The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission: Promoting the Gospel with More Than Our Lips

Introduction

Confessions of an Evangelist

FOR THE FIRST COUPLE OF YEARS of my faith I was a passionate promoter of the Christian message. I was fifteen years old and spoke about Christ to everyone who would listen. Without any background in Christianity I just assumed everyone would want to hear what I had heard. I shared my new beliefs with my mother, my friends, my football team, strangers on the street and even the crowds of other teenagers I met on the holiday camps my mum used to send me on (regularly!).

In those early years as a believer I had no idea Christians could be coy about their faith. No one had told me I was meant to feel awkward about spreading the good news. That was something I learnt only after mixing with Christians for a while. But I learnt it soon enough.

Because of my obvious enthusiasm for sharing the faith with others, my church decided I should be trained in evangelism. I had never heard of evangelism; I just wanted others to discover what I had discovered. I did not know there was a word for it or that courses and books had been written on the subject.

So, off I went to special classes once a week for several months where I was trained in one of the popular evangelism training tools. There I learnt a carefully prepared gospel outline, a set of illustrations to explain the message and a list of Bible verses to back it all up.

At the end of the course I was turned loose on the public of Sydney. I took part in prearranged home visits, systematic door knocking and even cold turkey walk-ups at the local shopping centre.

Suddenly, my joy and ability at passing on the faith evaporated. I had previously delighted in sharing Christ with others, but now it seemed a burden: a burden on my emotions as I felt the weight of the moment I had been trained for, on my memory as I tried to recall all of the points of the gospel and, perhaps most of all, on my poor unsuspecting evangelistic targets. This enthusiastic, natural promoter of Christ had been transformed into a nervous and unnerving Bible-thumper.

I do not blame the course itself. Many Christians around the world have been helped by this and other programs. I still see a place for evangelistic and apologetic training. But I suspect the way the course was run in my church, combined with my overeager personality, left me with several unhealthy perspectives on what it means to promote Christ to others. I have since discovered just how common these perspectives are in modern church circles.

The Curse of Self-Consciousness

First, I had become self-conscious about reaching out to others with the news of Christ. When I first became a Christian, promoting Christ was a perfectly natural orientation of my whole faith. It was similar to the way I felt about football (or what Australians and Americans call soccer). I loved football. I played it almost every day. I watched every televised English Premier League match. I talked about it and asked friends to come up to the local oval for a kick-around. I never dreamt that footballlovers might be self-conscious about mentioning it or coy about inviting others to play it.

But after attending this evangelism course, that is exactly how I felt about my faith. Suddenly, mentioning God and inviting people to church had become a specialised compartment of the faith. It had its own name—evangelism—its own propositions and jargon, and even its own multiweek courses. Whereas I once talked of God as freely as I talked about my favourite TV show, now I found myself switching into evangelism mode—where the heart beats faster, the palms get sweaty and you feel the pressure to steer the conversation in a most unconversational manner. What was once a natural outflow of faith, something requiring little concentration, now felt like a cross between a theological exam, an acting class and a knife-edge rescue operation. It is a bit like the Australian/American Idol television competition. One of the most frequent criticisms from the judges, especially in the early stages, is that contestants’ performances are self-conscious. I could see the cogs turning in your mind, say the judges, as you concentrated on the notes, scrambled for the lyrics and counted out the dance moves, instead of just enjoying the song and engaging the audience. The parallel with evangelism is obvious. Sometimes we concentrate so hard on steering the conversation and remembering the correct content that we forget the joy of the good news and the privilege of sharing it with another human being. At that point we have become overly self-conscious.

Let me reiterate: evangelism courses per se are not the problem. Some Christians undergo such training without ever feeling self-conscious; others feel self-conscious without ever being trained. Nevertheless, I suspect many would agree that this evangelistic self-consciousness is common amongst modern believers (with or without the help of evangelism training courses).

Thankfully my own evangelistic self-consciousness soon passed. After months of trying to perform as I had been taught, I decided to relax. I forgot about getting it right, getting it in order and getting my conversation partner over the line. Instead, I decided to approach my gospel opportunities as if they were friendly conversations about my favourite topic. It was not long before I realised again that this is exactly what sharing the faith is.

Part of my hope in writing this book is that a fresh, biblical look at the topic of evangelistic mission will go some way toward dispelling Christian self-consciousness.

The Gospel Download

The second outlook I inherited from my days as a budding evangelist was equally unhelpful. I began to think that if I had an opportunity to say something about Christianity, I ought to say everything about it. I had spent months learning a gospel outline, complete with analogies and Bible verses. I somehow got it into my head that it was my duty to download the whole thing no matter how passing the conversation about Christianity might have been. I don’t know how many poor souls had to endure my sermonettes before I realised the glazed look in their eyes was not the look of spiritual wonder!

In reality, most of our opportunities to speak about Christianity will occur in passing, in the to-and-fro of daily conversation. It should not surprise us, then, that the two clearest passages in the Bible calling on all believers to speak up for the Lord urge them simply to answer for the faith—to respond to people’s comments, questions or criticisms with a gentle and gracious reply (Colossians 4:5—6 and 1 Peter 3:15).

Most Christians are not evangelists (in the technical, New Testament sense of the word) and should not be made to feel the pressure to be something they are not. The Scriptures certainly urge us all to be open about our faith whenever opportunity allows, but doing the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4:5) is something God’s Word asks only of some of us.¹

Of course, if you have a chance to explain the whole message of Christ, please go for it! Evangelists do not have a monopoly here. My point is simply this: far more frequent than the full gospel opportunity will be the passing opportunities to offer brief nuggets about the faith to those around us—a relative at the Christmas lunch, a friend at the café, a parent on the sideline of the sporting field and so on. On occasions like these a gospel bite will usually prove more useful to your hearer than a gospel download.

Reducing the Gospel

The third unhelpful perspective I picked up in my early evangelism training concerns the gospel message itself. The particular course I studied summarised the gospel in the theological concepts of sin and grace. The goal of the presentation I had memorised was to convince my hearers (1) that they were unworthy of God’s acceptance because of their rebellion and (2) that God’s acceptance was offered on the basis of faith alone, not through good works. The gospel, in other words, was condensed to two doctrines with little attempt to connect these ideas to the flesh-and-blood story of Jesus’ birth, teaching, miracles, death, resurrection, appearances and return for judgment.

Some gospel preaching today—including some gospel conversations we have with friends—forgets that, at its heart, the gospel is the news about Jesus as narrated in the Gospels. This is why the four Gospels are called Gospels—because they, more than any other part of Scripture, tell the gospel. This is why the apostolic preaching in the book of Acts generally narrates the story of Jesus, including his birth to King David’s line, baptism by John, miracles, arrest and so on (Acts 2:22—39; 4:8—12; 10:34—43; 13:16—41). This is why when Paul explicitly summarises the content of the gospel in his letters, he does so by outlining the key events of Jesus’ life from birth to exaltation, including of course his atoning death, burial in a tomb and glorious appearances (Romans 1:2—4; 1 Corinthians 15:1—8; 2 Timothy 2:8).

Of course, sin and grace are central to any true gospel presentation (as they are in the four Gospels themselves), but the gospel cannot be reduced to these themes any more than it can be reduced to a simple retelling of Jesus’ biography.

I will say much more about this in the overly long chapter 8, What Is the Gospel? For now, let me just say that the gospel is not a theological idea or two. It is theology grounded in the actual events of Jesus’ life. The gospel and the Gospels are one. Let me offer a concise summary of what I mean by the gospel throughout this book:

The gospel is the announcement that God has revealed his kingdom and opened it up to sinners through the birth, teaching, miracles, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return to overthrow evil and consummate the kingdom for eternity.

Any account of the Christian gospel that does not narrate the basic content of the books we rightly call the Gospels does not deserve to be called a gospel outline. It might be a true and accurate statement of biblical truths—and, for that reason, valuable and useful for our hearers—but it is not the gospel that Jesus said must be preached to all nations (Mark 13:10).

Underestimating the Mission

There is a fourth unhelpful perspective I developed in those early days. This one was probably the result of my personality as much as any training I received. Somehow I came to assume that the only important means of promoting Christ was talking about him. Reaching out to others became for me an entirely verbal activity.

But perhaps the best kept secret of Christian mission is that the Bible lists a whole range of activities that promote Christ to the world and draw others toward him. These include prayer, godly behaviour, financial assistance, the public praise of God (in church) and, as already mentioned, answering people’s questions. All of these are explicitly connected in the Bible with advancing the gospel and winning people to Christ. They are all mission activities, and only a couple of them involve the lips at all.

I do not want to diminish the role of speaking. As I have said already, the New Testament urges us to be open about Christ in our regular conversations. To push our faith below the level of daily speech is unnatural and a sure sign of Christian ill health. At the same time, downplaying the range of mission activities listed in the Bible creates its own set of problems. It can make those who do not have a flair for speaking feel inadequate in their contribution to God’s work in the world. Perhaps more worryingly—and this was certainly so in my case—it can make those who do have the gift of the gab feel they are fulfilling God’s plans just by talking. The Lord wants more than our lips in the grand task of taking his mercy to our friends and neighbours. To think otherwise, as I did for years, is to greatly underestimate what God’s mission involves.

In light of this, I want to make a distinction throughout this book between the specific activity of proclaiming the gospel and the broader category of promoting the gospel. The former is properly called evangelism, a word that derives from the New Testament term euangelizomai, which only ever means announcing (grand) news. The wider category of promoting the gospel includes any and every activity that draws others to Christ (including, of course, evangelism). People sometimes use the words mission, outreach or witness for this larger work, but I prefer the expression promoting the gospel (I’m sure I pinched this from someone else but I can’t remember from whom) because it reminds us that at the heart of our mission to the world is the news about Christ, the gospel. In my view, when mission becomes disconnected from the gospel, as it sadly does in some church circles, it no longer deserves to be called Christian mission.

The concept of promoting the gospel obviously includes evangelism, but it also tries to give a proper place to things like prayer, godly behaviour and answering for the faith, all of which are explicitly connected in the New Testament with God’s plan to save his people. Such activities are not separate from the work of the gospel; they are supportive of it and vital to it. Praying that your friends and neighbours would come to know Christ is no less a promotion of the gospel than speaking to them about Christ. Both activities are evangelistic, even if only one of them is evangelism in the strict sense. This does not mean that those who pray for their friends need not worry about speaking to them any more than it means that those who speak to their friends need not worry about praying for them. My point is that both activities are full contributions to the promotion of Christ in the world.

For years, both as a public evangelist and as a personal encourager, I urged other Christians to evangelise (announce the gospel) as if this were the only significant thing they could do to promote Christ. In a sense, I was projecting my own ministry and personality onto believers in general. I was an evangelist; everyone else should be as well. That was the logic.

The problem is: God’s Word does not quite put it that way, and attempts to argue otherwise usually involve stretching biblical passages beyond their plain meaning. I used to do it myself both in sermons and (I am embarrassed to say) in my first book.² The motivation was honourable—I wanted more Christians to be more involved in the work of the gospel—but, as with so many other issues, a worthy goal does not give me permission to handle the Scriptures poorly. We are involved in God’s mission, and so we must allow his Word to shape our part in it. The slogan Every Christian an evangelist has a noble purpose, but it is not a biblical way of speaking.

For Christians in general—as opposed to evangelists in particular—telling the gospel to others (evangelism) could be described as the icing on the cake of mission. It is certainly the most conspicuous part, and, once tasted, it will often be the sweetest part too, but for the typical Christian it is not the bulk of the task. It is not where most of our opportunities to promote Christ to others will be found.

A central aim of this book, then, is to show just how allencompassing is the Bible’s call to be involved in God’s mission. I hope and pray that what follows will inspire you to see everything you do in life as a tool in God’s hands for the benefit of those who don’t yet know Christ.

Before we explore the Bible’s multifaceted approach to the promotion of the gospel, we should stop to ask the most obvious question: Why get involved in God’s mission?

CHAPTER 1

The One

and the Many

Why Get Involved in Mission?

He is to be feared above all gods.

Psalm 96:4

A FEW YEARS AGO, I was having coffee with a friend in a café at my local beach. I was explaining to him what our church was doing to promote Christ among the residents of the area. At one point, I noticed a woman a few tables away looking inquisitively at me. I assumed she was a fellow Christian interested in listening into our conversation. I just kept on talking.

A few minutes later, the woman got up from her table, paid her bill, walked straight across to me and, at what seemed like the top of her voice, said: So, you want to convert the world. How dare you! And off she stormed. It was at that point I realised she probably wasn’t a Christian.

I thought of the perfect comeback—about an hour later! At the time I was dumbfounded. For a moment, I even wondered: Maybe our mission is presumptuous. Perhaps promoting the news about Christ is the stuff of fanaticism rather than a reasoned, modern faith.

I am sure many of us at times have wondered similar things. The rhetoric of our world, which insists you keep your faith to yourself, is powerful and sometimes leaves us cringing at the thought of getting overly active in God’s mission to convert the world.

So, I want to step back and ask: Why do we reach out to others with the news of Christ? What ultimately is the driving idea behind God’s mission to the world?

There are plenty of good, biblical answers to this. You could say we promote Christ because he means so much to us personally, and that’s true. You could say we promote Christ because in the Great Commission he commands us to do so (Matthew 28:18—20), and that’s true as well. But I want to suggest that a more comprehensive reality drives our desire to make Christ known to the world. Not surprisingly, this driving force of mission also happens to be the fundamental idea of the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments.

The Bible’s Most Basic Doctrine

Please pause and reflect about what you would regard as the most basic doctrine of the Bible. Go back through your mental list of theological big ideas and try to arrive at the starting point (this is not a test of true faith, by the way).

There may be different ways of expressing it but I think I would have to answer this question with the simple statement: there is one God.

From Genesis to Revelation the Bible makes the resounding, unapologetic declaration that there is just one Creator and Lord of the world. It begins in the Bible’s opening line: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). To ancient readers, this was not simply a sensible way to start a holy book. It was a huge swipe at the entire religious outlook of the time. The opening lines of the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish, to give just one example from the period, list no fewer than nine separate gods, each with its own part to play in the events leading up to creation. Saying that "God created the heavens and the earth" was tantamount to saying that no other deity was involved in the universe.

And that’s exactly what the rest of the Bible affirms. The central creed of the Old Testament was the Shema (still recited twice daily by Orthodox Jews). It proclaims an uncompromising monotheism, or belief in one God:

Hear [Hebrew: shema], O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD, the One and Only.³ (Deuteronomy 6:4)

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul reworked the Shema (which he himself would have recited daily since his youth) in light of the lordship of Jesus:

We know that An idol is nothing at all in the world and that There is no God but one [the original language here is very close to the Shema]. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. (1 Corinthians 8:4—6)

Monotheism, crystallised in the universal lordship of Jesus Christ, is the Bible’s most basic doctrine.

What has monotheism got to do with mission? How is it that the most basic doctrine in the Bible is also the fundamental idea behind promoting the gospel? The answer may be obvious but let me spell it out. If there is just one God in the universe, everyone everywhere has a duty to worship that Lord.

Psalm 96 and the Universal Duty

This brings us to the main Old Testament text I want to reflect on. Psalm 96 is one of those Bible passages made famous by countless