Dusty

Whatever Happened to Personal Evangelism ?

We are not anointed by the Holy Spirit simply to have visions or feel spiritual goose bumps. It’s time for us to re-embrace soul-winning
My heart sank two weeks ago when I heard that Dr. D. James Kennedy had died at age 76 of complications from an earlier heart attack. Knowing that Jerry Falwell died in May, and considering that Billy Graham is not in good health, I wondered who could possibly replace these stalwart Christian statesmen
The congenial Kennedy, who usually wore an austere clerical robe when he preached on his popular television broadcast, founded Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale 48 years ago. Yet his formal appearance was misleading—since his life’s mission was to train the average layperson to share the gospel.


“‘Soul-winning’ is an outdated term. Polls show that few Christians today have ever led a person to faith in Christ.�


Indeed, Kennedy’s most enduring legacy was Evangelism Explosion, a training course he started in 1970. Used in thousands of churches, it has helped Christians develop a confident approach to personal witnessing. Countless people have been trained to ask a simple question—“If God were to ask why He should allow you into heaven, what would you say?�— to jumpstart conversations with unbelievers.

It was that trick question, overheard on a radio broadcast, that led Kennedy to Christ in 1953. He gave the rest of his life to help people find the right answer. Now that he is dead, I pray his passion can be ignited in our hearts.

It seems as if personal evangelism is a dying art. Fewer of us are taking our faith beyond familiar circles of friends and family. Witnessing has become intrusive in a culture that demands tolerance and diversity. Knocking on doors is illegal in most neighborhoods. “Soul-winning� is an outdated term. Polls show that few Christians today have ever led a person to faith in Christ.

As our society has become more secular, our faith has become more timid. It is no longer cool to declare Jesus is the only way. So we don’t say it—we just hope people will figure out our message by listening to our music or by wandering into our churches at an odd hour on Sunday mornings.

I am especially disturbed that personal evangelism has lost its importance among those of us who call ourselves Pentecostal or charismatic. Many of our best evangelists have also passed into glory or are getting feeble. Yet when I look at the younger generation, it seems many leaders are focused on the inside of the church rather than the harvest fields.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I know we need prophecies, visions, dreams and spiritual experiences. We also need solid Bible teaching, powerful exhortation and the inspiration that comes from praise and worship. But it seems today our focus has turned totally inward. The church is ministering to the church. The pastor is preaching to the choir. And our message isn’t reaching beyond the vestibule.

When Jesus began His earthly ministry, He read from the book of Isaiah about the promise of the Holy Spirit. The passage in Isaiah 61:1 says: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted …� (NASB emphasis added).

This verse, which so dramatically captures the essence of Jesus’ ministry and ours, clearly lists evangelism as His priority. The Holy Spirit’s anointing does a lot of things—but we are told here that He clothes us with divine power so we can announce good news. In other words, we are not anointed simply to prophesy, receive revelations, experience spiritual goose bumps, shake, quake, rattle, roll, shout, raise hands, take offerings, receive offerings or obtain blessings and breakthroughs. All those things are great, but if we have them without evangelism then our faith becomes inverted and self-absorbed.

I’ve been in some great charismatic meetings where everyone falls on the floor at the altar. Some get up and go back for more anointing. In fact, we are known to pray: “More! Lord, give them more fire!� Then the people swoon again, roll around and act drunk. And they come back three more nights to have hands laid on them again.

We’ve become like actors in a perpetual dress rehearsal in which we repeat our lines over and over but never actually perform for an audience.

What good is the anointing if we just wallow and splash in it like hungry hogs at a slop trough? I love the anointing as much as the next person. But when will we actually open our mouths and use it to preach to unbelievers? I want to stand up and scream, “Get off the floor and do something with this power!�

D. James Kennedy was an evangelical brother who did not preach about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, yet he taught people to pray for boldness and to look for every opportunity to share their faith. What would happen if churches that fully embrace the
Spirit’s anointing broke out of their self-imposed isolation and started preaching to everything that moves?


J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find out more about Evangelism Explosion at www.eeinternational.org. He also encourages you to pray for Muslims during the Islamic Ramadan season. For a prayer guide click here.

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Trials prove a Christian

Love confirms a Christian

But death crowns a Christian

violet

Boanerges

Evangelism is alive and well in some parts- more folks need to get their rears out of their pews and spread the good news.

BreathOfGod

I didn't realize he had died (Dr. James Kennedy). He was my favorite minister to watch on TV several years back when I had television. I'd get up early on Sunday mornings just to watch him.

Dusty

Yes Violet and your neibours are being very selfish and only thinking about me, me, me. Do you really think by their attitude that Jesus is happy with them? Where is their love ??We should not be so concerned with ourselves that we forget others around us. We must share the love of Jesus where ever we go whether in our neibourhood or at the grocery store.Didn't Jesus command us to love our neibours as ourselves ?

You all are doing he right thing , Violet and some day they will come to the realization of the Bible's true love. The Bible's kind of love is .......tender,aggressive,tenacious,jealous,, never ending , ,emotional, total, unspeakably sweet,and finally tough. God loves us with a tough love...... and that's the way we need to learn to love each other.

__________________

Trials prove a Christian

Love confirms a Christian

But death crowns a Christian

Dusty

Amen brother Larry

__________________

Trials prove a Christian

Love confirms a Christian

But death crowns a Christian

avlight

No, I am sorry to say that Kennedy's most enduring legacy will be that he was a 'theo-politician' (Center for the Reclamation of America) who was convinced that God could only move in this country when a certain political party was voted into office. By making government the evangelist of the church, we would pass laws and repeal other laws thinking that all the people would be 'forced' to be saved and we would live 'happily ever after' in our Leave It To Beaver World.

Bible Scholar - one of the best in reference to classical Old School Presbyterianism.

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In fact, the mindset of government as the Christian evangelist mentioned in the first paragraph helped contribute to the killing off of personal one-on-one evangelism. We expected a 'one-shot / mass saving' to take place instead of being content with one soul at a time. Also, we got so used to the Billy Graham concept of holding citywide mass crusades where thousands of people got saved that it became 'normalized' to expect mass savings. One person getting saved in a church service was considered as being 'falling short', 'lacking faith', and 'failure' when compared to a mass crusade rally in a big city or in an African soccer stadium.

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violet