Make sure your tactics honor Christ

Evangelism That Depends on the Spirit, Not Crafty Methods

Another application could be evangelism, so not just how we keep peace within church or home, but how do we get people interested in Christ? And there's so many approaches that are offered to us today that promise effectiveness.

But I think the promise is rooted in a lack of confidence in the truths of Christ, in the hands of the Spirit, being able to supernaturally change a person. And so if we doubt that, if we've not been changed like that, then we automatically go to other methods which are not rooted in that belief.

So they are rooted in a reduced expectation of the gospel and of the work of the Spirit. Maybe that's what we've grown up with. Maybe that's all we've known. And so we grab hold of methodologies which require us in our lack of confidence in God, they require us to be crafty.

They require us to adjust God's word. I remember going to a very large Sunday school class when we first came back from the UK. So my family and I were attending a class and the Sunday school class was almost the size of the church that we're at now.

Pragmatic Church Growth and the Temptation to Manipulate

And it was the young couples class. And so we're there and the teacher meant well. I don't doubt his motives, but I do doubt his grasp of these truths. And I think it's an example of what we shouldn't do.

He was talking about the newest way to build a Sunday school class. And it included taking a phone book and it had a cute acronym. I can't remember what it was. So we're gonna do this system. This is the newest thing.

I got a book, it says it'll work. It worked over here in this church. So one of the things they did was you were to call everybody on a page of the local phone book, which we don't have anymore. And so you just call all of them and you talk to them as if you're concerned, really concerned about them, any prayer requests, how can we be a help to you?

And then those people amazed that you cared enough to call them might show up at church. And they had a statistic, maybe one out of 10. And then it went on further. The man explained that only one out of such and such, let's say 10, only one out of 10 people will come to church with that.

Or maybe it's one out of 20. But if when they come, you greet them at the door and you shake their hand and you make eye contact, then one out of four of those will return. But if you don't do that, one out of 20 will return.

And so it had all of these kind of human psychology things. And so I think that's craftiness. And it's Paul talks about things that we put away because of shame. And that is, I think he's referring here to the way the false prophets did, the false teachers tried to grow church.

False Teaching, Shame, and the Use of Psychological Tactics

And some of the things they used, the deceitful statements about Paul, for example, or the deceitful claims that they made about their own lives and their power and their knowledge. If that was all brought out into the clear where everybody could see how they were manipulating the situation, they should be ashamed.

But go back to my example of how to grow a Sunday school class using basically psychology and psychological methods to manipulate people. So I'm going to grab them by the hand. I'm gonna look them in the eye because one out of four will return.

What if they attended Sunday school next month, some person who had been contacted this way and had had somebody meet them at door and look them in the eye and shake their hand. And then they attend Sunday school and they hear the teacher go back over and say, okay, guys, is everybody doing what you're supposed to?

Remember, only one out of 10 come because of this, but one out of four, we can get them if we look them in the eye. I would think I would be offended and I would think you people should be ashamed. You put a front on, you did things that made me feel you cared about me, but it was a system to get me to join the club.

The Gospel, the Spirit, and Honest Church Growth

When I left that class that day, he was talking about our Sunday school class has increased so many percent. Maybe it was 25 in the last three months because of this, great job guys, keep it up. And my wife and I, we were one of those people that were new.

Now they hadn't contacted us, we just showed up. I almost said to the man, except it would have been smart Alec, as I left the class, glad to be a number man. You know, like we helped them reach their 25 quota.

And I think those are ways that we are tempted to use methodology that is so attractive when we forget that the gospel in the hands of the spirit, coming through the life of a true believer who has tasted those things, that is all it takes really, you know, to grow the church.

And if you don't have confidence in that, you will eventually have to use crafty methods that you should really be ashamed of. And you will have to keep shifting the line.