Category Archives: Evangelism

Why the world is not breaking down our church doors

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If, as we say, the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” is heaven’s Good News, and if this good news is the answer to mankind’s deepest, biggest, worst problems, and if it’s free and eternal and for everyone, one would think people would be crashing through the church doors to get in on it.

They’re not.

Why not?

Not only are they not breaking down our doors to partake of God’s free offer in Christ, most of our neighbors act as if the church is completely irrelevant to anything that concerns them. And, if and when we do have the opportunity to enlighten them on Christ’s wonderful blessings of grace, some laugh in our faces or even scoff and dismiss us as nuts.

What’s going on here? Why are people not clamoring to get in on this wonderful thing God has made available for all mankind in Jesus Christ?


1. Many do not know.

My neighboring pastor Mike introduced me to a young man named Bill. “Bill was baptized last Sunday night.” When I said that was such good news, Bill said, “I had a real hunger in my heart.”

Later, Pastor Mike explained that Bill, a carpenter, had mentioned to some of his co-workers about that inward spiritual hunger. One of the men, a believer, invited him to church. He was not prepared for Bill’s response.

“How do I do that?”

The friend said, “How do you go to church? Well, you get in your car and drive down there, you park, and you walk inside.”

Bill said, “You mean just anyone can walk inside a church?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Anyone.”

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10 ways we know people are lost

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The Son of Man has come to seek and save those who were lost (Luke 19:10).

Someone asked Daniel Boone if in all his wilderness travels he had ever been lost. “No,” he drawled, “but once I was bewildered for three whole days.”

Bewildered in a wilderness. Sounds like the place to do that.

The great difficulty in rescuing the lost–the assignment God’s children have been handed by the Lord Jesus–is compounded when the subjects do not realize their dire situation.

How would one go about convincing a lost person he was lost? And why do that in the first place?

Clearly, if one is on-board the damaged Titanic and while scurrying to get off the doomed vessel with as many survivors as possible, he runs into partying passengers without the slightest awareness of their situation, he needs to tell them. He will want to alarm them even, and convince them to take action to save themselves. Whether they will listen is another story.

If we know the hurricane is coming and this neighborhood is about to be destroyed, we will do all in our power to alert the residents.

The days of our lives are finite and this world is doomed. Someone needs to tell the passengers.

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Before we tell the world, we must show them

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…so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (I Peter 2:9).

Show and tell. Sounds simple enough.

Every kindergartner knows the process. You bring something to school and then tell the class what it is. What it means to you. How it works.

A few years ago, I sat at the head table when veteran lineman Frank Warren was inducted into the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame. His agent paid tribute to his star player.

We live in Dallas. I’ll never forget the day my five-year-old son took Frank Warren to his school for show-and-tell. Frank flew to Dallas just to do that for my child.

I sat there not quite believing my ears. This football player went to all the trouble of flying from New Orleans to Dallas for no other purpose than accompanying a preschooler to kindergarten for show-and-tell.

No wonder the agent was still speaking of it, years later. Who would not remember that?

A few years back Henry Blackaby spoke to Louisiana Baptists about post-9/11 life for Christians in America.

After 9-11, business as usual would be an affront to God…. So far, we are not being the salt and light God intended…. We have had very little effect on this society.

It should matter to every Christian that the world around us ignores us, that it does not take us seriously, and even scoffs at our faith.

We have no one to blame but ourselves.

AMC-TV was running the movie “Shawshank Redemption” twice each night. I finally sat down and watched it, the first time since it appeared maybe 20 years earlier. It was easy to see why it’s so memorable and even loved. The roles played by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman wedge themselves in our consciousness and will not turn us loose without a struggle.

As a Christian, however, I was highly offended by the warden in that prison called Shawshank. He quoted the Bible, preached its platitudes, and then was guilty of the harshest brutality and greed. He even ordered murders to protect his criminal enterprise. All the while, Bible verses were displayed prominently and the man’s Bible was a major actor in the story.

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Why I’m angry at some preachers

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You’ve heard them, I’m sure. Some well-intentioned but thoughtless man of God will stand before a gathering of the Lord’s people and in urging us to evangelize our communities will overstate the case.

“Jesus told us to become fishers of men! He did not tell us to be keepers of the aquarium!”

And, almost invariably, the statement will be met with a chorus of ‘amen’s.’

The only problem with that is it is not so.

In fact, it’s totally wrong.

Jesus did not send His disciples just to reach lost sheep–He certainly did that–but commanded that we are to “feed my sheep.” In John 20, He gave that command to Simon Peter three times.

In Acts 20:28, Paul tells the pastors of Ephesus that they are to “shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.”

And here’s another one, the one that set me off this morning.

In trying to motivate church members to get into the community with the gospel, the WIBT preacher* will say, “The Bible in no places commands the people of the world to come to church. It does, however, command us to go into all the world with the gospel.” (*Well-intentioned but thoughtless)

That’s so true, it’s almost totally true. But it’s missing something critical.

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How to grow a small church

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“It doesn’t matter to the Lord whether He saves by the few or by the many” (I Samuel 14:6).

Depending on a number of factors, growing a small church is one of the more do-able things pastors can achieve.

Those variable factors include…

–the health of the church.  Now, you don’t want a sick church to grow; you want it to get well first. In an early pastorate, I told the congregation, “There’s a good reason no one is joining this church.  I wouldn’t join it either!” Believe it or not, those words were inspired and they received them well, and repented. (I explained that there was a bad spirit in the membership, people were engaging in idle gossip, and the love of God was missing.  When we extended the invitation, the altar was filled with God’s people praying. We began to have a genuine revival that day.)

–the attitude of the congregation. If the people are satisfied with the status quo, they would not welcome newcomers.  I’ve known a few Sunday School classes composed of long-time best friends who felt imposed on by visitors and offended by new members.  No one wants to go where they’re not wanted.

–the location of the church campus.  A church situated five miles down an isolated road, at the end of the dead end trail–I’m thinking of one in particular!–can almost certainly forget about growing.

The great thing about pastoring a healthy, small church is you can make a big difference in a hurry.

My seminary pastorate had run 40 in attendance for many years. The day the little congregation voted to call me as pastor, I overheard a man saying to another, “This little church is doing all it’s ever going to do.”  I was determined to prove him wrong.

Within one month, we hit 65 in attendance.

What had happened is this…

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There are reasons not to believe. And some are pretty good.

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“Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen…. By faith we understand….” (Hebrews 11:1ff)

There are good reasons not to believe in God, not to believe in Jesus, and not to believe in Holy Scripture.

A wise servant of the Lord will want to learn what they are and why people hold on to them. In doing so, he will better understand his own belief and will be able to respond to the questions/attacks of unbelievers.

This is far more important than the typical Christian realizes.

We cannot effectively counter the resistance of the unbeliever–whether he/she is a seeker, an agnostic, skeptic, atheist, or full bore antagonist–until we learn why they reject the heart of the message of the Christian faith.

Faith.  It starts with this and perhaps ends there also.

The very nature of faith means while there are good reasons to believe, there are also reasons not to believe.

The theist–one who believes in God–decides the reasons “for” God  are greater than those against Him.  The atheist–one who does not believe in God–attaches greater weight to the reasons on the negative side of the balance sheet.

To the Christian who says there are no reasons for not believing in God, that only a fool would say otherwise, I suggest you may want to become re-acquainted with the concept of faith.  Faith demands that some questions remain open and some evidence is missing.  It’s like “hope” in Romans 8:24. “Hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees?”

Question: But doesn’t the Bible say “the fool has said in his heart there is no God”? Yes, in Psalm 14:1.  But it does not say that everyone saying that is a fool. Those are two separate things altogether. A fool may eat chocolate cake, but everyone eating chocolate cake is not a fool.

Okay now…

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The part of salvation most people overlook

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It’s risky talking about the typical anything in church–people are as varied as their fingerprints, voice patterns, and DNA–but once in a while, it’s safe to draw a few general conclusions. Here’s one:

The average Christian who goes forth to witness for the Lord leaves out fully one-half of the equation between God and man.

Here’s what that means.

Let’s suppose I decide to join my favorites, the New Orleans Saints football team. For many years I lived about two miles from their facilities, and pastored some of the players.  But, let’s say one morning, I drive down, park my car and walk inside. A guard meets me.

“I’m here,” I tell him. “It took some doing, but I finally relented. I’m ready to give myself to this team.”

Being of a suspicious bent, the guard looks me up and down and says, “What are you talking about, mister? Why are you here?”

“I’m joining the Saints,” I say. “I’ve heard by the commercials that you need the support of the community. So, I have studied up on everything–talked to people, read the books, watched some games on tape–and I am now ready to join the team.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” he says.

“Yes sir,” I announce confidently. “In fact, I want Gayle Benson (she’s the owner) to know that I trust her. I believe she has the good of the community at heart. And the coaches and players? Well, they are the best. This is a big day for me.”

“There is only one problem, mister,” says the security guard.

“How could there be a problem?” I ask. “I think I’ve got everything figured out.”

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Experts: Read/listen, then decide for yourself

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What started this for me was a fascination with the fourth of Jesus’ seven parables found in Matthew 13. As I often do when faced with a long drive from a meeting back home, I picked a scripture that intrigued me in order to consider it from every angle.

This may be the most neglected parable from all those taught by Jesus, methinks.

The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened. (Matthew 13:33)

I had been working on a message on how Christians hide themselves inside their church buildings when the Lord wants us permeating the community with the gospel. This parable seemed a natural.

I had been interpreting it with an emphasis on “a woman took and hid” the leaven in the dough. She had some leaven and wondered where to hide it. “I know,” she thought. “I’ll hide it in this dough.” But a few hours later or the next morning, the world knew where she had stashed it. The power of the leaven to affect everything around it changed the dough and thus gave the presence of the leaven away.

That speaks to Christians wanting to remain secret disciples of Jesus. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: Secret discipleship is a contradiction in terms. Either the secrecy will kill the discipleship or the discipleship will kill the secrecy.

Then, I called a friend on the phone. Mike knows his Greek. I wanted to know what the Greek New Testament could contribute to my understanding of that fourth parable.

“The word in the Greek is ‘hid,’ all right,” said Pastor Mike. “But the commentary I checked said we should not make too much of the fact that she hid the leaven. She just put it inside the dough. The emphasis is not on her hiding it but on the way the leaven influences everything it touches.”

Well, all right, I thought, reluctantly. I had thought I was on to something with the emphasis on the “hid” word.

Then, next morning, with my office next door to the church library, I started pulling out commentaries.

Not a good thing.

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Looking for the fine print in the Gospel message

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I was getting ready to face the day and noticed something on the television.  An ad for “hair club for women” was running.  Photos flew by of before and after shots of women. Most had been afflicted with bare spots or thinning mane and the “after” photos showed them with gloriously full tresses.

Then I saw it.  Down in the corner the small print said, “Results may vary.”

Ahh.  Yes, indeed.  Results may vary.  The old “caveat emptor.”

Let the buyer beware.

The ad might as well say “these are not typical,” as advertisers are forced to do by truth-in-advertising laws.

Sadly, in our culture we’re used to such come-ons and slick sales spiels. No one expects the used car salesman to tell you why we should be cautious in buying this particular car.  We’ve learned to turn a suspicious eye toward the seller of the house who cannot quit raving about all its fine points.  What, we wonder, is he not saying?

Which brings up another point…

The fine print of the gospel

Has anyone ever found “fine print” in the Lord’s offer of salvation? Is there anywhere that we are told things such as:

–You’re going to love Jesus, but not everyone has the complete package of sins forgiven, name written in the Book of Life, acceptance into God’s family, and Holy Spirit’s entrance.

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Three gifts for the new pastor

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When our church was about to welcome a new pastor, I contacted him to ask what we could do for him.  “Tell me the top three things you want from this church.”  He had an immediate answer, as though he’d been expecting the call.

“I would love to come to a unified, loving, praying church,” he said.   As a retired pastor of six churches, I knew exactly how he felt.  So, let’s look at those three gifts the new pastor would love to receive.

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