The Laborers' Podcast- Evangelism

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Laborers Podcast. We're thankful that you could join us. Thank you for watching. We really appreciate it. We especially love locking arms with you in prayer and reaching out to our communities with the gospel, with the Word of God and the truth of God's Word and doing that in love.

And so we're thankful for you. Thank you for praying for us and supporting us. We really appreciate it. Would you give us a like, a share, a comment? Let us know that you're watching. If you have a question, we'll try to answer it.

A critique, we're open to that, too. If you would like for us to pray for you, all you have to do is type me. You don't have to say what it is. Just type me and we'll see that notification at any time live or later on.

And we would love to pray for you if you need prayer. We've got with us Tyler again. We've got Andy with us. We've got John with us. And we have Brother Matt with us. We've got some fellow laborers not with us tonight.

And we would just ask that you would pray for them. Some of them are not feeling well at all. And some are on missions trips. And so pray for them and their teams and quick recoveries. We miss our brothers when they're not with us tonight.

So pray for them. How are you guys doing tonight?

Doing all right.

Doing well, Rob.

Doing well.

Doing well.

Fantastic. I hope this is not a.

Uh oh.

Offense to anybody. There it goes. So if my computer freezes, the guys are going to carry on without me. I was telling Tyler earlier, I noticed something. It dawned on me earlier today as I was reflecting on last week's podcast.

Last week was Andy's first time with us. And Claude was the first one of the group to.

Are we losing Rob already?

Yes, sir. We are.

Let me finish that story.

Yeah. Where was he going, Tyler?

He was going that it was Andy's first time on the show. And he introduced himself. And then there was kind of this awkward silence. And then Claude piped up. Hi, my name is Claude. And that we're like a room of introverts called to speak.

That that seems to sum up our group very well.

Well, I'm definitely an extra extrovert. So am I the only one?

No, I don't think so.

I'm not a confessed introvert.

Do we have you back, Rob?

You got me back. Thank you for carrying on that for me. I think I think Pastor Jonathan's pretty extroverted and John, you probably are too.

Little bit.

Well, tonight, tonight, and I do apologize to everybody if my computer continues to act up. So thank you, Tyler. And we'll move forward with with God's help tonight. It may or may not, at least on the list that I have is the end of our healthy church series.

So we're going to be working on some different topics coming up soon. But tonight, maybe the last of our healthy church series for now, we're going to be talking about what does evangelism look like in a healthy church?

Biblical Foundations for Evangelism

Let me read some verses before we get started with our questions. These the first verse comes from Matthew chapter nine, verses 37 and 38. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.

Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the harvest. And Colossians four, five and six act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious season with salt so that you may know how you should answer each person.

And first Peter three, 15. But in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. All right, so here's my first question to you guys.

And this is this is open to anybody who wants to chime in because it's not on the list. I like to throw a curveball out there every now and then. So I'm going to play, um, atheist, a skeptic. I'm coming up to you.

You've been evangelizing, you've been witnessing it. And, um, and I'm coming to you with this objection. Evangelism is you're witnessing your evangelism is just basically the same thing any other club or business would do.

Um, it's just advertising, trying to get people to persuaded to come join your club, join your organization. And we know that if you don't do this, you're gonna lose numbers and you're just trying to, you know, make your club, your organization, your religion, the biggest one that have the biggest influence, you know, maybe in America.

But there's no difference in, you know, what you call evangelism and in any other club or business trying to persuade, uh, we lost them.

Again.

Hey, poor Rob, I'll go ahead and jump on. I think you know where he's going. I would first thing the facetious side of me would say, well, based on what standard, the second side, second, there's like, we got him back up.

Rob, we're just going, I was gonna go ahead. I think I know where you were going. I was gonna say based on what standard first, because any accusation you level has to have a foundational standard to it.

But more importantly than that, in the moment, I would say that there's a, the huge difference between us or Christianity and your garden variety group is we're dealing straight to the heart of foundational worldviews.

We're saying that you have a creator and you're going to stand before him one day and you're going to be judged for your sin. And you can be in right relation with that creator, or you can remain in your rebellion against that creator.

I think you have to get to the heart of the matter because yes, churches a lot, primarily in America have turned it into a basically a glorified social club where they are looking to gain numbers and this, that, and the other.

So you have to get the heart of it. You have to help them understand that we're dealing with a fundamental understanding of why we exist to begin with. So I think you got to kind of keep it focused there because all these discussions about, it's just a club or it's this or that, those are distractions and they're based in some reality in the sense that a lot of Christians act that way.

But if they're coming to us and we know what the truth is, we need to get the focus and it's sort of a cliche, but let the main thing be the main thing. So that's kind of where I would take it.

If I could build on that one second. One of the things that, uh, that I've run across before, it wasn't, it wasn't phrased exactly that way. Uh, but, but the example that I'll give you happened when I was in Washington DC, uh, passing out tracts during the atheist convention that happened to, I don't know, it's been several years ago now.

And, uh, at that convention, I was really expecting to see, uh, a very little turnout from the church. And I saw a lot. One of the things that I, that I noticed was that there, uh, well, I don't want to wrap them all up, but several folks, their approach to, to their evangelism at this atheist convention was almost, uh, hateful.

It was really almost hateful. I mean, I knew what they were trying to say and, and I, and I did stand with them and I took, I took their side because I knew what they were doing. They were, they were contending for the souls of the folks that were there at the, at the atheist convention.

But, uh, the thing that was missed was that they weren't listening to them. They were so, uh, there was so much conflict between the two groups that neither group was listening to the other group. And, uh, during the, during this, uh, this, this, uh, I don't know what you'd call it, but, uh, this contest of sorts, I found myself with my pastor and another guy from, that was going to our church at the time, uh, sharing the gospel with, I think it was three guys, but it might have been four, but, but there was one guy in particular that was really listening.

And, uh, and he made some of the same comments that you're, that you were making brother Robert. And I told him flat out, I said, uh, I said, I'm not, I'm not really going to try to start or win an argument with you.

Whether I could or I couldn't, wouldn't make any difference if you're not saved whenever I leave, we leave this conversation. I said, but, but if you would put yourself in my shoes for a second, for one second, if I can ask you to be empathetic, the founder and the finisher of my faith has commanded that I'd be faithful in sharing this gospel with you.

And if I do not do this, I have done you a disservice and I've done him a disservice and I can't walk true to my calling. So all I'm asking you is during this, during this point of time, if you'll put yourself in my shoes and you tell me what you would do if you were me.

And he stopped where he was at and he said, well, he said, I'm commanded to love you and I do love you and God loves you. The, uh, the fact is I know that if we were to have a battle of wits, I'd lose.

I know, I know right away I would, but that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to tell you that Jesus loves you, that Jesus has died for you and that his, his existence is real and your belief in his existence doesn't really matter whenever you die and stand before him.

And, uh, he actually defended us shortly after we were approached by another atheist who was not as nice, who was, uh, was very hateful in his speech, is hateful in his tone. And, uh, before I could utter a single word of defense, this man that I'd been talking to, he said, hang on a second.

He said, hang on a second. I understand where you're coming from friend. He said, but these guys hadn't been anything but kind to us. And this is, this is their belief and they're willing to die for this.

And you have to respect that if nothing else. And I said, praise God for that. So to add to what brother Andy said, Robert, I think a lot of the times we need to approach our evangelism with people, open hands without any kind of a trump card stuck in our back pocket without any kind of hidden agenda.

We need to make sure that we're open and honest with them in the beginning and say, look, my desire out of this altercation is that, you know, who the Lord is. And I'm not here to try to, to, uh, I don't know.

One of the things that I would say is that we've done a pretty good job real life as we're going after them church members. And, and I've pushed people to come to, to go to any church they'd go to so long as they become faithful to a church and be, uh, brought under subjection of the council pastor.

And with that, I'll hush.

That's fantastic.

I'll just real quick. Um, I would say that we touched on this last week that whether or not they want to believe God's word, that's our sword. We, we go to it, point them to Romans one, that whether they want to admit it or not, God's word tells us that, that they know that there's a God that he's made it plain to them, whether or not where they want to deny that or not.

We, we believe that they know there is a God and we can use that as our starting point to get to the gospel. So again, I think it's key that, that we don't just because somebody says they're an atheist, they don't believe that, that we don't try to go a different route that we stick to the weapon, the power that God has instilled in his word and go from there.

Absolutely.

Good night. Yeah.

It reminds me of what was the, what was the whole video? I guess it's still popular. Halo. And there was that, there was that one sword that could, you could override anything. It would, I can't remember the name of the sword or whatever, but that era, the sword of the spirit, God's word is, it reminds me of that sword.

It's, it's above every weapon. Sure. Has more power than anything. Yeah. Let's, let's start off with the questions and I appreciate you guys talking about some of your experiences and some of the, some of the negative, because I think it's okay if we, if we identify some of the wrong, some of the negatives so that we're aware and we can make corrections and we're going to look at some of those things tonight.

So Tyler, do you mind if we start off with you? You're there. Let's go ahead. Here's, here's the first question that, that I posted for us. What are, what are some thoughts, concepts, ideas, practices that are, that are not evangelism, not biblical evangelism or, or unbiblical forms of evangelism.

And I'm speaking from things from history that you've seen practiced in the church or by professing believers from history up.

Until now. Well, we, again, we touched a little bit on this last week when we brought in Charles Finney and some of the, the high emotional mess that was in some of his preaching with getting people wound up in their feelings and then people make an emotional decision about something that is spiritual.

And we do see that practice a lot with, we use this, this big drawn out imagery. There's a church I see that every Halloween they have a hell house that they put on this big Broadway production taking people to hell.

Bring your kids. I don't know. But we, we, we, we draw these big, grandiose images and we, we try to bank on people's feelings and we get people tied to these things because we are visual people. We do, to some extent, one way or the other, we think in pictures, we think in like movies in that, that sense.

And so when you put pictures in your brain of these kinds of things happening, there's, it's going to stir up an emotional response. And it's very easy in that scenario to make an emotionally charged decision, regardless of whether or not you actually believe the reality that's being posed.

And to speak a little more specifically there with some of the altar calls in churches that we, we preach this big emotional sermon about how you're, you're, you're drowning in the ocean and there's, you've got to grab that life preserver.

You're going down for the last time, da, da, da, da, da, unless you come down to this altar and you say these words or you, you, you, you see that hand, some of you know where I'm going with this. But these are the kind of ways that comes out sometimes.

Another way it comes out is we try to get people to ask Jesus into their heart. And we, we give them this repeat after me prayer. And we, we think they're good. But as you, as you said, this isn't biblical evangelism because it's not a one and done.

It's not trying to get a certain response. It's about having the conversation, as John said, about seeing people know God. And when the Bible talks about knowing God, it doesn't talk about head knowledge or repeating words.

To know God, as it says in the Old Testament, is a very intimate term. It's actually comparable to a husband and wife in the way that they know each other. And that's Christological in the sense that we are, as the church, are the bride of Christ and we are known by Christ.

If that, that answers your question.

Yeah. Yeah. And that you were talking about emotion and knowledge. From my experience and my understanding, my belief, true knowledge, a real faith is going to lead to emotion and, and passion and zeal.

But it's not the other way around, which is what you were talking about. We put the emotion first and try to create something out of emotion. But true faith is going to create, I mean, we all here, I know you guys, just like me, have a passion for Christ and want others to, to know him.

And so, yeah, let's, and you guys chime in any, anytime if you want to.

Well, I want to pick up on that question. I have two articles on my website. One is how to know if you're in a dying church. But if that's all you ever focused on, that'd be very negative and very depressing.

So I also have one on there, signs of a healthy church. I would much rather talk about that, the healthy church. And so in the context of a healthy church and evangelism, you have to be God-centered, which is the whole essence of what I try to teach behind everything, whether, no matter what book of the Bible I'm in, no matter what I'm talking about, try to help people understand there is a God-centered and a man-centered way to handle everything.

And the way you handle your church can either be God-centered or man-centered. And man-centeredness finds itself in altercals probably more than anything else. Personally, if I was pastoring a church, either as a single pastor or in a correct church with a plurality, I wouldn't have them.

I see no biblical basis for altercals. I see no prerequisites or prescriptions for them. In fact, I think they've been abused so much, we would do better to not have them just to, if nothing else, stay away from just what they've become.

Now, at the same time, being a huge proponent of theological triage, understanding that if a church does an altercal, it doesn't mean they're not definitionally Christian. It doesn't mean that they're all going to hell or they're actively trying to sin or something.

No. I attend a church that does them. My pastor does them, and I've got his back 100%. If he and I were to have a conversation about it that we would respectfully disagree, probably, I'm guessing, it doesn't mean I can't attend that church or be functional or serve in that church.

But I personally wouldn't have them just because I think it takes away from the truest understanding of what evangelism is recognizing when I'm evangelizing someone. Because when I'm evangelizing someone, I'm helping them to come to understand what I already know is that I was in rebellion against my creator.

And without repentance and faith, you will die loving your sin, choosing your sin, and engaging in your sin. And we recognize that unless every single human being is a body and soul, they're born physically.

You have to be born again. Your spirit has to be born from above or you will not see the kingdom of God. You will not have the capacity to exercise faith. So all of this stuff that we do, and I'll say this in closing for my answer to this question, this hell houses, the sing just as I am 100 times until you're blue in the face so you can get a certain amount of hands raised, it's emotional manipulation.

We need to just call it what it is. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't some churches that do altar calls that are trying their absolute best to do it in a biblical way and they have the purest of attentions.

So we don't want to come across that way either, but I just, I really truly believe a healthy church is going to recognize that you have saints in front of you. You're there to disciple them. It's not an evangelistic meeting.

Evangelism is what saints do out in the world.

One of the great things I love about having a conversation with you guys is when I'm listening to you guys give answers, it's creating thoughts in me and I'm thinking about things. And so one of the things that I thought about as you guys were giving those answers was evangelism.

You were talking about what is evangelism, what we're doing in evangelism. We're being obedient to God in sharing the gospel, discipling the nations, but it's God who's doing the work. And when God does the work, we should see a response.

And that response, I think we've...and it was, I think it was more popular years ago. You're talking about the altar call. The response that we were looking for was someone to come to the altar. That was the response that we thought we should see if someone was working, if God was working in the heart.

But biblically, if God is doing the work in somebody's heart, where is...the biblical response that we should be looking for is where's the water? Does that make sense? Instead of where's the altar, where's the water?

Where's the water? Yeah. So that's what you made me think about as you guys were answering that question.

I kind of got a question. Yes, sir. I kind of want to... To to do

I was just going to say real quick, I think we need to understand that true biblical evangelism is really nothing more than the proclamation of the gospel, which we touched on last week, that the gospel has a definite content to it.

So evangelism is sharing that content, that knowledge that's contained within the gospel. And really, if you're not doing that, then that's not really evangelism. I mean, that can come in some different forms depending on your setting, how much time you have with a person, how much you're able to give them.

But without giving the gospel, it's really not evangelism.

Yeah. One of the things that I was thinking about whenever brother Andy was finishing up, you said something right there at the end that I think was very important. You said that the church time is for the saints and the evangelism is for whenever the saints are out of the church.

But the example that you and brother Tyler used mostly, and if I misunderstood it, y 'all please correct me, was how evangelism is being done incorrectly during sermons. And I think that what you were saying at the end, brother Andy, was that that premise is really where the bulk of the problem, I think, lies and where maybe everybody, at least in America, that as far as I can tell, may have a little bit of an error in their mindset, is that for whatever reason, we have determined that Sunday morning is to be an hour of evangelism and an hour of discipleship.

And truthfully, scripture doesn't allow for that. Scripture allows for the church to be the church, and when the church gathers together, whenever day or for however long they gather together, they're to be perfected or being perfected in God's word and being prepared to do the work of the ministry.

And I use Ephesians 4 so many times because I believe that that's one of the perfect outlines of the way a church should be laid out. When you see teachers and preachers, as Paul's leading in Ephesians, for the edification of the saints, for the work of the ministry, I mean, that's a leveled thing where you see that the edification or the building up of the church is for the work of the ministry, which is to be conducted by all members and all parties inside of the church.

I've said it, I don't know how many times I've said it, and if it's on here, I'm sure it's been recorded before, the same way guys like Richard Wurmbrand discovered early on that it wasn't necessary to just make converts, but make converts who were also soul winners.

You had to disciple these, which is actually what the Great Commission does say, not to make converts, but to make disciples, you know, truthfully. And if I were to look at a problem that I see in terms of a dangerous or negative effect of wrong ideas and practices about evangelism and what they are in the church, is that for so long we have used our pastors and our leaders inside the church as our evangelistic outreaches to our lost friends and neighbors and communities, and in doing so, we've robbed ourselves of the privilege of being able to lead people to the Lord, as well as we have taken away any of the advantages that our testimony would have with them, because we don't know how we know Jesus if we have to have you come meet our pastor for that, right?

And I think that that really, if I were looking at, you know, an unbiblical form of evangelism, one is when evangelism is founded and funded around church services. Church services aren't time for evangelism, but because of the state we find ourselves in as a pastor, I can tell you that I can't, as a preacher of the gospel, I can't take a Sunday and not treat at least part of it as an evangelistic opportunity, because of the status quo.

Most folks that we find ourselves in now, they invite somebody to church who's unchurched. They haven't done any legwork before they get there. Is that fair, Brother Andy? Did I take anything you said out of context or verbal to call it?

Actually, I think you took what I said and made it even better. I like what you said better. I want to respond to something very...you hit on a point that I try making more and more often as I move forward, but it's difficult because as a trained debater, I can anticipate what's going to be said.

So when I say things like, I wouldn't have an altar call if I was in the position to make that call, I know what I mean by that, but when you say in your answer, church services are not to be an evangelistic meeting, we know what you mean by that, but the argument you get back is, well, you just don't care about souls.

Yeah, because that's obviously what we were saying. No, we just recognize what Scripture says. This is a hard truth for a lot of people to understand, but the church, the called-out assembly, is not actually instructed to evangelize as the church.

The church is commanded and commissioned to make disciples. The function of the church is to have a plurality of biblically qualified men to instruct and teach the Word of God so that the saints could be equipped for the work of ministry.

Now, in Acts chapter 1, he tells the apostles, you're going to be my witnesses. You'll witness to the fact of who Christ is and what he has done. That carries over through all of New Testament theology to where every single saint and child of God is as a function of their ministry to include evangelism.

And in my opinion, I think there's good arguments for other types of evangelism. In my opinion, I think relational evangelism is probably one of the best things that we have at our disposal because most people, and I'm speaking in general terms, won't listen to what you have to say about Christ until they've seen him in you first.

And I would end in my response to John by saying we have at the very minimum three, four, five decades of lost time where exegesis could have been getting done. Discipleship could have been happening that we've wasted because we want to see that hand or have numbers.

And a lot of this, and I'm not going to go down this train for this episode. It's a story for another day. But a lot of this is because of independent fundamentalism and the Jack House brand of, you know, hey, I have 10 ,000 people in Sunday school, so I'm the most successful pastor.

No, you're not. That's not a determining factor of who's successful. Success in the Christian life is are you obeying Jesus Christ? So that's kind of how I respond to that. I thought you took what I said and made it even better.

So I'm a.

Fan now.

So God be the glory then.

Well, I wanted to piggyback off something John said as well. I think one of the, which he really hit on it, but I think one of the negative effects is just complacency. Like he said, people, I think their idea of evangelism has become, hey, I'm going to invite somebody to church and that's it.

Like he said, no legwork up front. We hope they come, let the pastor do the work after that, or have some kind of event at church, bring them to that. Let somebody else do the work. It's made the church body complacent.

Like he said, if you're not out practicing it, you go up and ask most people to give a defense for the hope that they have. They'll look at you with a blank stare on their face because they're not doing it.

Just like say you're putting all your hope in somebody else to do the work for you.

Evangelism Is Not a Program to Draw People In

Let me share a little bit of history from my experience and how I've seen it, and it's going to lead to a question. All you guys are open to answer the question. So just from my observation, recent history in my lifetime experience, we moved to, Andy talked about, and we talked about it other times as well, the correct biblical model for the church is the plurality of elders that are in leadership in the church.

Somewhere along the way, we moved away from that into the single pastor system. Then we moved from the single pastor system to, and this gets to more recent history in my observation, everybody, if you were to have, or if the congregation were to write up a qualification or what they were looking for in the pastor, they may not say it or write it down, but from my observation is everybody wanted their single pastor to be Billy Graham.

That was the qualification. That's what they were looking for. God has blessed many men in local churches to be charismatic, to have a magnetic personality, to be able to draw in folks. We hired men like that.

They were our Billy Graham. Seeming success or what we thought was success. We saw these charismatic men, which God gives men that gift and talent and ability, and I'm not knocking that. We're all cut differently, but we hired our Billy Grahams.

What we thought was success was they were able to draw in the numbers because they were charismatic. They were approachable. They were outgoing and they spoke very well, unlike me many times. You had many churches like that.

Now, you also had, on the other hand, many churches who could not get their Billy Graham. They had their single pastor system and they couldn't get their Billy Graham. They just weren't that charismatic.

They weren't that magnetic. Their speaking ability, their preaching ability just wasn't that good. To make up for that in the churches, and I think Matt was hitting on it just a second ago in his answer, I saw that churches developed other things to make up for that lack of their pastor being a Billy Graham.

This goes along with our question here. What have you seen in our churches where the pastor wasn't a Billy Graham? He didn't draw in the numbers. What did our churches begin to develop and use as evangelistic tools to draw people in?

Oh, mercy. There's piles of things folks have used to try to draw people to the sanctuary. I want to be careful not to bash that. Frankly, we use programs every week at our church. We have youth programs and children's programs.

I play in three bands. There's been a lot of folks who have shown up to a worship service and they showed up. I've even asked people not to do this before, but they've shown up just because maybe our band was going to be there.

And I haven't really questioned why they came, but I suppose there's a lot of avenues that are out there. As my mind's thinking, I'm thinking things like Vacation Bible School, which I support. I think Vacation Bible School is a great thing.

There's a lot of programs that are out there to draw folks in to the house of the Lord. Do you think that's a bad thing for the.

Church? I lean towards the other side, but I think it's good that we have a conversation about it. Yeah, definitely. If we're thinking about things that we've already said, the gathering is for the saints, but then we have these programs where we're drawing the unsaved in.

So, is it contradictory to that? Well, I think if you're drawing on the laws to come to.

A service, then you can't really call it a church service. You'd have to call it something else, wouldn't you? I mean, if you have a week of Vacation Bible School, we call it VBS. There's no, at least we typically don't refer to it as a worship service or any of those things, at least we don't in real life.

Some folks may refer to Vacation Bible School as a worship service. I don't know what their Vacation Bible School looks like, and that's a bad example just because it's on my mind. We had a meeting Sunday morning about it.

I'd be interested in Brother.

Andy or Matt or Tyler's opinion on that. Well, we just got a really good question here that I think ties right into this. Okay. It says, didn't Jesus sit with the sinners? How did you do that? How'd you pull that up?

I can just see it, but Rob clicked on it.

It gives me that option to pull it up. That's wild. Yeah, it's really cool.

That is really cool. Thank you, man.

I'll take this question. Yes, it is, and every single saint and Christian is expected to engage in evangelism. They're expected to engage in being Christlike, showing and demonstrating His attributes, meaning love and kindness, gentleness, fruits of the Spirit.

Obviously, when we talk about fruits of the Spirit, it's not some abstract thing. It's talking about this is what the Spirit produces in you. A really good study I've done, and I've got notes for it off the top of my head, a really good study from a lot of good sermons I listened to on Acts 1 .8, I believe, when Christ talks about Him being their witnesses.

We'll be my witnesses here, there, and everywhere. Understanding the depth and the richness of what it means to be a witness for Christ. It's not just, oh, sure, yes, I can testify to what Christ has done for me.

Oh, yeah, every Christian should be able to, but when you're out in the world and you're engaging with unregenerate, unsaved people that are, in fact, in rebellion to their Creator, how is your witness to Christ pointing them to Christ?

How is your witness to Christ demonstrating to them the change that has occurred in you, the fact that you have a Spirit now that is alive in Christ and you are, as far as your spirit and soul goes, as righteous and holy as you ever will be, although we still war daily with the flesh?

And the issue, the crux of the matter with the question is, there is a fundamental misunderstanding. I can't speak for every other country in the world, but I can speak for the American church, primarily Southern Baptist churches.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the church and the purpose of saints. I would take the view that a church service should not be doing anything, program or otherwise, that has as its primary focus to get lost people into the church.