Imagine the following scenarios: What if you saw your neighbor’s house on fire and wanted to rush in to rescue them? Would you be timid about helping them to safety because you never took the time to get to know them over the years? What if you were walking across a parking lot and saw a woman being brutally attacked? Would you mind your own business because you haven’t developed a friendship with her yet? The obvious answer is of course not, but this tactic is exactly what is being promoted in many churches today.
In each scenario, the depth, length, or lack of a relationship doesn’t matter because these people are facing immediate danger. The only thing that matters to them is getting rescued. Now is the time to warn people about God’s coming wrath on the unrepentant before it’s too late.
Many church leaders try to circumvent the tension of preaching repentance to the lost by building relationships with them first. This approach may save your reputation, but it does nothing to save lost souls. Romans 1:16 A growing number pastors and leaders in our day are diluting the message of the cross. Gospel sermons have morphed into pep talks on relationship building and developing friendships. Moreover, this tepid approach isn’t equipping the saints to win souls, but to win friends and influence people. Church isn’t supposed to be a Dale Carnegie course sprinkled with religious platitudes. It is supposed to be a place where people are equipped to go into the world and make disciples.
If we witness to someone and lovingly warn them that they are eternally lost without Jesus, we worry that we might come across too harsh. So the fix must be in building relationships and friendship evangelism, right? Wrong, because nowhere in scripture do we ever see the early church or apostles ‘softening’ up the recipient to be able to receive the good news. 2 Corinthians 2:14-17
Dear pastor, teacher, evangelist, and well-meaning believer, please don’t get caught up in the contemporary nonsense that is the seeker-sensitive soft-sell gospel. Friendship evangelization has much to do with increasing attendance numbers, but nothing to do with making disciples for the Kingdom. We are not selling a car, a vacuum cleaner, or Amway. We are messengers of the gospel of Christ.
There is no pattern of getting the recipient ready to handle the gospel message anywhere in the New Testament. This misguided teaching is disseminated by Christian leadership experts and others who are utilizing salesmanship and marketing tactics to fill churches. The most unbiblical statement I’ve ever read regarding spreading the gospel was given by a well-known leadership author and pastor when he said:
“If we were able to rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity, I think we would put the emphasis on developing relationships with non-believers, serving them, loving them, and making them feel accepted, only then would we earn the right to share the gospel.”
Fellow Bible teacher Mark Cahill sums up the folly of this man-made strategy:
“When Jesus was talking with the rich young ruler, did he help him with his stock portfolio before He shared eternal truth with him? When the Jews were having Paul arrested in Acts 21 and Paul got a chance to preach to the crowd, should he have handed out skittles, given away free concert tickets, or washed their cars before he shared the truth of Jesus Christ with them? Hogwash and balderdash is all I can think of. One more time we are being duped by what people say instead of listening to what God tells us. As one guy said, if you were at the World Trade Center on September 10th, and you knew all those people would die the next day, what would you say to them? It doesn’t seem like to me that you would have had a lot of time to get them to like you, or to do a bunch of nice things for them. If you really want lost people to love you, then give up Christianity and go and find another faith to believe in.” –Mark Cahill of Mark Cahill Ministries
Our job isn’t to convince the community into thinking we are a building full of nice people or to win the hearts and minds of the surrounding neighborhoods. It isn’t the purpose of a Christian to engage in countless hours of small talk in order to get one person to finally capitulate and reluctantly decide to attend our church one day. Quit trying to sell, convince, and befriend people into ‘accepting’ Jesus. He doesn’t want a person’s tepid acceptance, He wants to be their Lord.
Please understand where my heart is in this article: I love the local church and fellow ministers. What I find unconscionable is that many pastors who used to contend for the faith are now watering it down because they are being deceived by popular church growth and leadership experts who are hirelings masquerading as shepherds. Jude 1:3
There is no problem with engaging people in conversations about life and pursuing genuine friendships as we seek to turn our conversations toward eternal matters over lunch or coffee. The thing we have to remember is that every face to face we have with people is an opportunity to tell them about eternity, coming judgment, and salvation through Jesus. It might just be the only time they get to hear the gospel. So rather than talking about your favorite NFL team or how great your church is, talk about Jesus and how He has given you a new life.
Does this mean we that we are harsh and unloving when presenting the gospel? Certainly not because the very reason we witness to people should be from a loving heart and compassion. We should present the gospel in a bold direct manner and from a broken heart for the lost. Peter tells us how to engage people when we witness. 1 Peter 3:15-16
When you find yourself having a conversation over coffee or having a few minutes to speak with a store clerk or anyone else during your day, love them enough to share the truth. Ask them if they know where they will spend eternity. Ask them what they think about Jesus and heaven. You will have turned the conversation from small talk into something that will matter a hundred years from now. Refuse to sell them the gospel like the peddlers because some people will respond to the truth and repent. 2 Corinthians 7:10
If Jesus, Paul, James, John, and the faithful 1st-century church didn’t preempt the gospel message with hours of small talk, why should we? If faithful men and women through the centuries boldly proclaimed the gospel, why don’t we? If the Bible tells us to go and make disciples, shouldn’t we go? If the message of faithful men of years past like Spurgeon, Chambers, and Tozer was repentance and salvation through Christ alone, then we should boldly stand on the same two-thousand-year-old message. Refuse to reduce the gospel down to the ridiculous by believing we have to earn the right to share the gospel. We are just the messengers but it is the Holy Spirit who does the work in a person’s heart. At the end of the day, the gospel isn’t about us, it’s about Jesus. When Peter preached to the crowds, he didn’t have to earn the right to preach the Gospel first, he simply preached Christ crucified. Acts 2:37-39
If we simply go along the path of trying to earn the right to share the gospel through friendship and acts of kindness, people won’t see the true condition of their hearts before a holy God. Tragically many of them just assimilate into our churhes and small groups, all the while having never come to repentance and saving faith in Jesus. This is the condition of many people in our churches who have had some sort of religious experience but are not saved.
Tozer and Spurgeon sum up the eternal reality of romancing the world instead of preaching the gospel:
“Today’s evangelical church is full of activities that court the acceptance of the world but don’t prepare anyone for Jesus’ return.” -A.W. Tozer
“People must be slain by the law before they can be made alive by the Gospel!” -Charles Spurgeon
Reject the salesman tactics that are inundating the church today. Popular Conferences and movements by leadership experts instruct us on how to fill churches but they have nothing to do with the gospel. Do you want to be a real friend to someone in the world? Share the gospel with them and do it lovingly in the boldness of the Holy Spirit. Collective years of church growth conferences won’t produce what one second of Holy Spirit wrought conviction will. True disciples who make other disciples are the result of boldly spreading the gospel, not romancing the world. Matthew 28:19-20
All for Him,
Howard
Many of you will remember the Christian singer Keith Green who is now with the Lord.
Here is an excellent message he gave concerning the modern attempts to change the gospel message.
Click here for the video: What’s Wrong With The Gospel
