I had the privilege of being raised
in a Christian home and being part of a Christian family, I remember spending a
lot of time with my Grandmother, in the latter years of her life, and she
used to tell me stories of her early Christian Life, she told me one story out
of many that impacted me greatly, in the 1930’s my great grandmother took
my Grandmother and one of her Sisters to hear the Evangelist George Jefferies
in Swansea, both my Gran and her sister had issues with their eyesight, and
both were healed at the meeting held by George Jefferies.
My mum’s parents Frank & Mildred Whitton were both Christians and very
involved in their local church in Resolven, my dad David was not raised in a
Christian family, and had contacts at a local Church in Pontardawe; through
them he went to hear Billy Graham in Swansea in 1958, where he became a
Christian. My Mum, Alison, became a Christian as a child.
Throughout my Christian Life, I’ve
seen and have been part of many evangelistic outreaches and strategies, I
remember being an eager and enthusiastic teenager and being part of an
evangelism team in Bradford, and seeing God save people and lives being changed
by the Good News of the Gospel, my dad was part of an evangelism team in the
1970’s and early 1980’s, I used to go with my dad, I think I was more of a team
mascot than part of that team but I loved being part of both teams.
For many years, Church Growth
here in the United Kingdom has been mostly transfer growth where people leave
one church and join another church, transfer growth can be successful it also
can be unsuccessful, I’m not going to say something positive or negative
about transfer growth, this is not the purpose of this post, for many
churches, evangelism is done through the spectrum of the Alpha Course and
similar courses, I think Alpha is great, but evangelism isn’t spelt
alpha, alpha can be part of an evangelism outreach programme but it isn’t the
entirety of an evangelism outreach programme/strategy. Some transfer growth can be due because there is more freedom for the Holy Spirit to move amongest us in some Churches.
There have been countless
evangelistic programmes/strategies some have been successful and many have been
unsuccessful, we invent strategies and ask God to bless our strategies, and we
wonder why they don’t work or fail our expectations, we read books attend
conferences on evangelism, research evangelism yet we don’t do any evangelism
or reluctantly evangelise.
We have superstar or
celebrity Christians who bring evangelistic outreaches to our towns and cities,
we pray that evangelist a will come to our town, then countless people will be
saved, when this doesn’t happens we pray for evangelist b to come, and
this cycle repeats itself for years and sometimes decades. Yet while we sit in
our comfortable pews, playing our self-indulgent games, people are going to a
lost and Christ less Eternity, The Lord hasn’t called us His Church to be full
of active and committed spectators rather he has called us and is calling us to
be active and committed participants in His Great Commission.
Matthew 28:18-20 New American
Standard Bible.
And Jesus came up and spoke to them,
saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of
all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am
with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Mark
16:15ff New American Standard Bible.
15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and
preach the gospel to all creation. 16 He who has
believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall
be condemned. 17 These signs will accompany
those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they
will speak with new tongues; 18 they
will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will
not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
I have often wondered, why here in the United Kingdom, our
evangelistic outreaches/programmes/strategies have either failed, or are less
effective than we hoped or dreamed, is our message the same Gospel Jesus
preached or is it either a watered down or wishy washy presentation of The Gospel?
What Gospel did Jesus preach ?
Matthew 4:22-24 New American Standard Bible
23 Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and
proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and
every kind of sickness among the people 24
The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who
were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs,
epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them.
