomplished in a yearly event, but something that must be part of the entire life of a healthy church. Even if evangelistic crusades, mass media, or citywide appeals are the means for conversion, it is in the local church that new converts must become contributing parts of the body.
Friendship Evangelism
Evangelical circles show a clearly increased interest in “friendship evangelism.” (“Lifestyle evangelism” or “relational evangelism” are the main thing.) The concept is certainly not new—that every Christian should personally witness to his network of friends, neighbors, and family members. But out of the blue, half a dozen books have popped up on the subject. What had been seen as evangelism for the less-than-bold is now seen by many as the most powerful tool to change the society in which we live.
Life-Style Evangelism by Joseph C. Aldrich, president of Multnomah School of the Bible, proposes that the confrontation evangelism often used by evangelicals actually may retard evangelism. “Although many of the evangelism practices ‘work,’ in some cases they actually hinder the total impact of a given church in a community. While some churches fail to grow because they do not evangelize, others fail because they do—but in outmoded, ineffective forms.” Aldrich believes that door-to-door evangelism, in which Christians present a carefully planned explanation of the gospel to strangers, will usually involve only a small percentage of Christians. The vast majority of Christians will never feel comfortable doing this type of witness, and they will therefore see themselves as evangelistically impotent.
Church-growth expert Charles Arn says, “We believe that the Great Commission applies to every member of the church, not the evangelism committee. Often the evangelism committee actually diminishes evangelism rather than helps it. Anything that looks like evangelism or smells of evangelism gets pigeonholed there. Our assumption is that every Christian has a responsibility to witness.”
Lifestyle evangelism allows every Christian to see himself carrying the gospel to his network of friends and family members. The gospel may be presented not just once, but repeatedly, over months and years. When a person makes a commitment, he or she is already linked to at least one Christian, and by extension to a church. “Follow-up” is a natural process.
Does Door-To-Door Still Work?
One reason friendship evangelism is increasingly favored is that many people believe “confrontation” evangelism has proven ineffective. It is not just that many Christians feel uncomfortable doing it. It is that the results are so meager—long-term—when they do it. Win Arn and Charles Arn, of the Church Growth Institute, have asked over 14,000 lay people the question, “What or who was responsible for your coming to Christ and your church?” Less than 10 percent credit a pastor, a visitation program, or an evangelistic crusade. Between 75 percent and 90 percent say they owe their Christian faith to a friend or relative. This is the most natural process whereby someone becomes a disciple of Christ, they say. It is this process churches should strengthen and encourage.
Door-to-door visitation, on the other hand, while it may seem effective, rarely yields results. Decisions are registered, and some who made them may even become church members, but they often go out the back door of the church as quickly as they come in the front. “It can actually be predicted,” writes Win Arn, “which decisions will grow into responsible church members within the first year, and which will become inactive. What is particularly discomforting to learn is that many churches and parachurch groups today are using methods of evangelism that actually increase the likelihood of new converts never finding the fellowship and family of a local church or becoming active church members.”
So say the advocates of friendship evangelism. Evangelistic programs such as the Arns’ “The Master’s Plan” find particular receptivity among “mainline” church groups. “Some of the mainline groups have done so little evangelism that they are more open to someone telling them how to do it,” says Charles Arn. “They’re not entrenched in one particular method. Some evangelical churches find it more difficult to step back and ask, ‘Is what we are doing working? Is it actually building disciples?’ ”
The Success Of Evangelism Explosion
But door-to-door, or confrontational, evangelism is hardly fading away. Far from it. Perhaps the best-known training program in door-to-door evangelism is James Kennedy’s Evangelism Explosion. It continues to grow at a rapid pace. Kennedy is a Presbyterian, and his program is endorsed by the likes of J. I. Packer and used by churches in virtually every denomination. But it has found particular appeal among Southern Baptist churches, which make up half the participants. Trainees memorize an outline that helps them develop a personalized presentation of the gospel, and then they observe and participate as previously trained laymen go out on visitation calls to present the gospel. They use two questions to get into the meat of the conversation. One is, “Suppose you were to die tonight and stand before God, and he were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?,’ what would you say?” They now have nearly 35,000 trainers certified in this method. Nearly 10,000 were added in 1983 alone.
Tim Floyd, vice-president of communications, stresses that EE agrees that friendship evangelism is preferable. They use “cold turkey” calls for their training program because “most people don’t want to bring a trainee along to watch them witness to their best friend.” How churches apply the EE training program is up to them. Many have adapted it to their visitation program, perhaps because many churches had visitation programs to begin with. But the same training would be valuable in helping pastors and laymen do effective friendship evangelism.
How The Southern Baptists Grow
Nobody grows like the Southern Baptists, and nobody does evangelism quite like they do, either. Southern Baptists adopted increased personal evangelism during the seventies, supplementing their traditional emphasis on revivalism. So many adopted the EE approach that now the Baptist Home Mission Board has developed a similar program. Twenty years ago, says Dallas pastor Paige Patterson, few churches baptized 100 converts a year. “Last year five churches baptized at least a thousand. Three hundred to four hundred of our churches are regularly baptizing 250 to 300 people, minimal, a year.” Such churches may have hundreds of members doing visitation and evangelism calls each week.
Robert Hamblin, director of evangelism for the Home Mission Board, believes churches abandoning confrontational evangelism are making a mistake. “I’ve tried it both ways. You win a lot more people with relationships than confrontation. But you win some through confrontation. Some relationships will never be developed. Some people never become part of an environment where I can form a relationship with them. There’s no bad way to win a person for Christ.”
What is the secret of Southern Baptist growth? It appears to be not a particular style of evangelism, but a determined commitment to do evangelism through any style. “Our objective is to take the gospel to every person in America,” says Hamblin. “We plan our strategies accordingly.” “If Southern Baptists ever did anything well, it was evangelism,” says Paige Patterson. “We have drummed into our people’s heads personal responsibility for witnessing. The average Baptist may not be a personal witness, but he is ashamed of himself if he isn’t.”
Peter Wagner of the Fuller School of World Mission, and one of the outstanding students of church growth, concurs. “Why have the Southern Baptists continued to grow while Methodists and Presbyterians have declined? The basic reason is that the Southern Baptists prioritized the evangelistic mandate over the cultural mandate. They do quite a lot of social work, but they never allowed their social responsibility to take priority over their evangelism. Southern Baptist preachers who practice evangelism get brownie points. The Presbyterians are still having committee meetings to decide what the mission of the church is. The Southern Baptists don’t have that kind of meeting.”
A “Physical Exam” For The Local Church
According to Wagner, the methodology of evangelism comes last of all. A church must first of all study itself, to determine what “diseases” it has that impede growth. “The first question you have to ask is whether the church is healthy or not. Diseases have to be treated first.” Church “diseases” block the natural flow of Christians into the world around them and the flow of non-Christians into the embrace of the congregation. “The common mindset (do these good things and then Christianity will look so attractive that people will pour in) must be renounced,” writes Donald McGavran. “A new mindset (I shall become all things to all men in order to win some …) must become the common possession of all Christians.”
Next, Wagner encourages churches to set goals, or “faith projections” of growth, and determine a philosophy of evangelism. Finally, they can select the methodology that is appropriate for them. “I don’t know of any particular method that just can’t work,” says Wagner. “We try to help churches develop a philosophy of ministry. Then certain methodologies are going to fit.”
When It Is Permissible Not To Grow
Wagner admits that some of the criticisms made of church growth—that is, is “growth at any cost” with secondary concern for the quality of the growth—may have been valid. “We’re maturing. We used to say, ‘Any church can grow.’ Now we know there are some churches, in particular kinds of communities, which will not grow. An inner-city church, for instance, or a church in a highly transient area. Now when people ask, ‘Is it okay not to grow?’ we say yes—but not to stop participating in the Great Commission through evangelism, through starting other churches, helping other churches, and participating in foreign missions.”
While friendship evangelism is increasing, it seems unlikely to replace other familiar forms of evangelism in the foreseeable future. “My opinion is that we’re getting to the point where anything goes,” says Philip Walter of the American Festival of Evangelism, which publishes a series of four reproducible notebooks crammed with teaching materials borrowed from every evangelistic technique imaginable. The proliferation of different “helps” a church can choose from may seem dizzying. Some essentially duplicate each other, while others are quite specialized, such as L.E.A.D. Consultants, which aims at recovering bored and apathetic church dropouts. Fortunately, virtually every denomination now has an office responsible for evangelism, which can provide denominational materials or refer with greater or lesser expertise to the wide variety of programs available. Most programs will fit into one of the following categories:
1. Pastoral training. A pastor or other church leader is given a course designed to help him analyze his own church and begin a program aimed to spread the good news and see new disciples join his church. The Robert H. Schuller Institute for Successful Church Leadership is one such program.
2. Church diagnosis. A consultant can come to your church and help you study its growth (or nongrowth) pattern in the context of the community you are in. He may offer suggestions drawing from a variety of resources. The Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth, associated with Fuller Theological Seminary, offers one such program.
3. Lay training in confrontational evangelism. The aim is to train a cadre of church members who have, through more-or-less prepared techniques, become capable of sharing their faith with anyone they meet. Evangelism Explosion offers the best known of such courses, but there are many others.
4. Church training in friendship evangelism. Generally, besides training and supporting individuals who want to witness better to their own network of family and friends, friendship evangelism programs seek to reorient the whole church program toward contacting and “folding in” new disciples. Win and Charles Arn’s Institute for American Church Growth offers one such plan.
5. Specialized ministry. As churches recognize the diversity of the American population, they launch outreaches aimed at particular groups—inner-city Hispanics, retired couples, or unwed mothers, for example.
Conclusion
Will the renewed emphasis on evangelism last? Will it amount to anything? Sterling Huston of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association offers a word of caution. “A new program doesn’t mean automatic results. You must often get back into spiritual condition to do evangelism. If it hasn’t been part of your lifestyle in the past, it’s hard to apply it now. There’s a measure of groping in some of the more traditional churches. One pastor told me, ‘We were so busy with social action in the ’70s that we almost lost our souls.’ ”
One thing is certain: American Christians are not acting as though evangelism is a thing of the past. “It’s the work of the Spirit in our times,” says Wayne Schwab, an Episcopalian who chairs the National Council of Churches’ Evangelism Working Group. A new sense of the significance of evangelism is alive, and increasingly it is personal and church-centered evangelism.
No church that wants to tell the good news and introduce people into the kingdom of God can plead lack of resources. More tools and training programs are available than have ever existed, offering a variety of methodologies. Nearly any church can find a tested program that fits its philosophy of evangelism. What remains to be seen is whether the broad sweep of the Christian church in America is going to make these programs work, relearning how to give the gospel to their neighbors.
