Hi, I'm David Bercot. And tonight we're going to be talking about the three basic characteristics of churches who excel in evangelism. Now, the word evangelism can encompass many things, and it certainly would include overseas missions. But when I use the word tonight, I'm going to be primarily referring to witnessing and winning converts to Christ in our own communities. Now, I have to be totally honest with you, I'm not a very good evangelist myself. My spiritual gift is in teaching, not in witnessing.
But that doesn't mean that I'm excused from witnessing. No, witnessing is a responsibility of every Christian and of every church. So you may be wondering, David, why are you speaking on a subject in which you don't personally excel? Well, it's because I'm in the same boat as most other kingdom Christians. Now by the phrase " Kingdom Christians, " I'm referring to Christians who take the Sermon on the Mount literally and try to live by its teachings with the power of the Holy Spirit.
These are Christians who understand the significance of the kingdom of God. Kingdom Christians understand that the essence of Christianity is an obedient love-faith relationship with Christ. So the term would include groups like the Anabaptist and brethren, but it's certainly not limited to those groups. Now, from what I've personally seen, most kingdom Christians today do very little witnessing. And when we do witness, we're not very successful.
Now, there are exceptions to that general rule, but that would describe most kingdom churches today. Our churches grow, if they grow at all, through our children, and through attracting people who are already committed Christians. We actually convert very few people who don't already strongly believe in Christ. Now, I apologize if this is stepping on your toes, but I think if we're all honest, those of us who belong to Kingdom Christian churches, that we would have to admit this is the general situation.
Now, the problem is not the message of kingdom Christianity. The New Testament Christians and the early Christians before the Council of Nicaea were all kingdom Christians. Yet they converted people right and left. I'm talking about converting people who had no belief whatsoever in the God of the Bible. And in their early years, both the Anabaptists and the brethren excelled in evangelism, and they grew rapidly. The Waldensians were originally kingdom Christians, and they were extremely successful in evangelism.
So we should never imagine that evangelism just doesn't work for kingdom Christians. That it's too hard to just take somebody straight out of the world and bring them to the point of surrendering their entire life to Christ and embracing all of His teachings. Now, of course, we can't do that in our own power, but the Holy Spirit has the power to do it. It's been done over and over and over again through the centuries. Now, as I've said, I'm not someone who is personally gifted in evangelism myself.
But I am a keen observer of others. And that's why this message is entitled " The Three Characteristics of Churches Who Excel in Evangelism. " And I'm not talking about the church that I personally attend. We're no more effective than most other kingdom Christians in making new converts from people who don't already believe in Christ.
So when I talk about the characteristics of churches that excel in evangelism, I'm talking about churches who've had explosive growth and who are still very effective in evangelizing others. We kingdom Christians can learn from them. In fact, we must learn from them. Witnessing that is spreading the news of the kingdom and helping it to expand is not an option. It's a requirement for a born-again Christian. Jesus made this very clear in his parable of the talents.
It's Matthew 25 verses 14 through 30, and I want to read those to you. Okay, we read, " For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability. And immediately he went on a journey. Then he who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made another five talents. And likewise, he who had received two gained two more also.
But he who had received one went and dug in the ground and hid his lord's money. After a long time, the Lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, " Lord, you delivered to me five talents. Look, I have gained five more talents besides them. " His Lord said to him, " Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.
" He also who had received two talents came and said, " Lord, you delivered to me two talents. Look, I have gained two more talents besides them. " His Lord said to him, " Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord. " Then he who had received the one talent came and said, " Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.
And I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours. But his Lord answered and said to him, " You wicked and lazy servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. Therefore, take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents.
For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Now, to be sure in this parable, Jesus doesn't define what he means by doing business with our talents and gaining more talent.
But surely it includes evangelism and making disciples, for that was the very commission Jesus gave his apostles at the conclusion of the book of Matthew. That book ends by saying, " Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. " That's Matthew 28:19 and 20.
And again, it was Jesus who said, " And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. " So if we say that it's just too hard, it's just too difficult to take an unbeliever and convert him to being a kingdom Christian, well, who are we like in that parable of the talents?
Aren't we basically like the servant who was given the one talent, and he went and hid it in the ground, saying, " Well, I know you to be a hard man, but look, I haven't lost anything. I preserved it. It's there in the ground. " Here it is, I'm giving it back to you. But that's totally unacceptable to Jesus. We're supposed to be out here working for His kingdom. And if not, he says then we are cast into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
Now, please don't fall into the silly interpretation that so many people today place on this parable. They hear the word talent, and they think that means the natural gifts we're born with, like a talent for music, or for art, or for something like that. Nobody on earth associated the word talent with those sort of things in Jesus ' day. A talent was a silver coin. It was a form of money. He's talking about giving his servants money, and they're supposed to do business with that money.
Now, it's because of the wrong interpretation of that parable, people thinking that the money given to us are our natural-born talents, that the word talent has come into the English language. In other words, we got our English word talent from this parable from a misinterpretation of it. But Jesus said He gave the talents to each one according to his ability. So it's not our abilities that are the talents, but rather, as he said before, to whom much is given much is demanded.
He knows we don't all have the same abilities, and he doesn't expect more of us than what we're able to do. But he does expect us to do business for the kingdom with the abilities we have and with that precious gift he's entrusted to us and interest in his kingdom. Now I realize that not everyone is a gifted evangelist. In fact, there are very few of us who are going to have the same results that say the apostle Paul did when he witnessed.
Perhaps the primary work for the kingdom that God has given you is in a totally different area. As I said before, there's no doubt in my mind that the primary work God has entrusted to me is to focus on teaching. And that is one form of working for the kingdom. And yet we should all still be seeking to make disciples. The good news of the kingdom has to be preached, and each one of us needs to do our part. We read in the book of Acts that when the disciples were scattered by persecution, what did they do?
Well, wherever they went, they talked about the kingdom of God. They preached Christ. It didn't just depend on the apostles, they were all doing this. So it will never be true that an entire church is excused from making disciples, as though nobody in the church is being asked to do that by God. Even less so will it ever be true that an entire group of churches is excused from witnessing and making disciples. Being a kingdom Christian is not a reason not to evangelize.
Rather, because we're kingdom Christians, we must evangelize. And it's really sad that in the message I'm going to be sharing with you this evening, I have to hold up as models two groups who are not kingdom Christians. In other words, I can't praise these groups for their beliefs. But I can, and I do admire their diligence and their skill in evangelism. They have a diligence and skill that puts most kingdom Christians to shame.
And I know a lot about the two model groups I'm going to be talking about because I formerly belonged to each one of those groups. The first group I'm going to be holding up as a model, not as a model for their beliefs or anything else, but for their effectiveness in evangelism are Jehovah's Witnesses. Now I say that they're not kingdom Christians, but they do take the sermon on the Mount quite literally, and they are very focused on the Kingdom of God.
Unfortunately, their preaching of the Kingdom of God is tied up in their sectarian view of themselves as the one true church and is intertwined with a lot of doctrinal errors that they hold to. The second group I want to hold up as a model are the evangelical Christians. Now by evangelicals, if that's not a word you're familiar with, I'm referring to groups like the Baptists, the Charismatics, the Holiness Churches, the Pentecostals. The word " evangelical " is quite a broad term.
It basically means a conservative Christian who holds to the basic tenets of Reformation theology. Unfortunately, Reformation theology doesn't embrace the teachings of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount, at least not as a way to live. And that's why I don't refer to evangelicals as kingdom Christians, but I make no judgment about where they stand with God.
They are the ones who by far have taken the lead in spreading the gospel about Jesus Christ throughout the entire world, even if there are some defects in their theology. And Jehovah's Witnesses likewise, with even more defects in their theology, are in every country of the world. And it would be hard to find a city of any size in the United States that doesn't have both evangelical churches and a kingdom hall of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Now both of these groups, I not only have observed, but I've personally participated in their evangelism programs. And I can see why they have been so successful, and why so many kingdom churches today aren't very successful. And in analyzing these two groups, I've noticed three characteristics or principles that are true of both groups. Now they apply them in very different ways.
The way that Jehovah's Witnesses witness and the way that an evangelical witnesses are quite different in a number of aspects, and yet they embrace the same principles. As kingdom churches, we too need to embrace the same three characteristics that I'm going to be talking about. But again, our application is going to be somewhat different from either Jehovah's Witnesses or the evangelicals. So now let's talk about these three principles.
Principle number one is to be very effective, evangelism has to be a full-time vision and a top priority of a church. By that I mean that witnessing and outreach have to be embedded in the very fiber of your church. Concern about evangelism and an interest in reaching the community around you have to be part of every service, every program, and every decision that we make as a church.
You can't just organize a church around meeting your own needs and what you want as members of the church, and then think that you can effectively tack on evangelism as well. Let me give you an illustration. For thousands of years, humans have had the desire to be able to fly. But their early attempts were based on simply trying to tack on wings to an existing structure, that is, our own human bodies. You know, people looked at the birds, and what seemed to be different about them is that they had wings.
And so it seemed like, well, if you build a huge pair of wings for a man, and he flaps them, then you should be able to fly. Well, a number of people got hurt even killed trying that. What they didn't realize is that God designed birds, every part of them, to be able to fly. He didn't just tack on wings to an existing animal. Rather, out of every fiber of the bird, the bones are very lightweight. Their shape is very streamlined. The wings aren't just something that you flap, they're designed to be aerodynamic.
He designed the birds from scratch to be able to fly. And that's what it has to be with the church that effectively evangelizes. It has to be built from scratch. You can't just have a church and then think, oh, well, we'll start passing out literature or something, and that's going to enable us to effectively bring people to Christ and our church to grow. It doesn't work that way. Let me give you an illustration from sports. I'm not a big sports fan now, but like most Americans, I was growing up.
And I still remember what was probably the most memorable football game ever played, or at least one of the more memorable ones. This is often known as the Ice Bowl. It was actually the Professional Football Championship, I think in the 1967 football season. Now the two teams playing were the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. And as the game neared the end, the Dallas Cowboys were in the lead.
They had been controlling the ball for the last part of the game, and it looked like they probably had the game sewn up. The Green Bay Packers got their ball with just a few minutes left in the game, but they managed to move the ball down the football field, and then in the final seconds they scored a touchdown and won the game. Now what I remember about it isn't just the fact that it was an exciting game and it was played in temperatures, I think, something like 15 below zero.
It was extremely cold why it's known as the Ice Bowl. Anyway, after the game, the reporters were interviewing the coach of the Green Bay Packers, whose name was Vince Lombardi. And they asked him, " What is it that you said to your team right there at the end of the game to motivate them to be able to make that final drive and score the touchdown? " And this was his answer. He said, " It's not about what you say to them in a situation like that. It's something that you build into them all season long.
" In other words, if you haven't built character and determination in your team from training camp and through the regular season, you can't think that in the championship games, somehow you're going to give them a speech and that's going to enable them to score a touchdown. It's the same way with evangelism.
If that wasn't the focus around which your church was organized, and which your church constantly thinks about, and weighs in its every decision, don't think that you can just go out on the streets and start passing out tracts and talking to people, and you're going to be successful in making converts from unbelievers to kingdom Christianity. As I said, the two groups that I'm going to use as models, not for their doctrines or practices, but for their effective evangelism, are Jehovah's Witnesses and evangelicals.
And I want to describe to you how they apply this principle of building in evangelism in every fiber of their church. Now you might not like the way they apply the principle. In our kingdom churches, we might want to apply this principle differently than the way they do, but we must apply it is the point. Now let's start with Jehovah's Witnesses. And I'm going to use first person in talking about them because I was a Jehovah's Witness. I participated in the very things I'm discussing.
Evangelism was so embedded in every fiber of our churches that it affected, for example, when we held our church services. Most churches meet Sunday morning. And actually, many Jehovah's Witnesses have their primary service Sunday morning as well. But the congregation I went to, we had our meetings on Sunday afternoon. Now why did we do that? It was so that we could go out on Sunday mornings and evangelize. And guess who you reach Sunday morning when you go house to house?
You reach people who don't already have a church home. You reach unbelievers. You reach unchurched people. You reach people who are burnt out on conventional Christianity. So even though I think all of us would have preferred to have our meeting on Sunday morning, we moved it to Sunday afternoon so that we could be more effective in our evangelism. Also, evangelism affected how we held our Sunday service. How we held our Sunday service was specifically designed for bringing in unbelievers to our service.
Now we had a two-hour service, but we reasoned that somebody who is not already a Christian might find that a little bit long and it might get boring for them. Also, we wanted to reach people who were very anti-church. Those were the ones who generally responded to the witness's message. So we would have our sermon say at three o'clock in the afternoon, but it would not be a normal church service. We didn't have a prayer before it or any singing before it. Now that's certainly not something I'm advocating.
I don't think that was necessary, particularly today, but there was a time when people were used to going to public lectures. Before there was radio and television and that sort of thing, people would pay actually to go hear a lecture of, say, a scientist or a world traveler or something like that. So a person would go to the Kingdom Hall and could just sit and hear a lecture without feeling like he was being shoved into a religious setting. Except that the message, of course, would be from the Bible.
No collection plate would be passed or anything like that. In fact, we would tell people, leave your wallet at home when you come. You won't need it. All right, when the sermon was over with, we then had a 5 to 10 minute break. So the people that we had invited to come and hear the message could now get up and go home without feeling embarrassed.
Like I say, there was an intermission, people were mingling, they would get introduced to people, people would shake their hands, and then they could comfortably walk out the door without it seeming strange. All right, then when those people left, then we would begin more of a worship service with song and prayer and go into our Bible study time that was more like Sunday school in most churches. Now again, I'm not advocating that we should do that with our services.
I'm just saying this is how the witnesses thought. They did everything with the new convert in mind, while at the same time trying not to compromise anything that they needed to grow strong Christians in the church. Another thing that we did, we had two midweek services rather than one. One of them would be what we would call a cell group or prayer group meeting. The congregation was divided into several smaller groups.
We would meet at someone's home, which made it very easy to invite a friend, invite someone you'd been witnessing to. It was limited to one hour, and we assumed there would be non-witnesses present. All right, then we had a second meeting during the week that was designed pretty much for Jehovah's Witnesses only. In that meeting, we worked to hone our preaching and teaching skills, and we practice to become more effective in our door-to-door witnessing.
For example, we would have skits where someone would be offering the current issue of the Watchtower or the latest book of Jehovah's Witnesses, and somebody else would pretend to play the part of a householder. And they might say, " Oh, no, I'm not interested in that. " And then the witness would come back with a statement to try to get around their objection. And so that's how we learned to be effective in our door-to-door ministry. But it didn't just stop there.
The importance of witnessing was constantly drummed into us as witnesses. As a result, the individual witness was always looking for opportunities to witness to somebody. We learned how to steer a conversation towards Jesus and towards the kingdom of God. We learned questions that you could ask somebody, say somebody at work or somebody on the airplane next to your bus, et cetera. Things like that that could get a conversation going where you could steer it towards a biblical discussion.
As witnesses, evangelism even influenced where you lived. One of the things the witnesses emphasized was serving where the need was greater. Let's say you lived in a town where the size of the congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses was quite large. And you were able to go around and call on every door in your community, say, once every six months or so. Well, there were other places in the United States where maybe it would be once every two years that a witness might get around.
Well, you were encouraged to move there and help build a congregation so that there would be plenty of witnesses in that area. In other words, witnesses were scattered throughout the United States. Whereas in our kingdom churches, they tend to be heavily weighted in certain areas like Pennsylvania or Ohio. Very few kingdom churches in Texas or New Mexico or Nevada. Likewise, kingdom Christians are well underrepresented throughout the Deep South.
Okay, again, I'm not endorsing necessarily any of these applications, although I would endorse this idea of moving where the need is greater. But I'm giving you an illustration of how in the witnesses evangelism was embedded in every fiber of what their congregations did. All right, let's talk about the evangelicals for a minute. Now they have that same all-encompassing ethos of evangelism as Jehovah's Witnesses do, but their application is quite different.
They too want their service to be user-friendly to somebody who is unchurched, who doesn't believe in Christ, who just comes in off the street, who's been handed a tract or invited by their neighbor or family member to come to church. So they focus on making their service very interesting. They have seminaries where their pastors are trained to be effective in preaching. And they focus on hiring a gifted pastor who is particularly a good preacher or a good people-to-people person.
They often have a paid music leader, or it may be a volunteer, but somebody who's highly gifted in that area. Nowadays, they would make large use of audio-visual enhancements. Often there will be a screen behind the pastor, and there will be an LCD projector. While he's preaching a sermon, there may be pictures that are shown on the screen behind him or to the side of him that pertain to the message that he's giving.
This reaches out to today's audience because most people are used to watching television, movies, things like that. They're very oriented towards visual aids. Again, evangelicals have all sorts of parachurch ministries. These are groups who aren't a specific church, but are formed by members of various churches, and they work alongside the churches, often to target specific groups of people, particularly youth. And they are quite effective in making converts out of young people.
For example, as you may know, I go to Honduras twice a year because I'm involved in a ministry to the poor there. Now in one of the large cities of Honduras, I visited a youth center that is a ministry sponsored by either one church or a group of churches in that city. And what they do is after school, they have a bus that brings in teenagers to this center. Now in Honduras, there aren't always a lot of things for young people to do, except maybe play soccer in the streets or something like that.
Well, here at the Youth Center, they have basketball courts, all sorts of video games, a number of things that would attract just ordinary, unbelieving youth off of the streets. Often the people they're attracting are drug addicts or prostitutes or children who come from broken homes who have a lot of problems. Well, they play contemporary Christian music there while the young people are playing.
And then I think it's about every 30 minutes, there's a 10-minute message or so, a brief sermon that is particularly focused to the ones who are there to help bring them to a decision to give their lives to Christ. There are also pastors who are well-trained in interacting with troubled youth, that sort of thing. In the United States, a lot of churches also have specially focused campus ministries.
I know if you go to the typical university, right next to the campus, there will be a Methodist, a Baptist house, and that of other churches that are places where young people can hang out, play wholesome games, get introduced to other Christians. And it's a strong witnessing tool, particularly to people who are at college, are at a very impressionable age. It's easy to reach them with any sort of vision, whether it's a far left one, a radical right one, or a Christian one.
Then every summer, most evangelical churches have vacation Bible school that not only tries to bring the youth in their church to Christ, but to reach out in the neighborhood. And I know these are very effective for people who don't go to church, they'll often take their children there. I mean, if nothing else, it's like free babysitting for a week. Often the children get interested in the church, and then through the children, the adults perhaps may start attending as well.
Now again, I'm not endorsing any of those methods that I've just talked about, but my point is that just as it is with the witnesses, in evangelical churches, every fiber, every decision they make has in mind what effect will this have on evangelism. And they're always looking for new ways, more effective ways to reach the lost.
This principle of making evangelism one of the highest priorities in our churches so that every decision, our services, how we interact with society around us, where we live, things like that that is focused on reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That principle, if a church is going to be effective in reaching the lost, that principle needs to be there in the church.
But I think as kingdom Christians, particularly as Anabaptists, since I go to an Anabaptist church, our application is going to be very different, but the principle needs to be the same. All right, let's move on to the second principle, the second characteristic of churches that are effective in evangelism. And that is, the church works together as a team to bring in converts. The entire congregation works together to the same end. One person doesn't have to do it all. Let me use another illustration from sports.
Back in the 1980s, the late ' 80s, the best basketball player, in fact, most would consider him the best professional basketball player of all time, was Michael Jordan. And I remember reading an interview with the coach of the team that was repeatedly beating Michael Jordan and his team, the Chicago Bulls, in the playoffs. That team was the Detroit Pistons, and they were able to defeat Michael Jordan's team because of their great defense and their defense work together as a team.
And I remember the coach saying, " It's not up to one individual player to stop Michael Jordan. It's all five of our players who are out on the court who work together to stop him. " He basically has to find a way to score even though all five of them are concentrating on him. Evangelism has to be a team project as well. Let me, again, go back to the application of this principle used first by Jehovah's Witnesses and then evangelicals.
As a Jehovah's Witness, you receive the necessary training to be able to go out and witness. It wasn't up to you to just have to think of a way to do it, and on your own, go out and try to witness to people. No, there was ongoing training. As I mentioned earlier, one of our mid-week meetings was focused mainly on learning effective techniques of witnessing. Also, you weren't expected on your own to just go out and start knocking on doors to witness to people. You did it as a group.
Everyone would meet at the Kingdom Hall that morning when we were going to go house to house, and then we would divide up into smaller groups, enough that would fit into one car, and then we would go out from there. And generally, when you were going door to door, you were doing it with another person, particularly when you were new at it. You almost always were assigned to be going with someone who was more experienced than you.
So if you got into a tight jam, there was someone there who would be able to help get you out of it. Also, you didn't get as easily discouraged because you were having a spiritual conversation with the person who was working with you as you went from house to house. And when you got back to the car, everyone would share any interesting experiences that they had during their work that morning. Not only that, you had a constant supply of literature coming from the Watchtower's Publishing House.
Not only that, you had a time-tested plan of action. You didn't have to come up with an idea of, " Okay, we've got a big city out here, a big county, how do we reach everyone? " Now I'm not saying the witness method is necessarily the most effective, but it did definitely work. That method was to go canvassing door-to-door with literature produced by the Watchtower.
And then if somebody showed some interest, if you got into an interesting discussion, if someone purchased a book from you, then you would return maybe a week later and ask them if they'd had a chance to read some of the book, what they thought about it. And you work toward setting up a regular Bible study with them on a weekly basis. Now, most of the life that I spent as a Jehovah's Witness, I was fairly young. So it wasn't very easy for me to try to convert an adult by myself.
But when I did get a Bible study started, I had adults who were willing to come with me on the study. So I wasn't usually there by myself. So again, the point was, it was a team effort. You didn't have to go out there by yourself. I mean, I would have been scared, petrified, if it was up to me, just alone, to go out there and try to start converting people or witnessing to them. All right, that's how the witnesses do it. What about evangelicals? Again, the same principle is there. They work together as a team.
Now, their path to conversion is much shorter than that of Jehovah's Witnesses. Like I say, Jehovah's Witnesses, it was a matter of studying the Bible with them, often for several years, to bring them to the point where they were convinced Jehovah's Witnesses were the one true church, and they wanted to surrender their life to Jesus Christ within the Jehovah's Witness context. For the evangelicals, it's usually just trying to get someone to the point of inviting Jesus into their heart as their personal Savior.
So often that can be done just on one meeting in a 30-minute or one hour conversation. But again, it's a team approach. The individual evangelical doesn't necessarily have to witness to someone and bring them to the point of conversion. Even though, like I say, it's a much easier thing for an evangelical than a Jehovah's Witness because of their different views of salvation and what it means to be a Christian. But the basic team approach as an evangelical is you invite someone to your church.
You already know that the church service is going to be geared for newcomers for people who aren't converted. Or maybe you'll invite them to a prayer group at someone's home or to a men's prayer breakfast or a lady's Bible study somewhere. They have all kinds of different outreaches that way. As I mentioned earlier, they have professionally trained, very effective preachers and pastors as a general rule. So you know if you can just get them to church, they're probably going to really enjoy the sermon.
Also, it's very common in evangelical churches, such as Baptist churches, that every single sermon at the end is going to contain an invitation. For people, if you have not yet invited Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior, will do it now. And time is offered right there to help them do it. Evangelicals also schedule large revivals often, where again, you just try to get a friend there. Once they're there, the evangelist is very effective in bringing people to make a decision.
An experience that I had that really impressed me on the team approach was about, oh, I don't know, 17, 18 years ago, a classmate of mine, a friend of mine from law school, had decided to get out of law and become an ordained minister, which is what he did. And he invited me to his ordination, which was in Tyler, Texas, at the largest Baptist Church in town known as Green Acres Baptist Church.
Well, like I say, I was just going there to be present to witness his ordination and to give him encouragement and share in the joy of that very momentous time in his life. But no sooner did I walk in the door than there were people who were trained as greeters who came up, greeted me. They knew that I wasn't a member there. They gave me a name badge that stuck to my shirt, so immediately everyone around knew that I was not a member and they could come up and they immediately knew my name.
Okay, well then they showed me where I could sit during the service. And when the service began, the pastor had all of us visitors stand up. And you know everybody applauded and you just felt like, " Wow, I'm like a king here. " And then afterwards, people came up to me, they said, " Oh, we have a Bible study group, a prayer group for people just your age. We'd sure like you to come. It meets on you know Thursday night, whatever it was.
" Now I wasn't interested in joining their church or anything like that, but I was very impressed by how well-organized they were, how the whole church worked as a team for just somebody walking in the door to make them feel very, very welcome. And to have a tailored program just for them to invite them to. Okay, now we come to our third and final principle, and that is to have a vision that can be easily encapsulated and marketed.
Now that might sound like a strange term to you, marketed, but Jesus used trade terms in his parable of the talents given to the people. He said he gave these different servants money, and they were to go out and do business with that money, to trade and earn more money with it. So we need to have a kingdom vision, not something made up, but something that anybody would want to embrace. When I was right out of high school, one of my first jobs was selling encyclopedias, door-to-door.
And I remember my manager telling me, " David, people don't buy a product, they buy a story. " Now by that, he didn't mean that you make up some fictitious story about the product you're selling. We were selling a very high-quality product, in fact.
Rather, you had to help the people see what a difference this set of encyclopedias would make in the life of their home, what it would do for their children in doing homework, how it would excite them to want to learn more about different kinds of birds, or about the history of the West, or something like that. There's a saying in the sales world that people don't buy a steak, they buy the sizzle.
In other words, it wasn't enough that we had a good product, a set of books of encyclopedias that were well worth the money. No, we had to take it farther and help people see how this would enhance their entire life. And it's that way with every product. I remember years ago when we were looking into a product that would enable us to grind wheat and bake our own bread at home, someone gave us a video about a product called the Kitchen Champ. It was a mixer, a blender, all sorts of things in one package.
Now apparently it was a good product, but just showing someone, see here's a blender mixer, and the price is $985 or whatever it was. Well that probably wouldn't sell too many of them. But in this video, you had a person showing just how the kitchen champ would change your entire life. Your family would suddenly start eating healthier meals. You would be grinding your own flour, baking your own bread, making your own pasta.
You'd be able to create all of these different delicious dinners and snacks and treats for your family. Your children would be crushing their own ice and making snow cones in the summer. Your whole family's life would be happier and healthier if you just had this product. Well, that's how you have to sell Christianity as well.
A lot of people would want to be Christians if they only realized what a change it would make in their lives, how much happier they would be not only here on earth, but have eternal life ahead of them. Now, Jehovah's Witnesses were able to take their particular version of Christianity and encapsulate it into something you could sum up in a paragraph that would make people want to be a Jehovah's Witness. Their basic story was, the church totally went apostate soon after the apostles died.
But in the end times, it was God's plan to restore His church that had remained dormant for so many centuries. So he raised up a man, Charles Russell, who predicted that a time of woe would begin in 1914. And just as he predicted, a new era was ushered in in 1914 with World War I and its aftermath. We could point to the fact that even secular historians acknowledged that 1914 was one of the major turning points in human history, and this was the year that Charles Russell had foretold.
Not only that, we explained to people that the churches were all teaching false doctrines, that most of the people who go there are hypocrites who live no differently than the world. In war after war, these so-called Christians have slaughtered one another, Catholics killing Catholics, Baptists killing Baptists, et cetera. We would paint the churches and ministers as money grubbers who had been hiding the truth from their people all along. In contrast, we would explain, in God's true church, it isn't like that.
In the true church, everyone loves one another and looks after one another. Little Christians don't even kill their enemies, let alone one of their fellow Christians. In God's true church, there's no racial prejudice. There's no class distinction. Not only that, but marriages are permanent and happy. Husbands love their wives and cherish them. Wives submit to their husbands. Children love and obey their parents. Now, who wouldn't want to experience all of those things?
Well, as we would explain, Jehovah's Witnesses are the true church where you can actually experience these things I've described. Now, we didn't normally present it in such a short package when we were witnessing to someone house to house or in a casual conversation. We usually started out with somewhat of a more indirect approach. And as I said, our goal was to set up a home Bible study.
But in the end, and it might take six months or two years, people would capture this vision and decide, yes, I'd like to be a part of that. Well, what about evangelicals? How do they market Christianity? Well, again, their approach is a lot simpler than that of Jehovah's Witnesses. One of their favorite evangelism methods is to ask someone, " If you died right now and you're at the doors of heaven and Jesus asked you, why should I let you in, what would you say?
" Well, of course, most people are going to say, " Well, I've lived a pretty good life. I've given money for the poor and gone to church throughout a lot of my life. " And the evangelical will respond, " No, God says that all of your righteous deeds are like filthy rags to Him. No one's going to be saved because they're good.
" And then you go through the four spiritual laws that sin entered the world through Adam, that all men are sinners, that nobody can save himself, that only by faith in Jesus Christ alone can we be saved. So all you have to do is to acknowledge you're a sinner, that you need salvation, and then invite Jesus into your heart. That's all it takes, according to evangelicals. And if you do that and really mean it, you're now a born-again Christian. No matter what happens, you can't lose your salvation.
You have a guaranteed ticket into heaven. But out of appreciation for Jesus and what He did for you, certainly you want to live by His teachings and you want to spread the gospel to others so that they too can be saved. Not only that, but as a born-again Christian, you can be part of a church family where your spiritual, emotional, friendship, and even recreational needs will be met in a wholesome atmosphere of love. Now again, who wouldn't want that? Who could say no to that?
Again, the Jehovah's Witness approach, the evangelical approach, are quite different. But both of them have effectively encapsulated what they believe to be the true message of Christianity, and are able to present it in a way that makes people want to join them. But what about us? What about we kingdom Christians? Why are we not very effective in evangelism?
And again, I'm not saying that no kingdom Christians are, but as a general rule, at least the large bodies like the Anabaptist, the brethren, they do make some converts, but most of their growth is from bringing forth children and by attracting people who are already very committed Christians, generally homeschoolers who maybe start using their homeschool material. And some kingdom Christians are fairly effective in overseas missions. But right here in our local communities, why aren't we very effective?
Well, let's look at these three principles again. The first characteristic is that evangelism has to be built in the very fiber of our congregations. Every decision we make, how we have our meetings, when we have them, where we live, how we live, has to have in mind this overall vision of reaching the lost. But let's be honest, that's not what's built into the fiber of most of our churches. We're not in an evangelistic mode. We're in a preservation mode. That is, we don't want to lose the good things that we have.
And kingdom Christians do have something that is very good. Unfortunately, preservation and evangelism tend to pull in opposite directions. Picture in your mind the old kind of balance scale, where if you set down a one-pound bag of nails on one of the scales, well, it will immediately go down, and the other scale will immediately rise up. They work against each other. But then you would put a one pound weight on the other scale, and they would come back into balance. But each side works against the other one.
Preservation and evangelism unfortunately work that way as well. When our primary focus is not to lose what we have, we tend to depend upon rules and standards, things like that to keep ourselves and our children separate from the world, protected comfortably from the worldly society around us. But these very things that protect us are walls that keep other people out. Now I'm not saying throw out preservation and let's put everything into evangelism. I think some evangelical churches do that very thing.
I mean, they'll do almost anything to make converts, throwing out important doctrines of Christianity, important teachings on lifestyle, just to be able to more effectively reach other people. See, that's putting the scale off balance the other direction. Somewhere there is a happy medium between preserving what we need to preserve and yet still being able to reach the lost.
Another thing that works against us is the siege mentality that so many kingdom churches have versus the mentality of evangelicals and Jehovah's Witnesses. I think I'm being fair in saying that the typical Kingdom Church, an Anabaptist Church, a brethren church, something like that, we would view ourselves as a castle under siege. We've built a moat around us, we've built up strong walls, because the world wants to get in.
It wants to bring all kinds of destructive things like divorce, violence, immorality, drunkenness, on and on. And so we're back behind our walls, effectively defending our perimeters, keeping the world out. Now see how Jehovah's witnesses would look at things and how evangelicals look at things is the world is the castle with walls trying to keep us out. And as a Jehovah's Witness or as a Baptist, you're not afraid of the world. They're afraid of you. At least that's your mindset.
And so you're out there to break down their walls, to fill in their moats, and to capture their people and bring them over to the side of Christ. Very, very different worldviews. And I have to say the New Testament mentality is that of the evangelicals and the Jehovah's Witnesses. We've somehow lost the New Testament mentality. When you read Acts, were they sitting back afraid of the world building walls so that the unbelieving Jews and the unbelieving Gentiles wouldn't defile them?
No, it was the world who was afraid of them. It was the people of the world saying, " These people who've turned the world upside down have now come to our city. " And yet the New Testament church was also concerned about preservation. A lot of the writings in the New Testament talk about sin and other things that were coming into the church. So besieging the world doesn't mean that we're not also careful to watch our own defense as well.
Okay, let's look at that second characteristic of churches that evangelize effectively, that they work together as a team to bring people to Christ to make converts out of the world. Is that the way it works in our churches? Again, my experience has been that if you're a kingdom Christian and you want to evangelize, you're pretty much on your own. We don't have an abundance of good literature aimed at reaching the general public. Now we have good schooling materials.
We have literature that is good in building up discipleship among ourselves. But as far as reaching the lost, reaching people who have no concept of Christ, we don't really have an abundance of good literature, not literature that will catch their eye, catch their attention, and draw them in. The services in our churches are not normally designed with the public in mind. We build our services over what will be effective for us.
Often we just follow the traditions that were handed down from our forefathers, and that's the way we have church. If we do change things around a little bit, usually it's for what will be effective spiritually for the congregation. It's not usually in mind of what will help us bring in people from the world, help us save the lost. Now I certainly don't mean to imply that we don't do anything as kingdom churches.
One of the excellent practices that most Anabaptist churches have is that of having hospitality meals, of having designated people to provide hospitality to visitors at church. Now we didn't have that as Jehovah's Witnesses, and we didn't have that in the evangelical church I attended. There were individuals who might often invite a newcomer over for a Sunday meal or something like that. But that's a very excellent practice that the plain churches have.
Finally, that third characteristic, a vision that is easily encapsulated and marketed. Well, rather than having what the evangelicals have or the witnesses have, what I've seen in most conservative Mennonite churches or brethren churches or what are sometimes called remnant churches is that we have a major identity crisis. You see, originally the Anabaptists, that is the kingdom Christians and the Reformers were in two opposing camps.
Luther and the other Reformers put the Anabaptists to death because their message of Christianity differed considerably from that of the Reformers. But today, if you go to any conservative Mennonite Church and ask to look at their statement of faith, it will probably read almost exactly like the statement of faith of the Baptist Church across town, except that it will contain provisions on Christian living on, say, non-resistance, non-conformity to the world, and on divorce and remarriage.
But what it will say about salvation will be almost exactly what a Baptist statement of faith would have. The result from what I've observed is that when conservative Mennonites attempt to evangelize, and likewise, people from other kingdom churches, remnant churches, things like that, they often use exactly the same approach as the evangelicals, or at least that is their attempt. In fact, often they use the same literature. They ordered tracts and pamphlets, even books from evangelical publishing houses.
And that creates a serious problem. You see, the evangelicals, when they hand someone a tract saying, " Just invite Jesus in your heart, and you'll be born again and you have a ticket to heaven that can't be canceled, " they truly believe that. They're not making up something. That is their concept of Christianity. They do believe that that's what the Bible teaches. But kingdom Christians don't believe that. We do believe that obedience is essential to salvation.
We do believe that there has to be an ongoing love faith relationship with Jesus Christ. So what happens today? This was not true back in the 1500s, but today, out of one side of our mouths, we say that we believe in salvation by faith alone. But then we have all of these rules that a person has to live by if they're going to join one of our churches. In fact, unless they agree to live by those rules, they can't be a member of our churches. They won't even be greeted as a brother in Christ.
Well, like Paul said, if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle? See, we sell people on one vision, the vision that evangelicals have, but then they're faced with a lifestyle of kingdom Christians that doesn't connect with the simple salvation message that we've preached to them. Now the problem isn't that we kingdom Christians don't have something very wonderful to offer to the outside world. We do. But we don't market it effectively.
We don't encapsulate our Christianity into something we can easily share with others. Well, in conclusion, let's review again these three characteristics of churches that evangelize effectively. The first is, to be effective, evangelism has to be a full-time vision and a top priority in every decision made in the Church. Number 2: The Church must work together as a team to bring in converts. And three, the Church has to have a vision that can be easily encapsulated and marketed or presented to people.
Now, if my church and your church were to embrace these three characteristics, then we would find that there are sheep out there looking for something more than what either the world or conventional Christianity has to offer. We, too, would be making disciples and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God.