Friday, October 19, 2012

Evangelism as a Process

Some years ago, as we prepared to take part in a long-term mission assignment, my wife and I were required by the agency that was sending us to take part in a three-day evangelism training process. That evangelism process required us to memorize a fairly lengthy script that included spiritual questions people might ask, along with Bible verses to answer those questions. The process was very structured and worked well in the role plays we were required to do as a part of the training, but when we tried to use the method outside the training environment, it was not nearly as eective. In real life, the people we witnessed to did not ask many of the questions from the script. They also did not respond in the right way to the Bible verses we had memorized. I do not recall anyone ever making a solid commitment to Christ when my wife and I attempted to use that particular evangelism technique.
Since then I have learned a variety of other evangelism techniques. Though none were ever quite as much of a failure as that first method, none were ever as eective in real life as they seemed to be during the training process. I have come to believe that the problem with these various evangelism methods is that they all view evangelism as an event in which end in people saying what is often referred to as the sinner’s prayer. But if the people praying such prayers have no idea what kind of commitment they are actually making and do not have any desire to repent of their sins or live lives of service and devotion to God, then what value do such prayers have?

In our postmodern culture, people are on a spiritual journey; they are searching for truth. As a result, they view the search for truth as a process instead of an event. Because of that, they rarely respond positively to being asked to say a sinner’s prayer after hearing a religious sales pitch from a well-intentioned Christian. While postmodern people may eventually say such a prayer, it will most likely occur after lengthy and thoughtful contemplation. If churches want to be eective in sharing the gospel with the next generation, they will view evangelism as a process instead of an event.

Adapted from Dr. Dorsett’s book, Mission Possible: Reaching the Next Generation through the Small Church, published by CrossBooks, a division of Lifeway Christian Resources.

3 comments:

  1. I believe that is the best way to evangelize. The church has been slow to adapt its methods to the changes in culture, fearing that a change in methodolgy means a change in the message. I believe a result is a number of folks who have made one-time "decisions" who have no clue what it means to follow Jesus

    ReplyDelete
  2. Evangelism as discipleship.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Evangelism should be a natural result of living the Christian live. If we love the way Jesus calls us to love and allow the fruit of the Spirit to flow through us then evangelism becomes easy. I have had the privilege of leading many people into relationship with Christ. The truth is I just spoke the words in each of those there were one ore more people in their lives that showed them the love of Jesus in a way that was tangable and understandable to them.

    Rusty Ford
    Dynamic Community Outreach
    http://community-outreach.com/

    ReplyDelete