The Laborers' Podcast- Evangelism

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Laborer's 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.

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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. Fantastic. I hope this is not a defense 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 seems to sum up our group very well. Well, I'm definitely an extrovert, so am

I the only one? 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 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?

Let me read some verses before we get started with our questions. 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 4, 5 and 6 act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you should answer each person.

And first Peter 3, 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 atheist, a skeptic.

I'm coming up to you. You've been evangelizing, you've been witnessing it. 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.

It's it's just advertising, trying to get people to persuade it to come join your club, join your organization.

And we know that if if you don't do this, you're going to lose numbers and you're just trying to 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.

We lost them again. 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 we got him back up.

Rob, we're just going to go ahead. I think I know where you're going. I was going to 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 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 could be 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 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've 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. And if I could build on that one second, one of the things that I've run across before, it wasn't phrased exactly that way, but the example that I'll give you happened when

I was in Washington, D .C., passing out tracts during the Atheist Convention that happened, I don't know, it's been several years ago now.

And at that convention, I was really expecting to see a very little turnout from the church.

And I saw a lot. One of the things that I noticed was that there. 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 hateful, it was really almost hateful.

I mean, I knew what they were trying to say and 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 the thing that was missed was that they weren't listening to them. They were so.

There was so much conflict between the two groups that neither group was listening to the other group.

And during this, I don't know what you'd call it, but this contest of sorts,

I found myself with my pastor and another guy from that was going to our church at the time 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 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,

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 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 put yourself in my shoes and you tell me what you would do if you were me and he stopped where he was at.

He said, well. Said I'm commanded to love you and I do love you and God loves you.

But the 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 and 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 he actually defended us shortly after we were approached by another atheist who was not as nice, who was very hateful in his speech, is hateful in his tone.

And before I could utter a single word of defense, this man that I'd been talking to said, hang on a second, hang on a second.

I understand where you're coming from, friend, he said, but these guys haven'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 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, 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 church members 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 brought under objection of the council of pastor.

And with that, I'll hush. That's fantastic. I'll just real quick,

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 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 is a God that he's made it plain to them.

Whether or not 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 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 that God has instilled in his word and go from there.

Absolutely. Good enough. Yeah, it reminds me of what was the what was the old 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 not I can't remember the name of the sword or whatever, but the sort of 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 OK if we if we identify some of the wrong, some of the negative 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 I posted for us.

What are what are some thoughts, concepts, ideas, practices that are that are not evangelism, not biblical evangelism 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, 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 was 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, some 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 you've got to grab that life preserver that you're going down for the last time that that that that that unless you come down to this altar and you say these words or 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. I know the 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 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 when 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 know him.

And so, yeah, and you guys chime in any time 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.

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 altar calls 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 altar calls. 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 altar call, 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 percent.

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 a hundred 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 given 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 we're losing,

God is doing 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? It's instead of where's the altar, where's the water? Where's the water?

Yeah. So that's 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 if. Brother Matt, do you want to add anything to this question before we do what

I'm fixing to do? I was just going to say real quick, I think we need to understand that true biblical evangelism is 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 to give them.

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

Yeah. One of the things that I was thinking about whenever. But Andy was finishing up, you said something right there at the end that I think was.

It 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.

And but the example that you and Brother Tyler used mostly, at least if I misunderstood it, shall 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 or 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 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 there to be perfected or being perfected in God's word and being prepared to do the work of the ministry, which and I use

Ephesians four so many times because I believe that that's one of the perfect outlines of the way a church should be 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 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 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 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 we've robbed ourselves of the of the privilege of being able to lead people to the

Lord, as well as we have we've 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?

I think you took what I said, 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. Like, 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 one, 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 so 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 from 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 how I responded. I thought 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 you said, people, I think their idea of evangelism has become, hey,

I'm going to invite somebody to church and that's it. Like you 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 into that, let somebody else do the work.

It's made the church body complacent. Like you 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're going to look at you with a blank stare on their face because they're not doing it.

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

Yeah. 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 and all you guys are open to answer the question.

So just from 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. And then we moved from the single pastor system to, and this gets to more recent history and 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, that was the qualification. That's what they were looking for. And God has blessed many, many men in local churches to be charismatic, to have a magnetic personality, to be able to draw in folks.

And so we hired men like that. They were our Billy Graham.

And 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. And what we thought was successful 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.

So you had many churches like that. Now you also had, on the other hand, many churches who could not get their

Billy Graham and 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. So 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. So and this kind of goes along with 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. And you guys mentioned some already. Yeah, there's piles of things folks have used to try to draw people to the sanctuary.

And I want to be careful not to bash that.

I mean, frankly, we use programs every week at our church. We have youth programs and children's programs.

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

And, you know, I haven't I haven't really questioned why they came.

But I suppose there's a lot of there's a lot of avenues that are out there, like 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 there's a lot of programs that are out there to draw folks in to the house of the

Lord. And are you think that's a bad thing for the Rob? I mean, I just want to I lean towards the other side.

And but I think it's good that we have a conversation about it. OK, yeah, definitely. So if we're thinking about things that we've already said, you know, the gathering is for the saints.

Sure. But then we have these programs where we're drawing, drawing the unsaved in.

So it's kind of. Is it contradictory to that?

Well, if you I think if you draw 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? OK. I mean, if you have a week of Vacation Bible School, you know, we call it

BBS. There's no at least we don't typically don't refer to it as a worship service or any of any of those things.

At least we don't realize 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 some of mine we had a meeting

Sunday morning about it. I'd be interested in whether 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. OK, didn't

Jesus sit with the sinners? How did you do that? How did you pull that up?

There's I can just see it, but Rob clicked on it. It gives me that option to pull it up.

That's why it's really cool. That is really cool. Thank you, Amanda.

Squirrel, 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, 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.

You need to a really good study I've done and I can't I've got notes for it.

I've got to go back. But off the top of my head, a really good, really good study from a lot of good sermons I listen to on it's

Acts 1 8, I believe, when Christ talks about me and 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.

The church is not for lost people. The church is for saints to worship God, sing, be discipled, sit under the teaching of the word, disciple each other, making disciples, being discipled, all that good stuff.

And then as a function of being a saint of God, we are called, part of our instruction as disciples is to learn how to better be witnesses for Christ.

So the question when he says, didn't Jesus sit with the sinners is yes, all Christians should be doing that.

And if you wanted to have some sort of program where it made it like, say, a non worship service type program where you're feeding people or welcome them in and you got an evangelism message, those things aren't inherently bad.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with those. I just think it's very important we draw a distinction between things the church does to witness for Christ and what is being done primarily in the church, if that makes sense.

Let me make two comments here, and maybe you guys can bank off of these comments. Let me reread the very first verse that I read as we came into the program,

Matthew 9, 37 and 38, and it has a similar vibe to the Great Commission.

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. So you have that, you have the

Great Commission. And secondly, there's caution in this mindset and this question of didn't

Jesus sit with sinners. Oftentimes, it's if we are more easily influenced a lot of times than to be doing what the sinners are doing than what the sinners do what we do.

And so there's a caution there when we're if we go sit with them, it depends on the setting as well.

Some people say, well, go to the bars or go here, go there. Just a word of caution, a lot of times it leads to the temptation and a lot of times we're more easily influenced by them than they are of us.

So just a word of caution there with that. But as far as scripture goes, it seems like there's a going out, a sending out versus drawing in.

What do you guys think about that? I see that. I see that. I agree.

I do know that in practical applications, a lot of times church buildings get used for things other than worship service.

I'm curious, Brother Andy, are you opposed to things like that as well? I know you talk about like feeding or clothing people less fortunate than us or things like that.

But I mean, in your guesstimation, do you think that things like VBS or let's take that one out of there.

Think of something else, something that is. Oh, I know one,

I know one that's something that I haven't seen happen in a long, long time. But when I was in high school,

I used to remember continually be invited to youth lock ins. I only ever attended one of them because I wasn't a believer when

I was in high school and I had a terrible time. I mean, an absolute terrible time, as you might imagine, an unregenerate pubescent boy locked into a church full of rules and people that wouldn't let you do anything that you really wanted to do.

And then they locked the door and you couldn't leave. Are things like those inherently inherently bad, in your opinion?

No, I might have maybe I didn't make myself as clear because we're actually in agreement.

What I think a lot of what I teach, a lot of what I preach, I will use the example of I'll say, hey,

I always preach against the extremes, you know, for example, with theology, you don't want to engage in fundamentalism because the fundamentalism thinks everything's a fundamental, definitional aspect of the faith.

So if you're not, you know, bless God, preach it, pre -Rab and all this stuff, you're going to hell. Liberalism, nothing's definitional.

You want to avoid that because obviously there's definitional items in scripture. So you need balance.

So what I'm saying is largely what Rob is saying.

We need to make sure that we're following the right path. We're not doing to draw in. We're doing to send out.

So, for example, we do not need, I think Rob hit on this a lot.

We was talking about, you know, every church is looking for a Billy Graham. The whole purpose of the church is not to find some Billy Graham so you can feel your pews.

I mean, yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, sadly, I had one recently

I saw they were having a feel the pews Sunday and I just my skin crawled. But as a function of the church, part of our discipleship in teaching saints, they're there to do the work of the ministry.

So if you have a saint or two saints or a group of saints that says, look, we feel as if we're gifted by the spirit and we feel as if we're being called to either create this program or create some sort of group or do this function, whether it's vacation

Bible school or maybe something to youth or something where we're going to have evangelism as our focus in this.

I not only would be fully behind them, I would want to show up and help. I think that'd be wonderful.

My hesitation is make sure that the overall purposes of the church is not we're just there to bring in, bring in, bring in.

So that's that's kind of more I think that explains it a little bit better. Yeah. And I'd be in agreement with that because I know that we try to do seem like we try to do all manner of things these days to to appeal to people.

There's some things that I won't help with because I don't I think they're they're more bad than good.

I won't argue their merits on some use. For one example, I've rode with several motorcycles and I've rode with several people who are in what, you know, quote unquote motorcycle ministries.

And I think that's fine if your church has one, you know, more power to you. I'd been asked if if I wanted to help start one at one time,

I said, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I think that that's like I said,

I think it's just more bad than good most of the time. And and to draw towards your definition of balance,

I think if it's more bad than good, we'll just leave it land. And if there's a if there's a church that is able to do something and make more good than bad out of it, then then go for it.

I just thought of a very short way of putting it. I would sum up my thoughts this way.

Evangelism is part of what we do as a church. It's not all we do. Certainly not. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Tyler, I'm going to read a verse and form a question out of it and see what you guys think of it.

So I've meditated on this verse before and. Oh, we have we have tests with us.

Oh, no. True, true. Everybody got your mask on.

Yeah. From the grave heroes. Is that Mr. Robot with the mighty

Trump over his foes? Lazarus.

Surely you all are on top of it tonight, aren't you? I just want to know, did he bring his organ with him?

Oh, mercy. Well, they give me no organ tonight. Hey, the organ playing. Hey, big question is, are you still able to taste your ice cream and your

Reese cups? I just did eat them. They did taste a little bit awkward.

The taste is not so much a factor this time around. It's more of a. Mid chest and throat congestion, so so you guys that are watching, be a prayer for Claude and be in prayer for Dan, he's sick as well tonight and Dan sick to he's sick.

Yeah. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry for jumping right in on you, but I was enjoying y 'all's conversations.

Well, I'm I'm glad you did. I'm very thankful. Pray for Jonathan and the others that are on missions trips right now.

Thank you for praying for our laborers. Appreciate it, man.

I'm going to go back to the question that I was going to address and Claude, you're welcome to jump in any time, too. So I was pondering this verse and it goes along with the conversation that we're having.

Ephesians 4, 12, English Standard Version to equip the saints for the work of ministry or service for building up body of Christ.

So if if you're gathered together with your leadership, your elders, your leadership of church, it seems like from my experience, just observation and I do want to qualify everything that I'm saying.

I think most. I can't judge hearts and probably most of what many people have done come from a pure heart, a love for Christ, and I don't want to take anything away from that.

We just want to speak and learn from what scripture says and what the Bible would have us to do. But but pondering that verse and making observations from my experience, it seems like leadership has spent more time focusing on.

Creating and building up the program. As opposed to.

How how can we equip the saint? For the for the program, creating and equipping the program for the same as opposed to equipping the same kind of what

Andy was saying, equipping the same program to go out and develop it or.

Dive into it. What do you guys think? I believe the

Holy Spirit knows exactly what he's doing and he gives every single saying pastors have a unique calling and a role, but they're there and we're in so need a great need of all of our brothers and sisters and any pastor worth this all is going to recognize that there are probably saints sitting in front of you that are gifted in areas that you're not.

And the Holy Spirit so wonderfully unique. Gifts people, so when

I teach, I always say your biggest job as a saint of God is to discover your gifts, develop them and then use them.

And my role is to help you do that because you may have in any congregation, you may have 25 % of your congregation that is excellent evangelism.

You may have another 25 % that are great teachers. You may have another 25 % that are great at doing things behind the scenes or having a program that you may have people that are really good knowing how to administer and run a

VBS or run these things. And you need everybody. And I think we're all basically saying the same thing.

We just need to make sure that we're balanced, that we don't get too focused on a

Billy Graham understanding of Christianity, that we that we lose out on discipleship. Right, Tyler?

And I'll speak real quick from, go ahead Tyler, I'll let you jump in.

If I could refer to Deuteronomy chapter 11, because this this passage has been blowing my mind these last couple of weeks.

I've got in front of me the Jewish study Bible, which has like the Hebrew names. I find that very interesting to have in front of me.

And it says, verse 26 of Deuteronomy 11, see, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse.

The blessing, if you listen to the mitzvot, the commandment of Yahweh your

God that I am giving you today, and the curse, if you don't listen to the mitzvot of Yahweh your

God, but turn aside from the way I am ordering you today and follow other gods that you have not known.

We talked about earlier about when God says, talks about knowing us, that that's very intimate.

But the reality here is in every aspect of our lives, both in the church and outside of the church, we are standing between two mountains.

When Moses is giving this this discourse to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they're standing between two mountains, literally the mountains of blessing and cursing.

And every aspect of our lives as Christians, as people, we are standing between the mountains of blessing and cursing, because we will go to the mountain.

But will we go to the mountain to to honor God, to commune with the holy, or will we go to the

God of our own design, of our own choosing, to the mountain of cursing? How do we rectify that?

I guess that's what I'm saying. Are we looking at our preconceived idea of what

God is, of what God desires of us, or are we seeking the scripture to see what

God is like and how are we to know him and know him rightly? Sorry to cut you off,

Matt. No, you're fine. I'll kind of, what you said there at the end, and I think it's biblical, and I've seen this play out in my own life over the last couple of years, talking about the pastor as a leader, as a shepherd, and in preaching the word and pointing his flock to the word and giving them that knowledge and pointing them to God, pointing them to Christ.

And in knowing God through his word, coming to love him more because we know him more, and as we love him more, desiring to follow his commandments, one of which is to go out and proclaim the good news.

So I think as a preacher, an elder, a pastor, give the people the word, teach them who

God is, who Christ is, point them to the word so that they'll know and that love for the

God of the word will grow. And out of that love, we should desire to do these things.

And I think I've thankfully, praise the Lord, seen that in my own life as I've gotten more serious about the word and sat under solid preaching and also used supplementary ministries as well.

I've seen that as, again, as my knowledge has grown, my love for the Lord has grown, and my desire to go out has grown.

So I think it all starts there with the pastor, the elder, teaching his flock the word and pointing them to God, to Christ through the word.

But this will be our last question. And Matt, you kind of took us right into that last question, and I'm going to correct my spelling.

I think that's right. You perfectly led us right into our last question that we'll probably have time for tonight.

So we want to develop a culture of evangelism in our churches, and that's where you were taking us.

And I just jotted down a quick definition of culture and see if you guys agree.

And if you agree, just take us into this last question, anybody that wants to answer and all of you can answer.

Culture, unity in mindset and activity. So how can we develop a culture of evangelism in our church, a unity in mindset and activity?

Well, the centerpiece of Scripture is

Jesus. It's the person and work of Christ from Genesis 1 all the way through to Revelation 22 is who

Christ is and what he's done and how we become, as his bride, as his covenant people, how we become recipients of that.

And so if the gospel is the centerpiece, then everything we hear on Sunday mornings, everything that gets pushed out that pulpit is about the gospel in some way or fashion.

It may not be tailored necessarily to the unbeliever, but we dig our roots into the same gospel by which we were saved.

And part of that, that digging our roots into the gospel is that our branches grow out.

And so as we are digging into this gospel, there is a natural growth outwards as we try to share this gospel with others and expound upon it in other areas of our lives.

I would say I like your definition, Rob. I had written down as far as culture, it's kind of what is viewed as normal or acceptable.

And I think a culture grows simply by doing whatever you want your culture to do.

You have to have somebody leading and doing that and setting that as the standard.

So to grow a culture, whatever you want the focus of that culture to be, somebody has to lead and set the standard and doing that for others to follow.

And I'll say I'll brag on Claude a little bit when

I was attending Reformation as far as evangelism. I don't think

I've been there that long. We had come to know each other a while before I went there, but at the time

I was doing some evangelism at the local abortion clinic. And I messaged him one day and I was like, hey, man,

I'm going out tomorrow and just pray for me. I don't know if anybody else is going. I may end up going by myself.

And it wasn't a couple of minutes later, he was like, man, what time are you going? I'm going to be there with you.

I ain't going to let you be by yourself. And he started coming out and I'm like, for an elder at the church to lead and be visible out there, that was that was huge for me.

So I think that's that's where it starts. We have leaders in the church.

There is a church structure set up biblically, and I think we need more leaders in the church to not only to teach it, but also walk it, lead by example, build that culture from example.

From from my observation, I think, John, I think you're a good example as well. I'd like to commend you publicly.

I'm sorry, but I didn't hear you. Matt was talking about Claude and his experience with Claude and Claude being a good example.

And I just wanted to say from my experience and my observation, I think John here is a good example.

Oh, I don't know about that. Well, I appreciate you and I appreciate what I what

I see. Well, I appreciate y 'all. I like what

Brother Tyler says about about being joint. Well, it's best I understand it being founded and centered, our culture being that on Christ.

And for the last week, I've been going over John 17 with my Sunday school class and talking about the

Jesus's prayer in the garden. And there's a section towards the end where all the believers are being prayed for.

And for the second time, I'm going to read just 20 to maybe 24. So he said,

I pray not only for these, but for those who believe in me through their message, that they all may be one as you,

Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one in us so that the world may believe you sent me.

I have given them the glory you've given me. May they be one as we are one.

I am in them and you are in me. May they be made completely one so that the world may may know you've sent me and have loved them as much as loved you.

Oh, goodness. The world may know that you've sent me and have loved them as you've loved me. Father, I desire those that you've given me to be with me where I am.

Then they will see my glory, which you have given me because you love me before the foundation.

But the prayer continues. But the point I want to get at is, is that if we expect if we expect the culture of the church to be one of evangelism, then we need the culture of the church to be to be centered and driven on one common thing.

There has to be something that that unites everybody so that so that we are willfully abased and Christ is willfully increased in our midst.

That's the only way that evangelism, as far as a culture, is going to ever be promoted and be effective.

And that's if everybody understands that we're all a part of the body of Christ, whether we be little pieces or maybe even a little bit bigger pieces or pieces that are seen next to insignificant, but that we do our part and we do it in a way that promotes

Christ above all, but also above us that we do like like Brother Claude did.

And you say, look, I'm not letting you go by yourself. That's that's that's not even biblical for a man to go, but I'm going to go with you.

You don't know where you're going to be and when you're going to be there and I'll be there as somebody who says, well, I'll take whatever

I have on my schedule today and I'm going to go ahead and allow it to be less important than my brother,

Matt. And I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to prefer him in this moment because Matt has desired to do maybe a better thing.

And and that's really what it takes. And I don't think that I don't think there's any one one person that I put it, man,

I just I just this is going to be a word sandwich before it's over with. This goes on to Joe Biden's speech before it's over with.

There's there's there's it's going to take a work of a work of God to make everybody understand the big picture and to be willing to be small door holders, if necessary, or to be big door holders, but just be door holders.

And I mean, and I think that I think that it does start as far as a local body.

It starts with the pastor. I have a good example in my past. My pastor do whatever he can do to help anybody.

You bring an idea of how how the laws can be witnessed to or if there's a program that you want to put in place that's going to evangelize the law, she'll say, explain it to me.

You explain it to him. And if it looks like it's going to be biblical, he'll say, all right, we'll do it. And you tell me what I can do to help you.

And Claude in the corner over here. Anyway, anyway,

I'm done. We have to be one in Christ if we want to see anything done successfully. And that includes evangelism.

Hitting the meat button, fellas. I'm just trying to hit the hit this or the show.

This book is will be a great help and an encouragement if I can get it to figure out how to get it in my frame here.

This is Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J .I. Packer, is it? Yes. One thing

I want to say real quick, I think it was Andy mentioned it earlier that within the congregation, you're going to have people who have different gifts.

And I think for me at times, especially early on when

I was going out and doing evangelism, sometimes I get a little bit frustrated because not many people are out there with you.

We've got a small group of guys. And I think we express our frustration with each other.

But we know there are people praying for us who aren't out with us.

We know there are people doing other ministries that we're not. I think

I heard Rob talk about this in one of the episodes I watched. I can't remember is

I think you use the term like ministry shaming. I think we get in the mindset, hey, if somebody is not doing the exact type of evangelism that I'm doing, then they're not doing it right.

If they're not doing it my way or if they're not in the same ministry that I'm in, then they're not doing the work.

And I think I'll admit I'm guilty of that, especially early on when I was getting started and doing stuff.

You kind of get that frustration like, where's everybody at? But there's a lot of stuff that other people are doing that I'm not doing either.

So I think we need to be gracious in that and realize that evangelism can take on quite a few different forms.

And we need to we need to realize that. And as Andy said, people have different gifts and those can be expressed in various ways as long as we are truly, as Tyler said, being united under the message of the gospel in these various avenues that we're taking.

Probably some of the, I'm going to get to Amanda's question or comment in just a second, probably one of the biggest harms that happens in ministry shaming, just my opinion, my observation, is when it comes to mothers.

I think mothers are our greatest preachers, evangelists, have the greatest job, most important job, the highest,

I mean, mothers should be our highest respect in the position that they hold and what they do and what they're called to do.

And when we begin to, you know, we don't call it ministry shaming, but it's our attitude towards other people who are not doing what we're doing or what we think they should be doing.

And you have mothers who feel like they're just not doing enough and they're being left out or they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing when they have the greatest role and job in the world and they should be elevated and they should be respected and lifted up.

And I think there's been a lot of harm caused in hearts toward mothers.

I'll touch on that real quick and I'll be quiet. But the kind of the core little group of guys that I go out with,

I know three of the other guys and myself included, all have young children.

Most of us have multiple children. And generally, our wives are staying at home, holding down the fort with the kids so that we can be out there.

And if it wasn't for them, then we wouldn't be out there ourselves. So they always try to give credit to my wife.

I know those guys do, too, because most times if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be out there.

So they definitely play a huge role. And I know anybody that's a pastor.

I know Claude. I know his wife, April, is a huge support in his ministry as well.

So I think that you're definitely spot on there, Rob. Amanda says,

I think for me, it's being one in Christ. And we do that through backing our testimony with the word, keeping the word of life the center.

Amen. Any last thoughts, Andy? Yeah, I really liked hearing from John, I think he really hit a lot of things really well.

It's so difficult because when you explain these things, you don't want to come off as evangelism isn't important or somehow because even in a worship service, there have been many sermons

I've preached where I would present the gospel because the text would call for it. Or this ultimately is about balance.

It's about understanding your true purpose, being balanced and understanding evangelism is a part of what we do.

It's not our primary purpose as a church. So we just make sure we have these distinctions and categories in mind that part of discipleship, which is what we're supposed to do, part of that is equipping saints to evangelize and be witnesses for Christ, which includes pastors.

So and the thing I really have enjoyed over the years as being a

Christian is seeing the variety that God uses in his people to evangelize.

There are some people that are excellent at confrontation, and I don't mean confrontation in the sense of mean or angry.

I mean, confronting people say, look, what have you done about Jesus? That confrontation of calling them to make an answer right then and there.

There are some that are excellent at relational, putting an arm around somebody, walking through the.

So I love what Rob was saying about the idea of a ministry shaming or even an evangelism shaming to the sense, well, this is cookie cutter.

You know, we you have to evangelize this way. If you don't do it this way, it won't work. Well. God, look at the variety in the trees in the fall,

God's got a variety, the message is the same, the truth never changes, but we are all equipped to evangelize differently, we need all hands on deck approach, in my view.

Well, how about you, man, I tell you,

I like I like all of it. I don't have any I can't add a thing to that.

I mean, I think it was it wasn't last week was the week before last. I missed a bunch of the podcast, you know, we're sitting here talking about the church and how to be a successful church.

And I'm really ready to to to chime in. My wife says, John, there's somebody at the door.

It's quarter to nine. So who's at the door to quarter to nine? And it was some kid from college trying to sell books.

And I got mad. I'll just be honest because I was like, man, what are you doing in my house? Fifteen to nine.

Have you not got any sense? They say it was in college. I said, of course, you don't have any sense. And then while I was standing there,

I thought, well, tell you what? I'll buy one of your books. Sit down that chair out there.

And he starts to pick those books. I said, no, I will buy a book. You don't make no difference. You ain't got to sell me nothing. I said, but why? I got you here.

Let's talk about the Lord. So I figure I got you for 10 minutes. Right. Turns out he was a Muslim.

So God sends me a Muslim from California to my front porch to share the gospel. And in the heat of battle,

I almost run him off so that I could come back and make a podcast. So I would say if you learn anything from my mistakes is that keep the main thing.

The main thing is Brother Andy said a while ago. And if and if, you know, you get took off of a podcast, you really want to be a part of to actually do the things that we're talking about doing on the podcast.

You know, just a blessing that God gives you and do it. And the brother, Claude, was texting me while I was outside.

You OK? And I was like, yeah, I'm OK. I'm OK. Anyway, I've enjoyed meeting

Brother Andy and Brother Matt. I think it's the first time I've met either one of y 'all. I enjoy listening to what you have to say.

Yes, sir. And I appreciate y 'all's hearts. I really do. And Brother Rob, thank you again for having me on.

And and putting it on and even getting more fancy. Now you get putting comments at the bottom as things are going on.

Tell you what, Claude, you have anything to say?

No, sir. My my voice won't let me say it. I just wanted to be here for support for you all.

Thank you. I love you. Let's wrap up.

And I really appreciate everybody's input on this. We had a little we may have some differences, but we all come back to Christ.

And I think all of you have excellent comments and excellent input. Matt, would you share the gospel?

And Tyler, if you don't mind, when he finishes, close us in prayer. Sure. The gospel, as I talked about before,

I think it for me, it essentially comes down to God, man,

Christ. And our response, we must from Scripture, learn that God is holy, he is righteous, he is perfect and good and all that he does.

He's also a just God. Unlike him, man is sinful. His word tells us that all have sin and fallen short of the glory of God.

And because of God's holy righteousness, he can have no fellowship with sin because of our our sin nature that we are born with, our sin that we do every day.

We are separated from our creator, from this holy God. Nothing we can do on our own to reconcile that relationship.

But God is also a loving and merciful and gracious God. And it's only he has the ability to reconcile us to himself and in his love and mercy did that through the person, the work of his son,

Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin, came a man, fully man, but still fully

God. Live that perfect life that none of us could live. And in doing so, was willing and able to go to the cross, to suffer that brutal death, to step in our place, to be a substitute for those who would believe in him, to atone for our sins and for those who would.

And he on the cross, he died, suffered the wrath, became sin, even though he knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God through him.

He was dead, buried, raised again, ascended, sitting at the right hand of the father today.

And for those who trust in the person and work of Christ and call upon his name, we are promised salvation.

We will become adopted as sons and daughters of the king.

We'll experience eternal life with God in heaven. And so we know that salvation is by grace, through faith alone in Christ alone.

And Jesus himself said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father but by me.

And the command of Jesus himself was to repent and believe the gospel. So that's our our call tonight.

If you have not trusted in Christ, we would call you to repent of your sin.

Turn to Christ in faith tonight for salvation. Tyler, if you'll close us in prayer.

Oh, Lord, our Lord. How majestic is thy name in all of the earth?

Lord, it has been beneficial to me to sit down with these men and ponder your your precious gospel.

I pray that this has been used mightily by you to reach people, to bring people to that center, to dig roots down into that rich, fertile soil.

I pray that this isn't about us. That when we leave this this meeting room, it's not about us, but it's about you.

I pray that seeds are planted, that other seeds are sown.

I pray that saplings grow into trees. I pray that you will be glorified through it all in Christ's name.

Amen. Thank you again, man. And thank you, everybody, for watching. We really appreciate it. Remember that Jesus is king.

Go live in the victory of Christ. Go speak with the authority of Christ and continue to go share the gospel of Christ.

hope to see you all again really, really soon. Amen.