The fifth area of church life I asked our fellowship about when I arrived in Croydon was evangelism. Perhaps its because our church came from a small house group that most of the 37 adults in out fellowship at that time agreed that evangelism was very important. I was told that we leafleted homes, knocked on front doors and regularly stood outside our local shops singing and handing out tracts. Most of our people then went on to tell me how much they disliked doing those things but ‘hey we have to do evangelism don’t we!’
Well yes and no would be my answer. Yes we have to do evangelism as Jesus calls us to:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Matt. 28:19
But as we saw earlier, we are to make disciples and not converts. If our evangelism program consists of lots of embarrassing door knocking and street singing then we are likely to only attract the kind of people who think that that is what Christians do. Or more likely we are likely to not attract anyone because they think that that is what Christians do.
A definition of evangelism is to tell people the good news of Jesus with a view that they will become Christians. However, the key words in this definition are ‘good news’ and ‘Jesus’. If we do things we don’t normally do to get people to join a small worn out group of people who are desperately trying to get more workers to keep the machine going, then we may not come across to others as having any good news. One way churches have dealt with this over the years has been to tell people some very bad news so that our news seems better. ie “Without Jesus in your life, you are going to hell where you will be tortured for all eternity, so you had better join us”. Hence the Jehovah’s Witness type of doorstep line, “Do you know where you will go when you die?”
As I have said several times so far, a formative passage of the New Testament for us at Jubilee has been the Sermon on the Mount. Our evangelism has been particularly impacted by one verse:
Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Matt 7:6
These words of Jesus have been misused and misunderstood for many years. Why do we not feed pearls to pigs? Because pearls have no nourishment for the hungry pigs. If you feed a pearl to a hungry pig it will look for other food and the only other meal available in the sty at that point will be you, and you are nourishing!
The good news of Jesus is a pearl of great price, but trying to force feed the gospel to people who know they are hungry for other things will cause the truth to be rejected and they will turn on you. Of course those drawn to old styles of evangelism will tell you that they were persecuted for the gospel when the crowd turned on them. But that isn’t the point of Jesus’ words here. He tells us that we need to meet people in their hunger and feed them first so that they can later receive the good news. Sometimes that is literally feeding people with food, other times its giving them employment, housing, respect, friendship, purpose, safety, significance or even just plain old fun.
As we have already seen, at Jubilee, worship, fellowship, serving and teaching can all be ways of feeding people. Our community chaplaincy, parenting courses and support, youth and children's’ work, and many other things we do are all geared to feed hungry needs in people before we reveal the pearl. Our evangelist Jaz Potter has devised a traffic light system so that we all know where we are with this process.
We hold events and minister to people in many ways, some of these are classified as RED events or ministries. RED means that we don’t share anything about Jesus, we just meet the hunger and those we feed are blessed. Things which are denoted as AMBER are associated with times and seasons when those we feed are aware that God, Church and Jesus are connected to our involvement with them, but we still don’t preach at them in any way. These AMBER events might be things like a Mothering Sunday service or a Christmas Hamper giveaway or a Easter meal or Hot Cross Buns being shared with shoppers. GREEN situations are where we explicitly invite those we have been feeding to an event or course where we proclaim the good news of Jesus death, resurrection and Lordship with a view to seeing our friends (for that is what they have now become) saved. Obviously our traffic light system isn’t found laid out in scripture, but we feel that it helps us to remember to not feed pigs with pearls and to let our light so shine that men will see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven. We are also well aware that God can and does break into our system whenever he wants to, as his Holy Spirit brings conviction on someone and they then ask us “What must I do to be saved?” or when we are in an AMBER or RED situation, but God gives us a prophetic word or ministers healing or freedom to someone and changes the lights to GREEN.
So what does the flippin’ church do?
I have looked at five areas of church life; worship, fellowship, serving, teaching, and evangelism, but of course there are so many other things which make up the life of a church. If you are someone reading this who is passionate about prophecy you are probably screaming at me to talk about that as the sixth, or should I say first of six things the church does. If you are a born again administrator then you will no doubt want administration to be on the list, or if performing arts are your thing then that will be your thing.
When I asked our church about the five areas of church life, nearly all wanted to add prayer as a sixth. However, even though many people see themselves as having distinct prayer ministries, prayer is part of everything a church does. Prayer is our communication with God and, like Jesus, we don’t want to do anything we don’t see the Father doing.
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise ...” John 5:19
The question now comes, how do we organise ourselves in such a way that we hear God and respond to his voice without hampering ourselves or building something which Jesus isn’t?
Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labour in vain.
Ps 127:1
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