Here’s an encouraging video of a group of young people reflecting on a week of street evangelism in Victoria, BC.

RSS/Email click here to view on the sermonaudio site.

You can also find some helpful evangelistic materials on this church’s ThinkGospel website.

• The Calvinism Excuse: ”If God’s going to convert the heathen, he doesn’t need us to do it.”
• The Pragmatism Excuse: ”It hasn’t worked in the past so why should it work this time.”
• The Ecclesiology Excuse: ”Our church is such a mess, there’s no point in asking people to come.”
• The Revivalism Excuse: ”We must wait for the Holy Spirit to bless.”
• The Pluralism Excuse: ”Surely not everyone without Christ is without hope.”
• The Pietism Excuse: ”I’ll pray. Evangelism is for the activists.”
• The Humility Excuse: ”Who am I to tell others what they should or shouldn’t do or believe.”

But if we dig down deep enough, behind the logic of these excuses, we’ll find a horrible emotion is at the root of all these evangelism-choking weeds: FEAR.

• Fear of ridicule
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of failure
• Fear of lost friendships
• Fear of exposure
• Fear of difficult questions

How do get rid of this fear? Well we must recognize it, confess it, and seek forgiveness. That covers the past.

But what about the future? We need another emotion. LOVE.

Perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn. 4:18). Love for Jesus and love for the lost is the only excuse-killing power that can get down to the roots of our excuses and grow deep soul-winning passion.

• What is evangelistic preaching?
• 4 kinds of evangelistic sermons
• Why is evangelistic preaching so rare today?
• 4 characteristics of evangelistic preaching
• 4 (more) characteristics of evangelistic preaching

In that first post, I defined evangelistic preaching: “It expounds God’s Word (it is expository) with the primary aim of the salvation of lost souls (rather than primarily the instruction of God’s people). Obviously there’s a difference in content when a sermon is aimed at the unsaved more than the Christian. But there’s also a difference in the tone, in the pathos. An evangelistic sermon has a more urgent, pleading, persuading, and personal feel to it.

As many have asked me for an example, here’s a (far from perfect) attempt I made on Sunday evening. My fuller notes are here, my one-page summary notes are here, and the audio and video are here. Because I don’t use my notes in preaching, there are usually some differences between what I prepared and what I end up saying. Some of that is intentional, and some of it is plain forgetfulness!

My text was  the second part of John 10v10: “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” My points were:

1. Jesus gives abundant spiritual life
2. Jesus gives abundant intellectual life
3. Jesus gives abundant emotional life
4. Jesus gives abundant social life
5. Jesus gives abundant physical life
6. Jesus gives abundant eternal life

One caveat, the church has the unusual tradition of stopping the sermon about two thirds of the way through to sing a Psalter, after which the pastor preaches his last point. I’m told that you eventually get used to it.

Present
Evangelistic preaching majors in the present tense. Yes, it deals with biblical data, which is usually in the past tense. But it moves rapidly from the past to the present. These are not sermons that are taken up with large amounts of history, geography and chronology. They may begin there, but move swiftly to the here and the now.

Hearers realize the sermon is about here, about now. It’s connected to the present, it’s relevant, it has impact on them, here and now, in this day and in this age. Martin Lloyd-Jones used to speak of such sermons being in the “urgent tense,” and that really is what should be communicated. We must show that the ancient Word connects with today’s world, and is relevant both to the present and the future.

Personal
These sermons should also be personal. Yes, again, we begin with explaining the Word as originally given to the Israelites, the disciples, etc. It starts with “they” and “them.” However, in evangelistic preaching, we move rapidly to “you.”

I’m sure we’ve all sat in congregations, heard sermons about the Philistines, the Israelites, the Corinthians and the Philippians, and wondered, “But what about me? Does this have anything to say to Americans, Scots, Africans, etc?” When teaching God’s people we can spend longer explaining the teaching as it applied to the original hearers. But when we are going after lost souls, we have to move more swiftly, we have to engage more rapidly, we have to show relevance much earlier on.

Also, when we are addressing the unconverted in front of us, we should work especially hard at moving away from reading our notes. When we are appealing, beseeching, arguing and reasoning in a very personal way with unbelievers – let it be eyeball to eyeball, “we beseech you.” Don’t let paper get in the way, distracting, and breaking the eye contact. Let’s really make it personal so that people really grasp “he is speaking to me.”

We can also make it personal by getting inside the minds of our hearers and saying things like this: “Well, you’re sitting there are you are thinking this…aren’t you? But this is what God’s word says.” Or, “You’re here today and you’re hearing this and you are feeling so and so….” And the person sitting there says, “He is thinking about me. He knows how I think, he knows how I tick; he is concerned to address what is going on in my mind.” Again, it just makes it a very personal intimate transaction.

Persuasive
In evangelistic preaching the great aim is persuasion. Much of such sermons will be taken up with Acts2v38-42 type beseeching, pleading, arguing, and reasoning. It’s not just, ”Here’s some facts; take them or leave them,” as if we are just dispassionate conveyors of information. We are here to persuade. People must see our anxiety that they respond to the Gospel in faith and repentance.

Passionate
To be really persuasive, we must also be passionate. Let people see that we feel this deeply, that we fear for their eternal state, that we are anxious over them, and that we love them deeply. Let that be communicated in our words, but also in our facial expressions, our body language, and our tone.

I’m not arguing for acting here; this should come naturally. Sometimes, before preaching an evangelistic sermon, I spend some time trying to think of lost unbelieving souls in my congregation, and even of particular individuals. I may try to see their faces (often lovely characters by nature – helpful, kind, loving people – but lost). I try to see them dying, going to judgment, and then their faces as they hear the verdict. Then I envision them sinking into the bottomless pit, being burned in eternal fire, going to the company of the devil and his angels. I try to see them there, try to hear them there. Sometimes I might even think of one of my own unsaved family members, just to try and bring home the reality and the enormity of the unsaved’s predicament. If we can really feel it ourselves, we will be passionate in our pleading, in our loving, and in our reasoning.

Having defined evangelistic preaching and looked at various examples of it, I’d like to suggest some reasons for the rarity of evangelistic preaching today, especially in reformed churches.

The Preacher
We start by pointing a finger at ourselves. Many of us have to admit that we much prefer to be teachers than pleaders. It is easier to engage in explanation than application. It is more socially acceptable, it is more dignified and respectable to be engaged in calm reasoning and deduction, rather than in anxious weeping and beseeching. I think we’d all have to admit that it is easier emotionally and socially to be teachers than evangelists. And that prejudice, that bias, influences our choice of text and the way we preach our texts.

In addition to our prejudice, there is also our pragmatism. Let’s get people in first. Get them used to our church. Then we will become more “evangelistic.” After all we don’t want to put them off by telling them they are sinners who need a Savior; or that they must abandon their own works and trust in Christ’s grace alone; or that without faith in Christ they will be punished forever in hell, etc. Surely it’s much wiser to begin more slowly, more carefully, more diplomatically; and then once they are in a while, we can begin to be a bit more confrontational and demanding. But then more new faces appear, and so the pragmatic cycle begins again.

Presumption also lurks in the background of many preachers’ minds. Some pastors dangerously presume that their hearers are already saved. Assuming that all is well with their souls, they teach, instruct, and give guidance on how to live the Christian life; but they rarely preach for conversion.

The Congregation
When we preach evangelistic sermons, some mature Christians in our congregations, those we often lean on for our encouragement and strength, might feel (or even say), “Well there wasn’t much for me in that sermon…that’s more like milk for babies than meat for the mature.” Of course, many mature Christians love to hear evangelistic sermons. They enjoy being evangelized all over again, and they especially love to hear sermons addressed to their unconverted family and friends. However, others may not respond so appreciatively as they do to our epic sermons on Romans. That lack of response can impact what we preach and how we preach.

Also, we might not have many unconverted people in front of us. My first congregation had only 20-30 people. Sometimes there were maybe only 3-5 unconverted hearers in an evening service. It’s a lot harder to preach an evangelistic sermon in these circumstances, because everyone knows to whom you are directing your warning, wooing, and pleading words. Teaching messages are so much more comfortable than convicting messages – both to preach and to hear. That’s especially true if our few unconverted hearers are very “moral” or “churchy” people.

There may also be in our congregation those who might view evangelistic preaching with a suspicious eye and ear, especially if they come from a hyper-Calvinistic stream of Christian upbringing. Maybe others have come out of Arminian easybelievism, hyper-emotionalism, and decisionism, and react against any kind of emotional appeal to the unsaved. We don’t want to offend these people, we want to keep them on our side, and so again perhaps we hold back from regular, full-throated evangelistic preaching.

The World
We are not pluralistic. We believe, surely, in the exclusive claims of Christ. That’s what we swear to, sign up to, and state at our ordinations. But, we live in such a pluralistic, many-ways-to-God world, that it’s extremely difficult not to be influenced by that, even subconsciously.

Maybe, in the back of many pastors’ minds, the sharp edge of Gospel exclusivity has been blunted by worldly influence. They may not deny that Christ is the only way to heaven, and they may not preach many-ways-to-God. But they do not keep the believer/unbeliever distinction or the heaven/hell contrast constantly and vividly before their minds. And of course that’s going to affect their preaching – both its content and tone.

The real test of incipient pluralism is, “How do we really view the unconverted?” Is our first thought when we see them, “These precious souls are hell-bound, without Christ, lost, under the wrath of God, however religious they may be?” I’m deeply afraid that a kind of incipient, subtle, often unnoticed pluralism has blunted the sharp edge of evangelistic preaching.

The Devil

Then, of course, there is our great enemy, the devil. If there’s any kind of preaching that has been more successful in stealing captives from him and claiming them for the Lord, it is passionate evangelistic preaching. No weapon in the Gospel armory has been so effective in rescuing souls. Of course, he’s going to fight it, and he’s going to supply every excuse not to preach in an evangelistic way.

See also the insightful comments at the end of this post with further suggestions as to why evangelistic preaching is so infrequent today.

I was planning on following up that definition with some reasons for why such evangelistic preaching is so rare today. However, while reading through the great comments last week, I realized that there’s still some confusion about what an evangelistic sermon looks/sounds like. So, before returning to the “Why so rare?” question tomorrow, let me outline some examples of evangelistic sermon texts/topics, grouped into four categories.

“Warm-up” sermons
These are sermons we preach to clear and prepare the ground for the gospel. They address some of the common objections to Christianity, the caricatures of and prejudices against Christianity. Such “apologetic” sermons will set out to prove the truth and relevance of Christianity, and demonstrate its doctrinal and practical superiority. Examples:

• Proofs of the resurrection
• Evidence for creation v evolution
• One way or many ways to God
• Do only good people go to heaven?
• Bible’s analysis of current economic, social, moral problems, etc.

These sermons are aiming at conversion, especially the early stages of conversion. They are clearing away all the rubbish that has accumulated in a sinner’s mind, to gain a hearing for the gospel. They deal with issues that will open the pathway for Christ and His grace. That’s why I call them “warm-up” sermons. We are taking sinners who are cold, prejudiced, and opposed to Christianity, and using God’s Word to break up the soil, warm the heart, and provide an opening for the core message of Christ and His grace.

Warning Sermons
Some warning sermons are characterized by a focus on the more threatening aspects of God’s character, especially His attributes of holiness, justice, sovereignty, and power. Other warning sermons may focus on human sinfulness, inability, frailty, and mortality. We may expound and apply the law, showing what God defines as sin and wickedness. We might deal with the speed of time, the uncertainty of life, the imminence of death, the certainty of judgment, the length of eternity, the reality of hell, etc. These are all warning sermons. They are designed to alarm the complacent, the comfortable, and the thoughtless; to make them anxious, and fearful, and even terrified. Examples:

• Remember Lot’s wife – and Saul, and Judas
• God’s law
• The end-of-time parables
• Revelation’s great white throne, bottomless pit, etc.
• Ecclesiastes’ view of the best this world can offer, etc.
• The Psalmist’s view of our frailty and mortality, etc.

The great aim of these sermons is to convict, to bring our hearers to an awareness of their perilous state before God, and their need of repentance.

Wooing Sermons
Having prepared the way for the Gospel with “warm-up” sermons, and having shown the need for the Gospel with warning sermons, we then come with a wooing word. We explain the wonders of the Father’s willingness to send his Son to sinners, and to save them by His suffering, death, and resurrection. We also focus on the Lord Jesus; His willingness to come, suffer and die for sinners; His tender, wise and winning ways with sinners. We explain the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and renewing the hardest of hearts. We explain that God saves by grace through faith, not by merit through works. We are trying to address people who are trembling, who are fearful, who are scared, and are seeking to draw them in to the love and the mercy and the grace of God. No pastor can pluck the chord of grace enough. Examples:

• The prodigal son
• Christ’s tender dealings with sinners during his ministry
• The sufferings of Christ on the cross
• The atonement
• Free justification
• The Gospel invitations and commands
• The sufficiency and suitability of Christ, etc.
• Adoption

If the aim of the warm-up sermon is to demonstrate relevance, and if the aim of the warming sermon is to bring people to repentance, the aim of the wooing sermon is to bring people to rest in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Will Sermons
Every sermon is ultimately addressed to the will. Yes, we address the head; and through the head, we address the heart. But we don’t just want to give people facts and feelings. We want changed lives. That’s surely the aim of our preaching. Ultimately, then, every sermon is addressed to the will. But evangelistic sermons, and especially this fourth kind of evangelistic sermon, are addressed especially and repeatedly to the will.

These are sermons that bring people to the signpost at the junction, with two choices. These are sermons that bring people to the ballot box, where they must cast their vote. They bring people to that point where they are faced with the two great and ultimate options: faith or unbelief, life or death, heaven or hell. These are sermons that are full of persuasion, pleading, and arguing and beseeching. Examples:

• Paul and Agrippa
• Jesus and the woman of Samaria
• Parable of the wedding invitation
• Paul on Mars Hill
• Peter at Pentecost
• “Choose you this day whom you will serve”
• Narrow/broad way
• Revelation 22:17
• Elijah on Mt Carmel
• “Stretch out your hand”
• “Lazarus, come forth”

But, is man not totally depraved? Are we not “dead in trespasses and sins?” Are we not spiritually “disabled?” Is the will not in bondage? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. There is no question the Bible teaches this. However, as the examples above show, the Bible also describes the depraved, dead, disabled and enslaved will being addressed. It may seem illogical to us, but God has chosen to free the will, enable the “disabled,” and give life to the “dead” by the persuasive preaching of the Gospel.

These sermons have content for head and heart, but are especially focused on pressurizing, yes pressurizing, the will. The truth is pressed home so closely that every hearer is “forced” to make a choice. The Puritans used to speak of the Gospel vice that squeezes hearers so tightly that they cannot but say “yes” or “no.”

From this range of sample evangelistic sermons, I hope you can see that this isn’t the kind of preaching that will sound repetitive. There is a great range and variety of evangelistic sermons. There is no need for us to sound the same every time we do this. The Word of God has provided us with so many models and so much material that we can preach evangelistically and freshly every time.

Any other kinds of evangelistic sermons that I’ve missed out?

There has been a welcome resurgence of expository preaching in the Reformed church over the last 20-30 years, and especially of “consecutive expository preaching” – preaching through books of the Bible, verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter. But together with that resurgence of consecutive expository preaching, there has also come a decline in what I would call “converting evangelistic preaching.”

Negatively
What do I mean by “converting evangelistic preaching”? Let me give two negatives to begin with. I don’t mean teaching sermons with an evangelistic PS; a doctrinal sermon with a brief concluding appeal or call to the unconverted to seek Christ, believe in Christ, look to Christ, etc.

Neither, at the other extreme, do I mean content-less sermons made up simply of repeated evangelistic imperatives, commands, invitations, and exhortations; sermons that have nothing for the head but are all addressed to the heart or will.

Positively
What do I mean, then, by evangelistic preaching? Let me put it positively: Evangelistic preaching expounds God’s Word (it is expository) with the primary aim of the salvation of lost souls (rather than the instruction of God’s people). Stuart Olyott says it is to “preach from the Bible with the immediate aim of the immediate conversion of every soul in front of us.”

So, what really distinguishes evangelistic preaching from all other kinds of preaching is its obvious and unmistakable aim – conversion. Its target is unconverted hearers. And its conscious and deliberate aim is to call, invite, and command needy souls to repent and believe the Gospel.

Why has this kind of preaching become increasingly rare in many Reformed Churches? I’ll give you my answer next week, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on it first.

You keep it to yourself, don’t you; because sharing means less for you.

What do you do when you taste the grace and mercy of Jesus?

You want to tell others, don’t you; because sharing means more for you.

When King David was given the gracious Christ-centered promises of an everlasting King and Kingdom, he asked in utter humble awe, “Who am I, O Lord God?” (2 Sam. 7:18). Why me?

But one of his next questions was: “Is there anyone who is left of the house of Saul, to whom I may show the kindness of God?” (2 Sam 9:1,3).

Having tasted the grace and mercy of Christ through His covenant promises, he thought: “How can I best illustrate and demonstrate the kindness of God I’ve just experienced?

I know…I’ll try to find someone from the worst family in the nation, the family that’s my greatest threat and enemy, and lavish the greatest kindness upon him. That’ll be the best way of showing what God’s just done to me!”

You can imagine Mephibosheth’s thoughts when David’s servant Ziba knocked on his door and said the King wanted to see him. That could only mean one thing in those days. Neck, meet stainless steel.

What a traumatic journey as the lame man was carried helplessly and hopelessly into the King’s palace.

Then the sentence…

“Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather; and you shall eat bread at my table continually.”

WHAT?

Or as Mephibosheth put it: ““What is your servant, that you should look upon such a dead dog as I?”

When our dogs die, we cry. When these dogs died, people laughed. Dogs were pests not pets. They were vermin. The only good dog was a dead dog. And that’s what Mephibosheth felt like – a splattered, stinking, dog corpse that people shuddered to look at.

Yet the king not only looked at him, but scraped him off the ground, cared for him, clothed him, fed him, and sat him at the royal table continuously.

From roadkill to a royal son. What mercy?

I wonder if Mephibosheth kept the chain of grace going?

Have you?

Go find your Mephibosheth and show the kindness of God to him.

Because sharing grace means more for everybody.

With all the attention that extroverts seek and get, especially in our over-connected media-saturated world (and church), you could be forgiven for thinking that there are few introverts left in the universe. However, statistics tell us that about 25% of people are introverts, with a further 25% having introverted tendencies depending on circumstances (I think I would put myself in this latter group). And if the church has about the same ratios, that means about 50% of us struggle to reach out with the Gospel to others just because of our personality type.

So, can we learn anything from Lisa’s strategies for Business networking and apply them to Gospel networking? I believe we can. Consider the three she summarizes in An Introvert’s Guide to Networking, over at the Harvard Business Review.

I learned to appreciate my introversion rather than repudiate it.
I have met so many introverts in business who talk about introversion as if it’s a malady that one must get over in order to be successful. This is wrong. Introversion is simply a preference for the inner world of ideas because this is where we get our energy. By understanding and accepting this preference, introverts can optimize time spent with their ideas to refine them and recharge. This allows them to be as powerful and persuasive as possible when networking situations arise.

I recognized that one-on-one conversations would be my lifeline during networking. Generally speaking, business events — and particularly networking events that require engaging with groups — are demanding for introverts. An antidote to this, I learned, is to seek out conversations with one individual at a time. When I approach events this way I have more productive conversations and form better business relationships — and I’m less drained by the experience.

I stopped being afraid to be the one to reach out.
My inner introvert used to think that making the effort to introduce myself was risky. I worried that my target would not be interested in talking with me or that I would make them uncomfortable. I learned over time that when I extended my hand with a smile and an introduction my effort would be reciprocated, even when I approached executives above my rank.

I learned to prioritize time to re-energize.
While it can be tempting to go from a networking lunch right back to work, or from a networking cocktail event right to a dinner, if you’re an introvert and you do that you won’t be able to bring your best self to your next commitment. Take the time to recharge, whether by walking from the lunch back to work, or by finding 30 minutes alone between cocktails and dinner.

Now, fellow introverts, go out into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature – albeit one at a time and with 30 minute breaks in between.

Thousands of dollars, I’m afraid. Mega-church territory.

Or $99! Local church territory!

Have a look at this great offer from SermonAudio. Anyone who knows Steven Lee, CEO of SermonAudio, knows his passion for supporting evangelism through the local church. And this affordable iPhone App for local churches is just the latest in a long line of innovative services that Steven has brought to us throughout the years (see this new blog service as well).

Steven says, “This App is just one more way we’re trying to service the local church and reach more people. If people in the local church can get excited about their church’s sermons and ministry, it might be a good way for them to introduce friends to their church, as it not only supports the regular archive of sermons, videos, and live webcasts, but also photos of church events, blogs, twitter, and more. I wanted to make it as close to a ‘one-stop’ app for the church as possible.”
 
“The other thing was that I noticed that only the rather large ministries were able to afford to have their own apps, and I felt if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for the ‘little guy’ as well. And we’re all about the little guy on SermonAudio. So, I wanted to achieve a price that was ‘game-changing’ affordable for any-sized church.”

“I talked with one pastor at Steve Lawson’s conference and they said they looked into getting an iphone app developed, but it was several thousand dollars – impossible for a small church.So, that’s another reason why i felt the need to do this. Plus, it was simply *possible* for us to do it. We already had a SermonAudio app and so the tools were in place for us to make the church app. We had to streamline the process to make our work as efficient as possible. So that took a bit of work. But the hard part is done – the churches can enjoy the fruits of our labor!”

Here’s a sample to check out.