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The Truth about Pastors and
Evangelism |
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When it comes to evangelism, most of us as pastors know how to talk the talk. Who of us is ever going to disagree that evangelism is a priority? The problem is that if all of us as pastors were to do a time audit or a church resources audit, our evangelism walk might not match our evangelism talk.
Reality Bites One of the greatest adventures of my life was planting a church. The reality in the early days of that plant was that if we did not engage in evangelism, my family was not going to eat. Some of the launch team members were already Christians, but the real life of the church was coming as a result of the changed lives of people who came to Christ. At least 65% of my time in the early days was spent planning, preparing and executing evangelistic activities designed to help people come to know Jesus Christ and become disciples. The church grew rapidly in the early days. We baptized twenty one people at our first baptism service. People were coming to Christ, and the atmosphere of the church was charged with anticipation as we seemed to be growing on a weekly basis.
Big Mo, where’d you go? Dickens coined the phrase, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. This is how I would describe the phase of our church when we left “pioneer status” and became a fully organized Wesleyan Church. An era ended the day we chartered and I take full responsibility as the founding leader and pastor. I mentioned in the early days I had dedicated at least 65% of my time to evangelism. Following our transition to official status, my time dedicated to evangelistic outreach fell to about 15% or less. I did not realize what was happening at the time, as a rookie leader and pastor, but I had stopped leading the way that God had called me to lead, and began to focus on maintaining the machinery of the organization. People, who I used to lead out on evangelistic adventures, were now fulfilling what we thought were important Board of Administration functions. I am in no way trying to diminish the importance of functional leadership structures and efficient administration. I am simply stating that these structures must serve the cause of apostolic evangelism rather than the other way around.
Truth or Consequences Here is the truth about pastors and evangelism. Pastors who are intentional and systematic in their approach to evangelism tend to be the pastors who are leading growing, spiritually alive churches. Pastors who are passive with regard to evangelism tend to drift in their leadership toward a maintenance or slow decline.
A Way Forward Let me suggest a way forward that will benefit any pastor who may be drifting with regard to evangelism.
Context is Everything In biblical studies, there is a saying about how one approaches the examination of a Scriptural text, Context is everything. One thing that many of us as pastors forget when it comes to evangelism and church growth is that context may not be everything, but it is crucial when it comes to the results of our evangelistic efforts. You may engage in the exact same plan for evangelism in two churches and receive completely different results. While studying church growth in the Beeson Pastor’s program at Asbury Theological Seminary, I discovered a little known truth; many of the pastors we hold up as models of evangelistic genius were serving in communities that were growing so fast, with so many people looking for churches, that a monkey could have been the Senior Pastor and seen great church growth. That, of course, is an overstatement but do not miss the point, you have been called to your context to proclaim the good news of Christ. People will respond if you tell the truth about your efforts, make a plan, and work your plan. The results from that point are all up to God.
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