A few years ago our former SBC President and F.A.I.T.H. guru (five finger salvation person) Bobby Welch challenged SBC churches to produce 1 million baptisms. Man I tried hard to win a couple souls. I preached and I prayed and I knocked on doors, it didn't produce to many "souls being won"; I don't guess I helped out a lot. As a matter of fact, we all fell short. I think thru his presidency we actually saw less baptism than before. (Not Bobby's fault --he is a good man)
This got many professional people to ask: What is wrong with SBC churches? They started coming out with books with cool titles talking about how backward we are as churches and people. We need to be more culturally relevant. We need to be cooler. Thus, we look to the new breed of pastors who play AC/DC music, wear cool T-shirts, $150 Lucky Brand Jeans, and you must have a gotee! Forget preaching the Bible verse by verse: to old fashion.
By the way, I am pretty cool, at least Allie thinks so. And if I wear a cowboy hat I kind of look like Kenny Chesney.
Forget discipleship: we are here as a church for the lost (where is that in the Bible). Why go deep when we can go wider. I agree, to many Christians take notes they never apply and God didn't ask us to be glorified note takers, but God never asked us to pimp His Son out to pagans in hopes we might grow a big church and make Outreach magazines most Influential Churches list, either.
Evangelism has become so manipulated and distorted God must be cringing at our Tare making ministries.
So what part do I Have in Evangelism? Read what James McDonald wrote recently:
"We are so far down the road of contextualizing the gospel for our culture that it is nearly impossible to make the point I am going to try to make here. Well-meaning people with sincere hearts for lost people have totally hijacked the gospel and a biblical method for sharing it. We have so overemphasized the role of human persuasion in evangelism that we really believe 'we' are the ones 'winning' people to Christ. It's all up to us--if we aren't relevant, if we aren't in touch with culture, if we don't understand the mindset of the people we are trying to reach, if we can't contextualize the message for the people we want to win for Christ--we might as well be speaking to them in Swahili!!! Is that true? Is that God's heart in the matter?"
In another post James said this:
"Consequences of an Overemphasis on Human Persuasion, etc.
1) Dilution of Biblical Content:
In the name of evangelism, churches across the country have jettisoned God's Word as the source for preaching in favor of felt need content and other points of relevancy aimed at interesting a person in coming to church. These 'talks' are designed to engage the curious in a positive exposure to Christianity in the hopes that over time they will begin to like church and ultimately choose to embrace the same Jesus these skilled entertainers claim to follow.
2) Departure from the Biblical Gospel:
It is nearly impossible to have your focus upon your audience and not succumb to an adjustment of the message. As any used car salesman will tell you, "it's all about reading the customer." This shaping of the message to suit the 'customer' has clearly fallen upon evangelicalism. Biblical concepts like the wrath of God, repentance, atonement, blood, cross and hell, have been scrubbed from our vocabulary in favor of an exclusive focus on the more tolerable concepts of God's love, forgiveness, fulfillment, purpose and freedom. The gospel has been reduced to a formula that can be quickly absorbed in a brief exhilarating conversation. People can pass from death to life, we are led to believe, just by correctly answering a few leading questions. This is a distortion of the biblical gospel. It does not square with Scripture or church history and will either be the end times departure Paul warned Timothy about or the tearful distain of a future, more faithful generation.
3) Dependence upon Human Strategy
You achieve what you emphasize. The church today has lost its moral authority and is wallowing in a weak worldliness that could under no circumstances be called a move of God! We are steeped in a perverse effort to be relevant to a culture that finds our watered-down gospel less than compelling and hardly a departure from life as they already know it. Having failed to win our world, we are now pathetically trying to make friends with it and convince the skeptical that we really are not as 'other worldly' as they might have first thought. The vast majority of evangelistic books and conferences focus on methods and strategies toward a greater cultural awareness. They call us to study the particular generational mindset of the latest target audience. The cacophony of NOISE on this point of emphasis is deafening! And has become for those steeped in Scripture, "sickening." (Amen, Brother James good preaching)
So what is my role,as a pastor, in winning people to Jesus, in a church setting? Paul said this:
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
I wonder if Paul had a gotee!
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