BOOK 19 Church Leaders. How To Lead Your Church In Evangelism (Part 4)

A SAMPLE OF ENDORESMENTS The following are some of the endorsements for Julian’s 900+ page book called Evangelism: Strategies from Heaven In the War for Souls. Some people are daunted by such a big book so Julian made a small book out of each chapter of the 900+ page book. What you are about to read is just one of the chapters of the larger work.

David Cole, YWAM Campaigns Asia/Pacific Board of Regents Chairman University of the Nations.

“This book is one of the most in depth looks at what Evangelism really is (and what it isn’t) that I believe has been written in the last century. I have been so inspired in my own calling through its content and often use it as a text book for teaching and imparting to young leaders in YWAM training courses as well as throughout other parts of the Body of Christ. Thank you Julian not only for such a valuable resource as well as for modeling the outworking of its content in your own life over the past few decades.”

Pastor Mike Smith, Melbourne, Australia

“An incredible book that all pastors should read. I have been a Christian for 28 years and a pastor for many years, and when I picked up this book, I thought, I doubt this will teach me anything new about evangelism. I was so wrong. It has revolutionised my thinking.

This is an incredible book that all pastors should read.”

Grant Buchanan LLB, B.Com, Auckland

“The best book I have ever read.

I am a solicitor (54) and a partner in a law practice.

I unhesitatingly give my endorsement for Julian s book.

Indeed, I would rate it as the best book that I have ever read!”

Grant Buchanan LLB, B.Com, Auckland

Michael Angulo, Pastor and Church Leader

“Truly a work of Ministerial art. I really like this book and every true evangelist will love it also. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO PUT IT DOWN, BUT WILL BE THINKING WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO READ IT AGAIN! A truly very well written book with good retrospective learning ideas. No true evangelist should be without this book. It is worth what it is worth and it will catapult you into great, deliberate PROVEN, ministry approach. Great book and I highly recommend it. Get this one, you won’t be disappointed!”

Julian Batchelor, M.ed (Hons), B.Th, Dip.T’Ching

Church leaders!

How To Lead Your Church In Evangelism!

(Part 4)

Copyright Julian Batchelor Evangelism Strategies International Press Auckland New Zealand

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Acknowledgements I owe a lot of thanks to a lot of people for the production of this Mini Series: Sheryl Kampenhout, who transferred a mountain of material from Power Point shows into Word documents and who served and encouraged me in such a loving and kind way; to Matthew Old, a faithful friend and fellow evangelist, who has been a Barnabas. He reached out his hands when the hills seemed steepest, loved me in spite of my failures, stimulated me with his sharp mind, and made me laugh when I wanted to cry; to Janice Teo, and her intercessory prayer team who are as vital to the ministry I direct as the heart is to the body; to the team of editors, including Ken Francis and Julie Belding; to all the financial supporters who have given so generously to me over the years. I especially want to thank Paul and Tina Richards, of Club Physical, owners of a gymnasium chain in Auckland, New Zealand, and Derek van Beynen, who have faithfully sponsored my ministry for over a decade. Few people have the privilege of being able to leave secular work to write and produce resources to further the cause of the evangelisation of the world, and to motivate and equip the Church to do the same. You, and all my other financial supporters, have made this possible; to those I live with who have not seen me for years because I have been locked away in my office writing, I give my sincere thanks. Special thanks to Neil Pollock. To Jenny Windeyer, the graphic artist, who designed the cover of the original 800 page book (which we’ve turned into this Mini Series), and to Jenny’s husband Drew for going beyond the call of duty so that Jenny could focus on this project; to faithful Bernie Anderson who has sacrificed and given way beyond what a leader would expect of a dedicated co-worker; to Eleanor Goodall and Sue and George Jeffrey who epitomise love and true friendship; to the team at ESI for keeping all the various aspects of the evangelism ministry moving forwards whilst I directed most of my time to write this Mini Book Series; for Dr Martyn Bowis who did all the programming for the electronic version of the gospel called “Proclaim it!”; for Henoch Kloosterboeror for producing all the brilliant

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drawings; Dr David Stewart, retired Principal of the Bible College of New Zealand for nearly two decades of encouragement and mentoring; Denise James and Anne Bartley, staff at the Bible College of New Zealand for helping with research; all those who have helped proof read the manuscript and given comment, particularly Dr Marie Sewell, Gill Donald, Gill Lukey, Donna Hansen, Ainslie Vines, Ann Hunter, and Miriam and Ted Martin; to the academic staff of the Bible College of New Zealand for giving me a grounding in theology; for all those who have given financially and sacrificially to pay for specific aspects of the publishing of this Mini Book Series; for my friend Ray Comfort, for his inspiration and encouragement.

There are few evangelists today who have journeyed on the road of trial and tribulation to achieve breakthrough as Ray Comfort. For John Stott, the academic evangelist for his coaching and input via his many books.

For all the people who we have trained in evangelism around the world who are out there doing it – you are the heroes in the battle for souls; for the many hundreds of pastors, leaders, and lay Christians around the globe who have contributed to my life as a Christian, and to this Mini Book Series; and finally, I thank Jesus Christ, whose amazing grace and love has inspired and kept me. All the revelations in this Mini Book Library about evangelism and the gospel were given by Him – to Him be all the glory.

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How To Read The Mini Books In This Library This Mini Book is one of a Library of 27 Mini Books. The Library is a detailed critique of the battle between light and darkness which is relentlessly raging all over the earth for the souls of men and women.

The insights and revelations in each Mini Book are hierarchical i.e.

Mini Book Two builds upon Mini Book One, Mini Book Three upon Mini Books One and Two, and so on. Hence, the ideal is to try and read all the Mini Books in the library in sequence. If you skip Mini Books, or even parts of Mini Books, you might miss something vital, and open yourself to misunderstanding or even defeat.

Having said this, after you have read Mini Books One to Seven, which are the foundational books in the Library, each Mini Book is designed to stand alone. So, read Books One to Seven first. This is essential.

With respect to evangelism, if you follow the advice I am giving here in the pages of each Mini Book, you’ll position yourself perfectly to be used by the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus in ways you’d not imagined possible. How so? Read the 27 Mini Books in the library and find out.

Along with Mini Books 1-7, I suggest you also purchase Mini Book 27, which is the “Evangelism Fitness Test.” This is a diagnostic survey which will tell you the extent to which you have been unwittingly influenced by the devil with respect to evangelism. Sit this test before you read anything. Then do the same test again after you have read all the Mini Books to check to see if all his devices have been thoroughly purged from your mind!

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Church leaders!

How To Lead Your Church In Evangelism!

(Part 4)

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evice 61. Have leaders who are evangelising mix regularly with non-evangelising leaders.

Satan knows that if he can surround an evangelising leader with enough non-evangelising friends and ministry associates, it is likely he or she will be ‘dulled down’ in their enthusiasm for evangelism or they will eventually stop.

This might seem an odd thing to say. Let me explain.

This is a very subtle device.

It is a general rule that people who are not doing evangelism already feel some degree of guilt and condemnation because they are not doing it. This is especially true of committed Christians.

The presence of a person active and enthusiastic about evangelism can heighten these feelings. So when evangelising and nonevangelising leaders get together, the non-evangelising leaders won’t want to talk about personal evangelism since they’re not

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doing it.1 The evangelising leader, sensing this, won’t want to make the others feel awkward. Over time, our leader begins to feel that talking about evangelism is taboo – which subtly puts him or her off doing it.

This explanation might make leaders look petty and immature, which they are not. No Christian leader deliberately intends to put anyone off evangelism or marginalise an evangelist. No leader ever wants to be marginalised, or to make those not doing evangelism feel condemned or guilty. It’s commonly called negative peer group pressure.

The phenomenon of those non-active in evangelism subtly discouraging those active in evangelism all happens in a subliminal way. No one is quite sure how it happens, but it happens. As Pascal, the famous mathematician once said, “… there is a reason of the heart that the head does not know.”

1 In Mini Book Fifteen, I said we could categorise evangelists as “crusade”or “non-crusade”. Below is another way of categorising them.

1. EVANGELISTS WHO “DO” THE EVANGELISM FOR THE CHURCH: These evangelists do evangelism “live” on stage or proclaim it via DVD (like Alpha) or they serve the Church by proclaiming the gospel at children’s programmes, in prisons, at camps, or at youth events etc. They are living in obedience to Mark 16:15. They willingly train anyone who is interested in evangelism how to do what they do i.e. how to copy them. All this is biblical and to be desired. Thank God for crusade evangelists like Billy Graham and Greg Laurie. Evangelists who serve the Church in this way enjoy enormous popularity for several reasons. First, they make few demands on fellow Christians to do evangelism. Secondly, they tend to appease the collective conscience of the Christian community by doing the evangelism for them. Third, God works mightily through these evangelists to save people and few things bring joy to the Christian community like seeing people saved.

2. EVANGELISTS WHO WANT TO MOBILISE WHOLE CHURCHES TO “DO” EVANGELISM: These evangelists seek to follow exactly the job description given to them in Ephesians 4:11-14 which is to equip Christians to do evangelism. Their desire is to motivate and equip the 98% of the Church who show no apparent interest in evangelism. i.e. the culture of most churches today is not evangelistic. In fact, sadly, it’s even hostile to the idea. This is how low “evangelism” has sunk in the Western Church. The solution? Leaders, our great challenge is to change the very culture of our churches to make them evangelistic. Here are some things you can do. Connect with us as a ministry. We have plans and strategies which will change the culture of your church. Evangelists, how can you help? Soak in the truths of this Mini Book Series and then connect with us as a ministry and we’ll show you how to help churches in your area mobilise all their people into evangelism.

Write to me: julian@esisite.com

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One of the enemy’s goals is to create a whole culture of nonevangelising leaders. If enough leaders are not active in personal evangelism, negative peer pressure kicks in, and not doing evangelism becomes the ‘in’ thing.

So, how can we combat this device?

Let’s make sure, if you are a non-leader, that you regularly honour, affirm, and encourage your pastor about the evangelism they are doing. If they are not going to be encouaged about evangelism from other leaders, they’ll need all the encouragement they can get from other people like you!

The greatest thing you can do is pray for your leader that they won’t be affected by the negative influence on non-evangelising leaders.

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evice 62. To target the leader with positive distractions.

If the enemy cannot discourage an evangelising leader through non-evangelising peers, he’ll employ other little schemes which on the surface seem harmless. For example, he’ll throw in a few appealing distractions: • A plan to build a bigger and better church.

• A plan to redecorate the church.

• A business opportunity.

• A plan to focus on some other good aspect of Christian life, like a “season” of prayer and fasting.

• A “season” of seeking the presence of God or signs and wonders.

• A fund-raising drive.

These are all good things. But, sometimes, when a special event is happening in a church, it is tempting to discard evangelism in order to focus on the current project. The enemy knows that if he can knock us off evangelism temporarily, we might get out of the habit and not return to it – another perfect result for him.

This doesn’t mean such projects/seasons/opportunities are 9

initiated by the enemy. But whatever project or season comes along, we should never drop regular personal evangelism, any more than we would drop prayer, worship, tithing or the sermon.

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ow to stay focussed…

The apostles demonstrated this attitude of keeping the focus no matter what: “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the Word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word’” (Acts 6:1-4). By “the ministry of the Word” they mean evangelism.

Commenting on this passage, J. Oswald Sanders wrote: “The apostles faced the problem of perverted priorities very early in the programme. With the multiplication of converts, the legitimate social responsibilities of the infant church began to crowd out the more important spiritual ministries. The apostles had the insight to perceive that incipient satanic deflection and announced their determination to put first things first.”

Sanders points out that Christian workers will always be tempted to allow their horizontal relationship with fellow human beings to take precedence over their vertical relationship with God – indeed to oust it altogether. They will also be tempted to look after the physical needs of the lost, instead of making a priority of securing their soul.2 This has happened on a worldwide scale within the ecumenical movement.

“Not that social action is not authorised in scripture,” Sanders 2 It is interesting to note that in the account of Jesus healing the paralytic in Mark 2:1-12, He forgave his sins first, and then healed his body.

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said, “but many church leaders have accorded it a priority not given to it in scripture. Meanwhile, billions of souls languish ‘without God and without hope in the world.’”3

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evice 63. To hit the leaders with a tidal wave of other work to stop them evangelising.

The enemy delights to see a leader overwhelmed with work. He knows that an overloaded pastor or leader will never get around to doing evangelism. I have found that if I build my day around evangelism, rather than build evangelism into my day, I will always do evangelism, no matter how busy I think I am. In other words, I treat the few minutes it takes to present a non-Christian with the gospel as the main event of each day. A few minutes is not a lot to devote to the priority of the Church.

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hat’s the bottom line?

Many years ago I made a commitment to reach one person a day with the gospel. I leave my office and go and find someone to whom I could present the gospel. I would spend about 10 minutes looking, 15 minutes delivering the gospel, and 10 minutes getting home. Initially I found reaching at least one nonChristian a day with the gospel an enormous challenge.

I always had dozens of other things to do which seemed much more urgent, but I did it any way. 1 Corinthians 9:27 says “I discipline my body and make it my slave.” This is what we must do too. We must be ‘broken in’, like a horse, in order to establish the priority of Jesus in our lives.

What’s interesting is that when I returned from doing evangelism, I’d feel like all the pressures of the things I had to do had vapourised! Somehow, miraculously, doing evangelism causes the burdens of life to temporarily lighten! Try it. You’ll see what I mean.

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J. Oswald Sanders. Satan Is No Myth. Moody Press, 1975, pp.88-89

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Before I established the habit of evangelising regularly, I didn’t want to tear myself away from what I was doing to go and evangelise, especially if I was in a cosy office, with a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and it was cold and wet outside.

But I found that if I made the excuse “I’m too busy” on a particular day, the next day the same excuse came more readily.

It was so easy to form the habit of making this excuse. It seemed to come as easily and as often as blowflies on a decaying carcass.

As I mentioned before when we discussed leadership theory and practice, if you as the leader pull out the “I’m too busy” card, you’ll give permission for all those under you to do the same.

Believe me, they will whip their “I’m too busy” card out as quick as a flash if they get even a whiff of an idea that you as the leader have been using it. But if you pull out the “I’m extremely busy but this is the priority and I’m going to go anyway” card, you’ll inspire everyone around you to follow your example.

It’s really that simple. You will help cut a path to victory for an army of others.

Eventually, after a gruelling fight with my inner man, the flesh, God, and my priorities, I put a match to my “I’m too busy” card, and watched it burn. I want you to do the same. As long as this particular card sits around in the filing cabinet of your mind, available when you need it, the temptation to use it will be too much for most.

For me, now, the “I’m too busy” card just doesn’t exist any more. Thankfully I let God win me over to His way of thinking, and I have broken through. I have not stopped doing all the other things that need doing – the difference now is that I just don’t go to bed at night without having reached a lost soul with the gospel.

What’s the result? My spiritual life is better, healthier, richer and more satisfying for it.

The bottom line is that to do evangelism or not is, ultimately, 12

just a choice, based on perceived priorities. Only you can make that choice. Only you can adjust your priorities.

I urge you to get your priorities in sync with those of Jesus. You will never regret it.

Today, I still reach one person a day with the gospel, but most often now I don’t proclaim it (i.e. deliver the full gospel myself) I often spread it (i.e. point people in the direction of the gospel via the web site www.biblein11.com). We have a great tool for doing this called THE TWO RIGHT ANSWERS. This means that rather than make a special trip to find a lost person with the gospel, I ‘do’ evangelism naturally as I go about my day. It takes only a few minutes to do this to the shop keeper, the man at the petrol station, the checkout operator, etc. It’s a very natural way to ‘do’ evangelism.

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evice 64. To persuade leaders that it is better to hang out with Christians.

Christians love the company of other Christians, which is understandable. The enemy has tried to twist this desire, however, to stop us from evangelising.

He reminds us subtly that it is more comfortable and pleasant to deal with people we know, people who love and respect us, than with strangers. Subconsciously we say to ourselves, “I just want to be with the people I know and like. I adore the safe and comfortable.”

Before we know it, these thoughts have banished the idea of going out with the gospel, and we’ve decided to stay put in our offices at church. Our time is consumed with little else but Christians and Christian activities.

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ow to stay fresh and relevant in your ministry…

I sometimes take leaders with me when I go out evangelising, and many freely confess afterwards that they felt uncomfortable talking to non-Christian strangers, admitting they have lost the 13

common touch.

Jesus was utterly different in this respect.

Many leaders genuinely struggle to hold an evangelistic conversation with a stranger without sprinkling it with religious jargon, sounding like someone from a completely different culture, or as if they were preaching to the converted on Sunday morning.

Most are shocked to find they have developed “church-bound-itis.”

They have lost their saltiness (Mark 9:50).

Regularly doing evangelism helps to keep a leader fresh, salty, and in touch with the people in the world. It will also positively affect almost every other area of their life including their preaching, Bible reading, prayer, worship, and marriage.

How can doing evangelism have this effect? Since evangelism is a strong theme in the Bible, a leader who is doing it will feel the Scriptures come alive with new relevance and interest.

How will doing evangelism help your preaching? Non-Christians you meet will ask questions that few in your church will ask, and finding answers will cause you to run to the Bible and prayer for wisdom and answers. Since prayer and Bible reading are rich sources of fuel for our spiritual lives, when we feed on them everything around us is positively affected.

The people in your church will quickly sense new enthusiasm and freshness in you – and your preaching.

Most importantly, they will follow your lead to go to the lost with the gospel. Non-Christians you have reached personally in evangelism will fuel your prayers more than praying for the lost in a general, abstract way. Now when you pray you will have names, faces, situations and people you have evangelised to pray for. Finally, leaders who learn to evangelise find a new source of joy, which in turn spills over into relationships, including marriage.4 The enemy, of 4 R ecently (28/07/06), a couple emailed me with the following message. “I’ve always wanted to tell you that since we’ve been involved with your ministry it has improved our marriage so much as we are really one in

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course, doesn’t want you to know any of this.

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ow the enemy uses scripture to keep you churchbound…

The enemy will even bring to mind certain comforting scriptures such as John 21:17, in which Jesus says “Feed my sheep.”

“You are the pastor,” he will remind you. “If you don’t feed the sheep no one else will. So you had better stay in your office, prepare that sermon, write that report, read those letters, or make the comforting phone call to that parishioner who is ill. It would be unwise to go and look for the lost. After all, they are not the ones paying you. You must put the flock first.”

Paradoxically, for the reasons I have outlined above, when we make a priority of reaching the lost, we become a better pastor to the flock.

The enemy knows this and so he is delighted when he sees an office bound pastor.

Watching a church-bound leader is a relaxing exercise for him.

When he sees one, the enemy often takes time out, puts his feet up, smiles and exhales with a freshly-brewed cup of coffee in hand.

“The more I see this lovely sight,” he says, “the more I feel secure about my future.”

Pastors, don’t listen to the advice of the enemy intended to keep you church bound. God’s plan is to have you at your very best for the people in your church by getting you out. The plan of the enemy is to keep you in, and to make you spiritually stale and stodgy.

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evice 65. To persuade leaders that the words of the gospel are already “in the church programme” and that there is no need to proclaim a concise say-it-all-at-

this. Our other Christian activities used to prise us apart. This has united us and brought life! Thanks so much for that. Our marriage has had its ups and downs like most! We can’t thank you enough for the changes that you have made to our life through taking up evangelism.” To write to this couple please email George Jeffery gjeffery@eol.co.nz.

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one-time gospel message.

I call this the “thousand piece jigsaw” device of the enemy.

Imagine that the programme in the church, with all that is said and done, is like a thousand-piece jigsaw. The words of the gospel message are 25 pieces of this jigsaw,5 but they are scattered throughout the 1000 pieces.

Yes, it is technically true that the gospel is being proclaimed in the programme. But the non-Christians in the programme are not necessarily grasping it. When we say “the gospel is in the programme,” we are expecting the non-Christians to identify the 25 pieces and make sense of them among the other 975. Instead, we should put together the 25 pieces that represent the words of the gospel and present them in one sitting, so the message can be clearly understood.

Why make it hard for them when it is within our power to make it easy?

As a ministry we have produced a clear, eleven minute, multimedia presentation of the gospel which can be played through a data projector and a laptop. The gospel ought to be proclaimed as a distinct message regularly in church programmes. If we mix it up with 975 pieces of church life, non-Christians just won’t see it. And nor will the Christians.

The enemy enjoys the “thousand- piece jigsaw” approach, because if non-Christians hear the words of the gospel scattered randomly through the 1000 pieces, they might as well not have heard them at all.

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evice 66. To blind us to the difference between simple exposure to the gospel and hearing and understanding it.

One of the enemy’s favourite devices is to dupe the church

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I am not saying the gospel has literally 25 component parts, nor the programme 1000.

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into believing the citizens of their country have already heard and understood the gospel.

“There are churches in every neighbourhood in New Zealand,” some argue, “and we have Christian TV and radio. Surely everyone in the nation has heard the gospel?”

George Barna makes a comment on the situation in the USA which applies to other countries too: “We may confidently say that most, if not all, adults have been exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he writes. “We may also suggest everyone has access to the gospel. But we may not conclude that everyone has actually heard and understood the gospel. Until we present the message in ways that penetrate the consciousness of the people we seek to influence for Christ, we have not truly communicated. We have only made noise.”6 I would contend with Barna at this point. It would be more accurate to say “Most non-Christians have been exposed to Christianity as a religion” rather than “most adults have been exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ.” If by “the gospel of Jesus Christ” he means the gospel message, our research shows only 1% have heard it.7 Remember the vision of the waterfall which the Holy Spirit gave me which I wrote about in Mini Book One? Would other Western countries fare any better than our 1%?

What would Jesus say if He audited our efforts to fulfil His priority command in Mark 16:15?

Should we be content that 99 percent of people in our country go to a Christless eternity, never once having heard and understood the gospel?

A church in every neighbourhood with a billboard outside 6

George Barna. Evangelism That Works. Regal, 1995, p.41

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We know this because we now evangelised tens of thousands of non-Christians. We often ask them after we have presented the gospel “have you ever heard this message or anything like this message before?”

Over 95 percent say “No.”

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gives a Christian presence but those who read what’s on it, no matter how clever the wording, could not be said to have been evangelised.

Having Christian radio and TV in no way guarantees nonChristians are hearing and understanding the gospel. First, most don’t listen or watch.

Secondly, usually only bits of the gospel are scattered through the various programmes, and it’s virtually impossible for nonChristians to put them all together to make sense of the whole gospel message.

If we love them, we’ll want to put the gospel message together for them. This essentially is what it means to “love our neighbour” (Matthew 12:31). Paul’s aim was to make the gospel plain (Ephesians 3:8-9).

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evice 67. To lull leaders into thinking that successful evangelism initiatives mean we are successful with evangelism.

Successful evangelism initiatives can give a false impression.

They can lull us into thinking the world is being successfully evangelised. Alpha is an example. As brilliant as Alpha is, its emphasis is not mobilising and equipping Christians to proclaim the gospel.8 8 I would encourage every church to do Alpha, a programmee God is using wonderfully around the world.

The challenge is finding sufficient non-Christians to attend the course. Non-Christians are invited in two ways: 1). Christians invite their non-Christian friends and associates.

2). Non-Christians that attend the course invite other non-Christians.

Both groups usually have no trouble inviting their friends, family and workmates. But after they have exhausted the pool of people they know, what then? Personal evangelism is a good adjunct to programmees like Alpha because it provides a means for Christians to access the pool of total strangers. In our experience, non-believers in this pool fall into one of three categories. The first group represents those whom we approach and who politely indicate they don’t want to know anything about Christianity. This group would represent about 5 percent of the population. We will not be held accountable for group one because at least we tried to reach them with the gospel. The second group is open to hearing the gospel. At the end of a presentation, they indicate they understand it and appreciate the Christian taking the time to come to them, but they want to think about it some more before making a decision. They would not be interested immediately in attending a course like Alpha. This group represents about 75 percent of the population.

The third group is interested in going further immediately, and would attend an Alpha course or similar

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Do we really comprehend how limited our present evangelism efforts are? I fear not. Let’s take New Zealand as an example.

There are roughly 250,000 born-again believers in a population of about five million (5 percent). Say each believer has five people in their sphere of influence and that each of these 250,000 believers brings his or her five non-Christian friends to an Alpha course.

As such, we are going to reach 1.25 million people with the gospel. Who will reach the other 3.75 million? New converts from Alpha may be enthusiastic evangelisers at first, but the reality is that most people who have been Christians for a while come to fear mentioning their faith in public, so they hesitate to invite others to a brilliant programme like Alpha. Anyone who has organised an Alpha course will tell you it’s a major challenge to get Christians to bring non-Christians along. The solution? Let’s remain passionate about Alpha, but let’s prioritise mobilising all believers for personal evangelism. I believe this would put programmes like Alpha on turbo.

I have found too that most pastors love programs like Alpha because it creates new converts for their church, but these same pastors have little enthusiasm for the idea of evangelising the world generally because the new converts might end up in someone else’s church! i.e. they are more interested in building their kingdom, rather than THE Kingdom.

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evice 68. To persuade leaders that using tools to proclaim the gospel reduces evangelism to a formula, and that “formulas are not of God.”

We have already ascertained that the gospel message has a fixed content. In the ministry I direct, we have taken this content and developed tools which help Christians stay on track as they if invited. This group makes up the remaining 20 percent of the population and its members are hearing the gospel twice – first when a Christian presents it to them on the first encounter, and secondly at Alpha.

With the third group, the church has found a way of identifying fresh non-believers to attend its courses. In reaching all three groups, evangelism is happening and people in all three groups are hearing the gospel.

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deliver it. We need to adjust the delivery slightly with each person, contextualising it, but the content of the gospel message is essentially the same for every person. And yes, a fixed body of content, delivered over and over again, is a formula.

There are some Christians who believe formulas and tools are suspect, however, and won’t use them. Is there a biblical foundation to their reasoning? No, there is not. Think about this.

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illy Graham repeated some of his messages over and over…

Billy Graham and other great evangelists often recycle many of their messages, and each time God blesses these mightily. With Billy Graham, there have been thousands in each audience, each person with a different need, culture, life experience and background, and yet the same message has touched a huge proportion of people. We have to conclude that God does not withdraw His blessing when a message has been used before – even many times before.

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octrinal formulations are ok, says John Stott…

Dr John Stott writes: “I have heard it said that we should ‘seek to impart the minimum of truth’ and point to Christ as the way without doctrinal formulation. With this viewpoint the apostles would certainly have disagreed. Their presentation of the gospel was remarkably rich in intellectual content. They reasoned with people out of the Scriptures and sought to persuade them of the truth of their message.”9

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hy I became frustrated with “witnessing”…

For years I went out to witness on the streets on Friday or Saturday night. I was taught as a new Christian that sharing your faith was about having ‘God’ conversations with people and trying to turn the conversation gently around to spiritual things, e.g.

“Have you had any church background?” or, “What do you think

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Dr John Stott. Our Guilty Silence. IVP, 1997, pp.54-55

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about spiritual things?” I call this “free-wheeling evangelism.”

After a decade of doing this I came to some conclusions. Most of the conversations I had with people about God were just that: conversations about God. General conversation, which I initiated, generally led quickly to the non-Christian asking a question such as, “What about all the suffering in the world?” Before I knew it I was on the back foot, answering hard questions.

Discussions or debates about certain topics became the norm: the problem of pain, the suffering in the world, wherever there is religion there is war, immorality in the priesthood, church leaders who just want your money, where did God come from, evolution, the big bang, and so on.

Often it was hard, if not impossible, to prevent the discussion from drifting towards points of difference, which I tried to avoid at all costs. I found the old adage to be true: “If you win the argument, you lose the person.”

Occasionally I’d also end up counselling people hurt by other Christians.

But whether it was essentially counselling or simply talking about points of difference, after we had said goodbye I increasingly found myself wondering, “did that person really hear and understand the gospel?” The answer, I had to concede, was no.

I had often done good works for non-Christians, too. I had carried their shopping, mowed their lawns, cleaned their gutters, planted their trees and babysat their children. I had good conversations about God with those I was helping, but when I returned home I asked the same question. “Had these people heard the full gospel?” Again, I had to be honest and say “no.”

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hy formulas help when evangelising...

Since receiving training in evangelism and using good tools which presents the essential gospel, my success in evangelism (i.e. actually proclaiming the gospel or spreading it) has increased 21

remarkably. This is because: 1. I have confidence that what I am about to say will be understood by the non-Christian and that it is faithful to the Scriptures. The tool I use has been well thought out and carefully crafted, well in advance of the delivery.

2. The presentation I give via the tool is based on experience in communicating with non-Christians, plus an extensive study of Scripture.

3. The sequence of truths presented through the tool has already been tested with tens of thousands of people and its effectiveness proven.

4. With the tool, there is no room for me to get side-tracked by my listener. I can stay in control of the event. This does not mean I’m not prepared to listen sensitively to the non-Christian I am talking with, or to answer their questions. God forbid! What it means is that I stay on track.

5. Conversely, with good tools, the listeners don’t feel their time is being wasted with pointless debate or disorganised waffle.

6. By using tools, non-Christians appreciate that you have honoured and valued them by taking time beforehand to prepare your message.

7. By using tools, you are conforming to the instruction of Jesus in Matthew 13:23, which exhorts Christians to ensure listeners understand the gospel.

8. Listeners will more likely “connect” with the message because they have understood it. It is my view that the extent to which they understand determines the extent to which Jesus is glorified.

9. With good tools, the presentation asks and then answers many questions non-Christians have. So it is relevant and interesting.

10. With good tools, the message is faithful to the Bible. Nothing important is left out, and nothing unimportant is included.

11. I can be confident that any hard questions asked by my listener can be handled easily. At the back of the follow-up booklet10 which I give away each time the gospel is presented, there is a website address with answers.

10 How to be Sure of Going to Heaven When We Die. You can view the content of this booklet by going to our homepage at www.esisite.com.

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At the end of the presentation, non-Christians occasionally say something like, “Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me. That was so clear” or “Wow! That was so powerful.” They then often reveal deep issues in their lives. Such things rarely happened in many, many years of free-wheeling evangelism.

Good tools, then, which formulate the gospel message, can really help Christians succeed with evangelism.11 Anything that does that has to be “of God.”

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evice 69. To persuade Christian leaders and churches to invest heavily in oversea’s missions and missionaries as a substitute for evangelising their own back yard.

There are some leaders and churches who unwittingly drift into thinking that they are doing evangelism if they support someone else who is doing it. I call this ‘evangelism by proxy’, where we fund someone else to do what we ourselves should be doing.

No thinking Christian would object to the idea of supporting overseas’ missions and missionaries, but neither would a true Christian pass on their personal responsibility for evangelism to someone else.

Let me say it again - if you are a pastor/leader in a Western Church, your responsibility before God is to do evangelism yourself, and to mobilise 100% of the people in your church to do the same. If some end up overseas as missionaries, well and good.

Dr Leighton Ford said, “North American churches are mission-centred rather than witness-centred. Absorbed in supporting missionaries overseas, they become irrelevant in their witness at home. Is it possible that a church’s missionary 11 Yes, there are some who don’t need a tool in order to effectively communicate the gospel. These people are usually Ephesians 4:11-12 evangelists, the minority group in the Church. The challenge for this group is to train the majority how to evangelise. This is where good tools are so vital.

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programme could become an idol to the detriment of evangelistic zeal [at home]?”12 In my own country there are some churches which have unwittingly drifted into adopting this device of the enemy.

Jesus said we should never neglect personally evangelising our own community, no matter how passionate we are to support oversea’s missions and missionaries. Indeed, He said we should make it a priority (Acts 1:8). It’s not “evangelise overseas” or “evangelise the local area.” The Biblical ideal is to be passionate about both, and getting 100% of the people in your church passionate about both.

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evice 70. To spread the idea that “if Jesus didn’t spell out what the gospel was, then surely it can’t be a specific message we all need to proclaim?”

I have sometimes heard a Christian say something like this: “Jesus told His followers to go and preach the gospel, and He said He had come to preach the gospel, yet we don’t ever see Jesus explaining exactly what it is. Why is this? We can piece the gospel together when we look at the whole New Testament, but if it was so important, why didn’t Jesus spell it out clearly and simply for us as He did with the Lord’s prayer?”

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t was so obvious, it did not need to be spelled out…

Certainly, in the first four books of the New Testament, the biographies of Jesus, He does not clearly define the content of the gospel in one brief definition.

The reason? Jesus was the gospel. Therefore, to find out what “the gospel” is we have to study Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

When we do this, we find there are three different aspects to the gospel: works, effects, and words. I explained the difference 12 Dr Leighton Ford. The Christian Persuader. A New Look At Evangelism Today. Harper and Rowe, 1976, p.21

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between these three in Mini Books Eleven and Five. In these Mini Book Series, I noted that “evangelism” has to do with the words of the gospel.

As we read the rest of the New Testament, we see that the gospel message proclaimed by Jesus in the four gospels is fleshed out in the Epistles.

When Jesus commanded the disciples to proclaim the gospel, it must have been so obvious to them what He meant, that the gospel writers did not need to write it out in one tidy, succinct passage.

Let me illustrate. I have been living at the same home address for a number of years.

If someone at my home phones me while I am out, and asks me to come home, they don’t say “Julian, come home to 123 John Street, Smithsville, Auckland, New Zealand. Postcode 45678. Your house is the third on the left, next to the house with a green roof.”

It is so obvious to me and the caller what the instruction means, that the detail is unnecessary.

In summary, just because Jesus didn’t clearly define the gospel in one succinct passage does not mean there is not a definite gospel to proclaim or spread.

In Mini Book Six we saw how scholars concluded the gospel could be defined. So don’t worry that Jesus didn’t spell it out.

There are other foundational doctrines of the Christian Church which Jesus did not spell out clearly too yet we accept them as vital and formulate our teaching around them e.g. the doctrine of the Trinity.

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evice 71. To persuade Christian leaders that accountability in evangelism is not necessary.

To set up accountability structures in your church to monitor who is doing evangelism and who isn’t is one of the most powerful strategies from heaven in the war for souls. If there is one thing God wants you to do, it’s this.

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One of the reasons the enemy has been so successful in hindering evangelism in the West is that we have failed to be accountable for our evangelism and so we have had no way of measuring our evangelistic effectiveness. As a result, the enemy has been free to work his many devices unhindered.

No one has noticed that so few are proclaiming. Can you imagine a business which never cashed up each night to see whether the money in the till matched the sales? Or owners who never did a stocktake, or kept records of debtors and creditors? Employees could steal unhindered and unnoticed, and financial disaster would be inevitable.

In our churches there are some things we do measure. For example, we count: • how many new people are coming to the service • how many new people are coming to the various ministries • how many people are coming back • how many people are finding Christ • how many people are being baptised • how many people are involved in ministry • how many people attend training • how much money is given each week But where is accountability with respect to evangelism, the most critical measure of all? The measure which most interests Jesus?

Many leaders have absolutely no idea whether their people are proclaiming or spreading the gospel, and the people in the pews have no idea whether we leaders are doing it either!

I have met leaders who are living in denial about the percentage of the people in their church who are active in evangelism. “I would say about 10%” one leader told me one day. “How do you know?” “Just my knowledge of my church” he said. The truth? He didn’t have a clue about who was doing evangelism and who wasn’t. How do I know this? One thing about those doing evangelism is that they love to hang out with each other. They gravitate towards each other. There is tremendous camaraderie between those doing evangelism. Everyone 26

doing evangelism knows this.

Now, I knew the evangelist in this pastor’s church. He was a great guy and a very good evangelist, yet no one in that church ever came to this dear man to share their stories and encounters in evangelism. Rather, the people in the church steered clear of him! This was the clearest sign ever that no one in this pastor’s church was doing evangelism. Furthermore, this pastor hadn’t ever defined evangelism or ‘the gospel’ for his people, so how could he possibly accurately gauge who in his church was doing evangelism and who wasn’t? The conclusion of the matter is this - this pastor was living in la la land with respect to his “10% of my people are doing evangelism” statement. He was trying to hide his shame. His 10% figure was a fig leaf.

I have already reported in Mini Book Fourteen what the research says about the need for accountability if we want to succeed with evangelism, but I will state it again as an important reminder: “If there was a single characteristic that separated the pastors of effective churches from other pastors,” wrote Thom Rainer after concluding his research, “it was the issue of accountability in personal evangelism.”13

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ow to be accountable in evangelism…

What can we do to become accountable in evangelism?

One idea is to use “Great Commission Surveys” on Sunday mornings. Let me explain. When people enter the auditorium, they are given a piece of paper along with their bulletin / Sunday morning notices. On this paper are two headings: Proclaiming the Gospel and Spreading the Gospel. Church attenders write a number under each heading, indicating how many non-Christians to whom they have proclaimed the gospel, and how many to whom they have spread the gospel. The survey is anonymous. Once the numbers are written on the paper, they are collected with the offering and counted at the back of the church. At the end of the service, the leader announces the result, how it compared with the previous 13 Thom S. Rainer. Evangelism And Church Growth. Zondervan. 2001, p.162

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week, and how the church is progressing towards its evangelism goal which is mobilising 100% of the people in a local church into evangelism. There are a number of advantages to a survey like this.

It keeps evangelism at the top of a Church’s agenda and it helps members to become externally focused.

It tells the truth, revealing how evangelism is really going in a local church as opposed to how we think it is going. 3 John 1:4 says “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” If you are a leader, and if you want to put a smile on the face of Jesus, come out of la la land and walk in the truth about evangelism in your church.

It is also motivating and encouraging for church members to see steady progress towards the goal. This is just one strategy of 28 in THE ESI ONE YEAR PLAN.14 We have other strategies to help people in your church be accountable. For example, have people in your church pair up and text each other when they have done some evangelism.

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evice 72. To persuade leaders to keep quiet about their evangelism experiences.

The enemy writhes in pain when he sees Church leaders passionately and consistently practising personal evangelism.

But he does not give up easily when they are active.

If a church leader does mobilise, one of Satan’s “second phase” devices is to get them to stop talking about their experiences.

For example, he might sow into the leader’s mind the concern that talking about evangelism will be misinterpreted by his peers and congregation as being “prideful.”

The enemy does everything he can to keep evangelism off the discussion list. By contrast, Jesus was regularly proclaiming the 14 This is a whole year of planning which integrates with a church’s existing year plan. In the ESI ONE YEAR PLAN are specific, do-able, proven strategies which when implemented will change the Culture of a church. To know more about this, please email me: julian@esisite.com

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gospel in front of His disciples and setting an example for them.

For example, “He was teaching the people in the temple courts and preaching the gospel…” (Luke 20:1). After instruction from Jesus, after seeing Him model how to do it, the disciples went out from village to village, “preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere” (Luke 9:6).

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ilence is not golden…

Paul never downplayed his evangelism or hid it from anyone.

In fact he often talked about it. He even warns himself never to stop doing it.

“Yet when I preach the gospel I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach,” he explains. “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”

(1 Corinthians 9:16). Not only did Paul NOT keep quiet about evangelism, but he wrote it down to advertise the fact!

Neither should we hush up our evangelism experiences. On the contrary, we should follow the example of Paul and Jesus and encourage one another, as the writer to the Hebrews instructed: “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24).

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e intentional, model it…

Ideally, we want our evangelism efforts to be obvious to everyone in our church. Dr Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, addressing the Southern Baptist Convention in 2005, stated directly: “Pastors who are not committed to evangelism should not be in ministry.”15 Dr Bill Mackey, Executive Director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, writes: “It is the pastor’s role to create the atmosphere and strategic plans for evangelism in a local church. Through preaching, personal example and witness training, the pastor

15 http://www.baptistbanner.org/Subarchive_1/405%20To%20guard%20the%20future.htm

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creates a strong example by his leadership.”16

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ow to beat the enemy and his devices…

The wonderful thing is that there are pastors out there who have already adopted many of the strategies from heaven which I have unveiled so far in this Mini Book Series. These pastors and leaders have been successful in beating the enemy and his many devices.

Calvin Ratz, for example, pastors the Abbotsford Pentecostal Assembly in British Columbia, Canada. He and his team have been successful in mobilising their church for evangelism. “People want to be led, to be inspired, to be challenged,” he said. “Church leaders who lead their churches into evangelism do it primarily by example, by modelling, by making evangelism a priority.”17 Ratz points out five things a pastor can do to intentionally model evangelism:18 It must be a personal priority. “If I don’t live it, I won’t be able to preach about it with conviction. I deliberately place myself in situations in which I can talk to people about Christ.”

It must be a passionate priority. “Passion has to exist – somewhere – for evangelism to work. I shouldn’t pastor a church if I can’t demonstrate passionate care for the lost, because if evangelism doesn’t bubble to the surface in my life, how will others catch the vision?”

Get out of the office. “I prefer to manage church affairs, study, and prepare sermons – activities that keep me in an office with the door closed. But I am not modelling evangelism if I spend an inordinate amount of time away from people.”

The method must have integrity. “Our evangelistic methods 16 http://www.kybaptist.org/kbc/welcome.nsf/pages/mackey20030226 17 Calvin Ratz et al. Mastering Outreach And Evangelism. Multnomah Books, 1990, p.26 18 All his suggestions below are cited in: Calvin Ratz et al. Mastering Outreach And Evangelism. Multnomah Books, 1990, p.26

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should lead people to repentance and faith and a decision to follow Jesus, not just to attend church programmes. The church must be built on a biblical principle, and so must the evangelism I model.”

Pray much. “I pray that evangelism will happen through the people in my church.”

Mark Conner, Pastor of the healthy Waverley Christian Fellowship in Melbourne, Australia, has also been effective in mobilising a church to evangelise. He lists his own keys for success: Aim to equip the whole church. “The only way to turn the tide is for churches to make a priority shift from inward focus to an outward focus and for everyone to become actively involved. The church’s mission will only be accomplished as the entire church is motivated, equipped and deployed in the work of evangelism.”19 Share your struggles honestly. “I felt I needed to be honest with people about the difficulty I found in sharing my own faith… you could actually feel the sense of identification and connection as I was willing to be open and vulnerable as a church leader.”

Lead from the front in your church. “As a leader, I had to embrace heaven’s priority in my own life first. Only after modelling this personally could I then help our congregation change its values to become an evangelistic community.”

Ensure accountability with respect to evangelism. “Where there is accountability and follow-up, the chance of training being translated into behavioural change is enhanced considerably.”

Make evangelism the priority in your church and determine to keep it that way. “Our top priorities can easily be replaced by other seemingly urgent or pressing matters. As we become busy with so many things in church life, we can begin to drift from our mission. That’s why the work of an evangelist also involves 19 All these points are detailed in Dr Bronwyn Hughes and Dr John Bellamy (editors). A Passion For Evangelism. Turning Vision Into Action. Open Book Publishers, 2004, pp.155-161

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keeping the evangelistic passion of a church community alive and white hot.”

Create evangelistic opportunities. “Each local church should create as many entry points and bridges as possible so that people can be encouraged to experience the life of Christ within the church community.”

Keep passion alive. “Have new believers share their testimony.

There is nothing more impacting for congregations than hearing stories of changed lives.”

Help your church discover a warm heart for lost people.

“This is perhaps the hardest part for any leader wanting to encourage evangelism. Developing evangelism programmes is easy by comparison. …Continually remind [church members] about the source of their own value. Remind them that their significance and identity come from “who they are” rather than “what they do” …

As a leader in your church, you must learn to live this value in your relationship with others. I have personally had to slow down and take an interest in people.”

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ow to find out if your church has a culture of evangelism…

These are wonderful insights. One of the most valuable things you can do, as a pastor or leader, is to find out – really and truly – whether or not your church has a culture of evangelism. Ask yourself the following questions: 1. What percentage of the annual budget is set aside for the mobilisation of your people for personal evangelism?

2. I have a friend who had been a Christian for only three years.

He attended his local church’s annual general meeting. It was announced that the church had $700,000 in the bank. Item by item, they worked through the budget and found $5000 had been allocated for evangelism the previous year. “How much should we spend this year?” the pastor asked members, explaining that the $5000 allocated last year had not been touched. Asked why this 32

was so, the pastor said, “Well, no one asked for it.” This was not the church’s fault. He and the leadership had not made evangelism a priority in their church and so none of the people had either.

3. What strategies and plans does the church have in place for mobilising 100% of your people to proclaim and spread the gospel?

4. How often does the leadership team in your church engage in personal evangelism?

5. How often are stories about personal evangelism encounters talked about spontaneously among the staff or from the pulpit?

6. Is there any accountability within the leadership of your church for personal evangelism? What about the rest of the people?

7. How often do the leaders in your church teach and preach evangelistically?

8. How often is a clear gospel presentation given?

9. If a stranger visited your church and asked 10 random people what was central in your church, would they all answer “evangelism”?

10. Does your church have a specific strategy to reach everyone in the community surrounding your church with the gospel? i.e. its Jerusalem (Acts 1:8) If you could not say “yes” to most of these questions, it is highly likely your church does not have a Culture of evangelism. This is the bad news.

The good news is God has given us the plans and strategies to help you create one. Just email me - julian@esisite.com and let’s get started.

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evice 73. To persuade leaders to go away on a retreat or enter a season of prayer and fasting to seek God about direction for their church or to formulate their vision statement.

We established in Mini Book Seven that the priority of the Church is to evangelise the world. This is the mission of the Church. In Mini Book Eight we concluded that it was the responsibility of all believers to help 33

complete this mission.

In Acts 1:8 Jesus rolled out a specific strategy for the mission - He said evangelise Jerusalem first, then Judea, then Samaria, and then the uttermost parts of the earth.

So why are we going away on retreats etc to seek Him about ‘direction’ for our churches? In so doing, aren’t we questioning/doubting the clear directives He gave in His five Great Commission announcements i.e.

Mark 16:15, Acts 1:8, John 20:21-23, Luke 24:44-49, Matthew 28:18-20?

It would be quite understandable for us to retreat, pray and fast to have the Holy Spirit give us strategies and inititiatives about how to best carry out His mission, but this is very different from asking Him what our mission is. He has already told us clearly.

Some will argue “Wait a minute. There is a lot more to the mission of the Church than evangelising the world, surely? This is what we are seeking God about.” How should we anwer? All the other critically important things we do in our church - prayer, fasting, social action, worship, bible study, great sermons etc - these behaviours relate to/ strengthen/ give credibility to the mission, but they are not THE mission. Just how they relate to the mission is detailed in Mini Book Eleven. You’ll remember the “SIX STEPS TO DRAWING A NON-CHRISTIAN TO CHRIST” model? If you don’t, please revisit Mini Book Thirteen Others argue that “making disciples” is the mission of the Church.

How should we answer? The imperative to make disciples is crucial.

But why are we making disciples? The answer? So that we can have more people engaging in THE mission, so as to complete it.

Making disciples and evangelising the world must be kept in perfect balance.

Take note of what world-renowned missiologist Dr George Peters has to say here.

“The emphasis therefore [in the New Testament] is to make disciples and evangelise the nations. These two imperatives must be held in constant tension and in proper balance until the total world has had the opportunity to hear the good news of the salvation of God in Christ Jesus.”20 The key question to ask at leader’s retreats is this: “how can we make 20 George W. Peters. A Biblical Theology of Missions. Moody Press, 1984, p. 198

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more disciples to complete the mission?”

This leads to another crucial question - just what is “a disciple?” A disciple is an apprentice or a learner, according to the Greek lexicon.

Christians are Jesus’ apprentices.

So what are we supposed to be learning? Please think about what I am about to say now, as it’s important. If Jesus’ priority was the evangelisation of the world, then Jesus would have made a priority of teaching His disciples how to do it, surely? His discipleship programme would have been in perfect sync with His mission.

Yet, in most discipleship programmes which exist today, very little ink is dedicated to evangelism. In fact, tragically, it’s non-existent. The epicentre of any truly biblical discipleship plan must be the making of disciples who will make a priority of evangelising the world (our mission).

These are the kinds of issues leaders need to be seeking God about when they retreat and pray and fast for direction for their churches and the formulation of their vision statements.

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evice 74. To make a leader feel threatened and insecure at the thought of making evangelism centre stage in their church.

I touched on this in Mini Book Fifteen and I am going to elaborate on it here.

If a leader brings evangelism centre stage in their church, yet he doesn’t do it, this sends a signal to the staff and members of the church that it’s quite acceptable to extol the value of a crucial Christian behaviour, yet not do it. This then spawns the idea in the minds of those watching the life of the leader that it’s OK to be hypocritical.

They will say to themselves “Huh....he says evangelism is the mission of the Church and its priority, yet he doesn’t do evangelism himself.

What’s that all about?”

Everyone knows the warning of James against disconnecting theory from practice: “Be doers of the Word and not merely hearers only” (James 1:12).

Leaders reason, “If I put evangelism centre stage in our church and then I don’t end up doing it personally, I will be hyprocritical.

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I don’t want to be a hypocrite, so I had better not put evangelism on centre stage.” Thus, evangelism falters at a local church leadership level, and a whole church is immobilised for Jesus’ mission. Tragic.

For many leaders, admitting to others that they feel deeply insecure, threatened, and even terrified of evangelism is humiliating. The enemy plays on this. He causes these leaders to keep their true feelings about evangelism to themselves. Next he manipulates them to “cover up” their true feelings with excuses such as: • The time is not right for us to do evangelism.

• We are seeking God about the direction of our church.

• We are reaching the lost in other ways.

• We are busy with a building project.

• We don’t feel God is leading us in this dirction.

• We already have our year planned out, thanks.

• We are busy with other programs. Please call another time.

• And so on.

Leaders, please don’t fall into this device. It’s a trap. Please, face your fears and push through. When you do, something incredible happens. Your feelings of insecurity and vulnerability with respect to evangelism will become your biggest asset.

How so? When you feel insecure, vulnerable and terrified of evangelising and voice these feelings publically from the front of your church, yet commit to learning how to evangelise anyway, you will liberate everyone in your church to have a go.

The people in your church don’t want a hero who can’t relate to their humanity and frailty.

They want someone who can relate to them and their fears and insecurities with respect to evangelism. The people in your church will reason “Wow! Our leader feels vulnerable and insecure and fragile, but he is having a go anyway. By voicing his weakness, he 36

has liberated us to have a go. He has given us a freedom to fail and fall over and to get up again and keep going. Leader, we think you are wonderful!”

Leaders, put what I have said here to the test and you’ll see an amazing thing happen in your church.

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evice 75. To cause leaders to see “the gospel” and “the gospel of the Kingdom” as two different gospel messages.

This is a particularly nasty device. A pastor who had fallen for this one wrote the following to one of his church members: “I used to believe that the sole purpose of the Church was to seek and save the lost, disciple people into seeking and saving the lost and then we die and go to heaven and spend our eternity in heaven for ever.

I used to believe that this was the ultimate purpose for the Church.

I no longer believe this is the ultimate purpose for the Church. [conversion] ... this is the start of the journey and not the end.

Jesus preached the gospel and the gospel of the Kingdom. They are 2 messages. Now I believe that the ultimate purpose for the Church is to become the bride of Christ, spotless and without blemish, and to govern in the 1000 year reign with Christ on this earth. This is the journey. We proclaim the message and become the message. Make sense?”

What are we to make of this? This pastor is very confused. First, the mission of the Church is not to seek and save the lost. This has never been it’s mission. Rather, the mission of the Church is to evangelise the world. There is a huge difference between the two.

Second, this pastor is really asking a series of questions: what is the difference between “the gospel” as Jesus used this phrase in Mark 16:15 (“Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel.”) and “the gospel of the Kingdom” as Jesus used it in say Mark 1:14 ? (“Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God”). Are they different? How do they relate to each other? How does “the Kingdom of God” relate to these two?

To answer these questions, let’s first examine the phrase “the Kingdom of God” as it’s used in Scripture. “The Kingdom of God” is anywhere where God’s will rules and reigns. Dr William 37

Barclay describes it like this:“The Kingdom of God is a society [or realm] upon earth where God’s will is as perfectly done as it is in heaven.”21 Notice he describes “the Kingdom” as a realm or a society and in terms of God’s will being done i.e. an action. I am going to talk about each of these in turn.

Here are some examples of where the Kingdom has come and God’s will is being done in contemporary day to day life: the businessman pays all his taxes; the child honours her / his parents; the employee is scrupulously honest in the shop; the person who is hurt forgives the one who did the hurting, the prisoner is visited in prison, the person with two coats gives one to another person who has none, the husband is faithful to his wife, and so on. In each of these situations, God’s will is being done, and the Kingdom has come.

Furthermore, if it’s true that“wherever God’s will is done, there the Kingdom has come” then when someone engages in evangelism they are not just doing the will of God, but the priority of his will. That is to say, to engage in evangelism is to engage in an action which brings the Kingdom of God to earth. To try and divorce evangelism (i.e the proclamation of the gospel and the Gospel of the Kingdom) from the Kingdom is neither Biblical or logical. In fact, it’s sheer folly. It’s as silly as saying “the front door of my house is neither part of my house nor leads to the inside of my house.”

Now here is another thought. If we were to analyse our thoughts, attitudes, and actions over a period of a week, it would be fair to say that all of us “do” the will of God spasmodically i.e. sometimes we fail, other times we execute His will perfectly. Whenever we do His will, at that moment in time, in His name, for His glory, there His Kingdom has come. When Jesus prays in the Lord’s prayer “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven...” it’s a petition to His Father for the coming of a day in the future when all people on earth will be members of the Kingdom (i.e inside the house) doing His will 24/7 for His glory. When this happens, the Kingdom will have come in all 21 William Barclay. The Daily Bible Study. The Gospel Of Luke. The Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh. 1975.

p.54

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its fullness, as it has already come in heaven (i.e. in heaven, His will is being done perfectly 24/7 by all who live there).

But the Kingdom is not just where God’s will is being done. As Barclay said, it is also a realm. Everyone in this world is either in the Kingdom, and a member of it, or outside of it, and a non-member.

There is no third option. For example, in Mark 10:15, Jesus says “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter into it.” The Kingdom then is a realm with a point of entry. I like to think of the the Kingdom as being like a house with only one entrance door which is locked. Inside the house are infinite spiritual treasures (e.g. relationship with Jesus, peace, joy, purpose, miracles, blessing etc). When someone hears the gospel message (i.e. is evangelised) they are given the key to enter the house. If they decide to enter (i.e. repent, confess their sins, and turn to Jesus) they go through the one and only door.

Someone outside the Kingdom can experience some of the treasures which are inside. For example, when Jesus healed the unsaved sick, the recipients of His miracles experienced the Kingdom, even though they lived outside the realm of the Kingdom. That is to say, they were not yet the sons and daughters of the King who rules the Kingdom yet they received some of the benefits of the Kingdom.

Now, back to the pastor. The pastor is also very confused about the relationship between “the gospel” and “the gospel of the Kingdom” and “the Kingdom” He does not understand that the former two are the same thing. Both are a message which explain to someone outside the Kingdom of God how to enter it. The Kingdom of God is what one finds when one passes through the door of the house.

Now here is the crux of the matter. How can someone enter the Kingdom (i.e. go through the door into the house), unless they know how how to? How will they know unless someone tells them where the key is? (Romans 10:13-15). This is why evangelism is so crucial.

Without it, those outside the Kingdom will not know how to enter it (i.e. the house).

What are we to make of those who suggest that the mission of the Church is to bring the Kingdom of God to earth? What they are really saying is that they want to have all the people on earth doing the 39

will of God perfectly all the time i.e. 24/7. Not even the most devout Christians are able to obey the will of God perfectly 24/7, so how can we expect such a thing to happen? What I am saying is that only God can bring the Kingdom of God in all it’s fullness to this earth. Sure, the more people who are saved, and filled with the Holy Spirit, and doing the will of God, the more the Kingdom will be established.

But it will never be completely and perfectly established on earth until Jesus renews the heavens and the earth. It’s therefore nonsense to think we can bring the Kingdom of God in all its fullness to earth. As such, it’s yet another device to distract us from the task of evangelising the earth. To put our efforts into bringing ‘the Kingdom’ in its fullness to earth is simply chasing a rainbow. As I have said, the extent to which the Church obeys the expressed will of Jesus will determine the extent to which the Kingdom will be manifest on the earth. Woudn’t focussing on doing the priority of His will be a good starting place?

It is worth noting here also that the phrase the “The gospel” is referred to in many different ways in Scripture. Here are just some: • The gospel of God (Romans 1:16).

• My gospel (Romans 2:16) • The gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24) • The gospel of your salvation (Ephesians 1:13) • The gospel of peace (Romans 10:15) • The gospel of the Kingdom (Mark 1:14) • The gospel (Mark 16:15) Again, these are not references to different gospel messages, but to different aspects of the same gospel. There is only one gospel.

And what are we to make of the pastor’s idea we are to become the bride of Christ? Ephesians 5:25-27 is clear that we are already the bride, positionally spotless and without blemish because of the finished work of Jesus on the Cross. It is sheer nonsense for the pastor to suggest that the Church, the bride of Christ, can become actually (i.e. horizontally) spotless and without blemish.

The Church will always be full of redeemed sinners who still sin.

This side of death, no Christian will ever be living a sinless life. We can therefore quickly dismiss as heresy the idea that the ultimate purpose of the Church in the world is to actually (horizontally) become spotless 40

and without blemish.

One day another pastor came to me and said “In our evangelism, we should not be selling Jesus as a ticket to heaven. Rather, our evangelism should be all about letting people know that they can have a relationship with Jesus here and now!”

What are we to make of this? The answer is that it’s not one or the other. It’s both. And what’s really interesting is that getting to heaven is of utmost importance to most non-Christians. It’s also hugely important to Jesus.

One of the most incisive insights into the mind of Jesus regarding the importance of securing eternal life for the lost is seen in Luke 10. In this Chapter Jesus sends out the 70 to preach the gospel, perform miracles, call people to repentance, and harvest souls into the Kingdom. The disciples go and when they return they are all excited and full of joy saying “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name” (Luke 10:17). The disciples loved the fireworks! But what most excited the disciples was NOT what MOST excited Jesus, for in verse 20 He clarifies for them what REALLY matters. Please read carefully His words “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” It’s as if Jesus is saying “Hey guys, I know you love the thrill and excitement of casting out demons, healing the sick and raising the dead and this is all good. But let me remind you - what’s of supreme importance to me is that you secure eternal life for the lost. In the midst of doing good and demonstrating my supernatural power, don’t ever forget this.”

After reaching tens of thousands of people with the gospel, I can only think of one or two people who didn’t want to go to heaven after death.

So what is my advice here? In our evangelism, we should boldly and unashamedly explain to non-Christians how they can get to heaven. We should present getting to heaven as of great importance.

Non Christians want to know how to get there. It’s in their heart. “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

So what on earth are we doing poo pooing the idea of selling Jesus as a ticket to heaven? Try the following as an exercise. Interview 41

100 random non-Christians and ask them if they are more interested in “starting a relationship with God” or more interested in “getting to heaven.” I can guarantee the latter will triumph hands down. So build your presentations of the gospel around “getting to heaven”.

It’s “a carrot” which will lead non-Christians in the direction of the establishment of a right relationship with Jesus.

Jesus did this over and over in the gospels. In most cases, He calls heaven “eternal life.”

For example, what’s perhaps the most famous Bible verse in Christendom? It’s John 3:16, right? Please read it again carefully: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The whole purpose of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection was that people should not perish but have eternal life - if we are to go by what Jesus said in John 3:16.

The Westminster Confession of Faith affirms the monumental truth that securing eternal life for lost souls is critically important to Jesus: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

Clearly, if the 121 Puritan clergymen who met at Westminister in 1647 considered “eternal life” to be of supreme importance, why are we deemphasising this in our gospel messages?

General William Booth, the founder of the great Salvation Army lived in the reality this truth: “Take a man out of the slums, heal his body, give him decent clothes, provide him a home in the country, then let him die and go to hell?

Really, it’s not worthwhile.”22 If securing eternal life for lost souls was of supreme importance for Jesus, who are we to argue?

It is worth noting here that theologically “eternal life” starts at the point of conversion, not after death. Many criticise evangelists for their apparent sole emphasis on “getting people to heaven” as though this is all that matters. But this is not all that matters to evangelists, for they know that eternal life starts at the point of conversion. They know 22 Cited in: Norm Lewis. Priority One. OM Literature. 1988. p99

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that at the point of conversion, a person enters the Kindom of God. And once in the Kingdom, they start living eternal life. That is to say, believers don’t have to wait until death to experience heaven. Heaven can be experienced here on earth during the earthly life of a believer, not in it’s fullness, but as scripture puts it, “...dimly, through frosted glass.” (1 Corinthians 13:12). So, if you are a person who criticises evangelists for “selling tickets to heaven”, please, back off. We know the theology of eternal life and we know that ‘getting to heaven’ is a carrot Jesus used, so we’ll use it too.

And what are we to make of the pastor’s statement: “[conversion] ... this is the start of the journey and not the end.” He is absolutely right. Between the point of conversion and death, God works in us to conform us more and more to His likeness and the more we become like Him, the more we will do His will.

This process is called sanctification and is life long. So when the pastor says “we become the message” he is quite rightly making a reference to the result of our sanctification. But in his statement “we become the message” there is also a hidden device. Can you spot it?

In case you can’t, let me explain. Jesus displayed exemplary works, behaviours and attitudes during his life on earth. Yet he said, these alone are not enough. He said we must also proclaim the words of the gospel. Non-Christians are not going to hear the essential content of our gospel message (i.e. why they must be saved, how Jesus can save them, what they must do to be saved, and the cost of becoming a disciple) which I discussed in Mini Book Five just through our works, behaviours, and attitudes. As I have already said, to say ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel and if necessary use words’ is as silly as saying ‘Go into the world and feed the hungry, and if necessary use food.’

Becoming the message is vital because it’s through our works, attitudes, and behaviour that the Holy Spirit “ploughs” the soil in the hearts of non-Christians, making them ready to receive the seed of the gospel i.e. the Words of the gospel (propositional truth).

How should we conclude? This pastor has become fuzzy and muddled in his thinking which is what the enemy loves. This pastor has made the cardinal mistake of allowing personal opinion to define, in his words, “the ultimate purpose of the Church.”

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It’s quite OK to have personal opinions of course, but before we broadcast them, we ought to test them against the views of a range of reputable scholars and leaders in the global Church i.e. those outside of the leaders in our immediate circle. Without such testing, cults start and whole churches can easily be led astray.

What can we say to clear the fog? How can we bring clarity? How should we summarise our answer to this pastor? What ought to be the thrust of all Churches?

• Their chief motive ought to be to glorify God. • Their chief outcome ought to be to win souls.

• Their mission (i.e. their priority) ought to be to mobilise 100% of their people to evangelise the world.

• Their purpose is to make disciples so that there would be more people to complete the mission and bring glory to God. • Their goal ought to be to ensure that all six steps in the “six steps to drawing a non-church person to Christ”23 model are flourishing. When this becomes a reality, the Word will be being proclaimed and demonstrated and the Kingdom made increasingly manifest.

• Their teaching should re-iterate that there is only one gospel message and that the Church is already the spotless Bride of Christ, and Jesus the Bridegroom. Jesus wants to receive His Bride, but won’t until, among other things, the world has been evangelised (e.g. Matthew 24:14). Our disobedience with the Great Commission therefore just delays the final joyous union of The Bride and The Groom. This is yet another reason why scholars rank the evangelisation of the world as the priority of the global Church.

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ummary

• If you are a leader, mix with other leaders who are doing personal evangelism. If you can’t find one, be one.

• Don’t allow evangelism to be shoulder-charged out of it’s 23 To know what these six steps are and how they work, please refer to Mini Book Eleven.

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• •

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position as the priority in your church. The threat will be constant. Resist it.

Jesus spent a lot of His time with the un-churched, giving them the gospel. Imitate Him. Evangelising strangers will keep you fresh and salty. If you don’t, you’ll develop ‘church-bound-itis’ which will make you and your ministry stale and stodgy.

Church programmes are like a 1000 piece jig-saw puzzle, and the essential content of the gospel like 25 pieces scattered throughout the puzzle. Don’t make it hard for the people in your church - pull out the 25 and regularly show your people a complete ‘single sitting’ presentation of the gospel. Don’t leave it to them to have to work it out.

It’s one thing to have non-Christians hear the gospel. It’s quite another to know they have understood it. If they don’t understand it, they might as well not have heard it (Matthew 13:23).

The goal of any church ought to be to mobilise 100% of its people to engage in personal evangelism. Any evangelism program or initiative which does not seek to achieve this goal falls short of God’s ideal.

There is nothing wrong with using tools to proclaim or spread the gospel. In fact, good tools are a gift from God. Sending missionaries overseas and supporting overseas missionaries is good and right. But, this must never become a substitute for not personally engaging in evangelism in our own back yard.

Jesus didn’t spell out the content of the gospel message like He spelled out the Lord’s prayer. To find out what ‘the gospel’ is, we must study His life, as found in the four gospels, and fleshed out in the Epistles. When we do this we discover ‘the gospel’ is a carefully defined message with 45

•

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• • •

• •

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specific content.

Research shows that local churches which hold their people accountable for their evangelism activity will succeed with mobilising all their people for evangelism.

For a leader to keep quiet about their personal evangelism is an oxymoron. Jesus and Paul were very public about their experiences and we ought to be too.

People around a leader who does evangelism will be inspired to do likewise.

If leaders are quiet about their evangelism experiences, people will presume they are not having any.

The mission of the Church is to evangelise the world. Our purpose is to make disciples. Let’s not get our purpose and our mission confused. These two should be kept in perfect balance.

The reason Jesus commanded we make disciples is so that we would have more people to help complete the mission.

If you are a leader who feels insecure and vulnerable when it comes to evangelism, God will use these feelings for His glory and to your advantage if you let Him. Don’t stop evangelism happening in your church because you feel this way. Face the fear and do evangelism anyway.

Proclamation of the gospel is to be kept in perfect balance with abounding in good works. This is the ideal.

There is only one gospel message.

CTION POINT: You might ask “What can I do to help get the truth in this Mini Book to others?” Help other Christians become aware of the issues raised in this Mini Book, particularly leaders. Email it to everyone on your address book and encourage them to do the same. Send them a PDF file. You can obtain this by writing to julian@esisite. com. Post it on social media.

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CTION POINT: Go to the leaders of your church. Ask them to make changes to their mission statement so that evangelism becomes central. Ask them to bring evangelism back to centre stage in the life of your church. Pray for them.

Encourage them. Work with them. Dialogue.

In the next Mini Book , there are more devices which the enemy uses to stop leaders from actually doing evangelism.

If you think the devices I have discussed so far are dirty, wait until you see the new ones I unveil in this next Mini Book.

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Real Life Story

Going To Church For Sixteen Years... But Not Saved Tauranga, New Zealand.

Unsaved church-goers are more common than you might think.

In fact researcher George Barna says up to 50 percent of people in evangelical churches may not be saved. Ian Ross had been a churchgoer for sixteen years before he realised he was not a genuine Christian. His decision to go forward at an altar call took great courage – and a move of the Holy Spirit. Here he tells his own story. “My name is Ian, and I am 74 years young.

For 16 years I went to a church in Hamilton, New Zealand.

Recently, however, my wife and I moved to another city, Tauranga, and began to attend a small Baptist church there.

One Sunday, Julian Batchelor took the morning service and gave a presentation of the gospel, using a data-projector and a big screen.

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At one point, on the subject of turning from our sins, a figure on the screen was walking one way and then turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction to follow Jesus. All of a sudden I realised that even though I had been a “good bloke,” and had even been baptised in water, I had never truly turned from my sin.

At the end Julian asked people to raise their hands if they wanted to commit themselves to turning and surrendering to Christ.

I put my hand half-way up, and then, feeling scared, pulled it down again. But I knew God was speaking to me, so my hand shot up again, this time fully, and I got up out of my seat and went forward at the altar call.

I have not been the same since. I’m a different man.”

This story illustrates how important it is to be proclaiming the gospel from the pulpit on a regular basis.

We should never presume all those sitting in the pews from Sunday to Sunday are genuine Christians.

Present the gospel, have altar calls, and give people the chance to turn and surrender.

Ian 49

The Full List Of Books In ‘The Truth About Evangelism’ Mini Series Book One

Evangelism Lost! Exposing The True State Of Evangelism In Today’s Church

Book Two Seven Deadly Motives Exposing How The Enemy Is Shutting Down Evangelism.

Book Three

The Sorrowful Collapse Of The Great Commission- A Dangerous Redefining Of Evangelism

Book Four Evangelism Redefined? Six Subtle Yet Devastating Redefinitions Of Evangelism

Book Five Confusion Busters 7 Things You Should Know About The Gospel Message

Book Six

Six Ways To Move From Gospel Confusion To Gospel Clarity

Book Seven

The Evangelisation Of The World Is The Ulimate Purpose Of The Church. 7 Irrefutable Reasons It Is Time To Prioritise

Book Eight

A Gift, A Call, Or A Commission. Are All Christians Commanded To Evangelise

Book Nine

12 Keys To Fearless Evangelism In The 21St Century

Book Ten Take Them Down. 12 Road Blocks And How To Get Through Them

Book Eleven

The Key To Victory. Start Viewing Evangelism As An Event, Not A Process

Book Twelve

Confidence In The Gospel, Come Back! Four Essential Steps To Reclaiming Lost Ground!

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Book Thirteen Prepare To Be Amazed! What Jesus Really Taught About Evangelism!

Book Fourteen

What Leaders Must Do To Cause A Resurgence In World Evangelism

Book Fifteen

A Plan Of Action To Cause A Resurgence In World Evangelism

Book Sixteen

Church Leaders! This Is Your Time To Step Up! (Part 1)

Book Seventeen

Church Leaders! This Is Your Time To Step Up! (Part 2)

Book Eighteen

Church Leaders! This Is Your Time To Step Up! (Part 3)

Book Nineteen

Church Leaders! This Is Your Time To Step Up! (Part 4)

Book Twenty Church Leaders! This Is Your Time To Step Up! (Part 5)

Book Twenty One

Climb On Board! 4 Reasons Why Doing Evangelism Will Help Create A Better World!

Book Twenty Two

Devastation! How Pseudo-Conversions Hinder Evangelism And What You Can Do To Stop The Rot!

Book Twenty Three

“Friendship evangelism.” What’s good about it, and what’s heretical?

Book Twenty Four

Unholy Grief! Five Ways Evangelists With The Gift Can Grieve The Holy Spirit

Book Twenty Five

The Highest Motive For Doing Evangelism? You’ll Be Amazed What The Bible Teaches!

Conclusion

Book Twenty Six Appendix One : If We Fail To Evangelise, We Fail. Period. By Dr K.P. Yohannan

Appendix Two : The Pastor Evangelist. By Dr. Roger S. Greenway

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Appendix Three : True Gospel Must Be Heard, By Kevyn Harris

Appendix Four : This We Believe Signatories

Appendix Five : Device 84. “I don’t like being told to do evangelism!”

Book Twenty Seven The Evangelism Fitness Test

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