I have just finished reading a fiction book titles "A Journey in Grace" by Richard P. Belcher...EXCELLENT book! While it is a ficitonalized account of a young pastor, the book is theologically rich and doctrinally sound. I want to share the following that I just read, and it regards the methods that churches use to evangelize:
"It is certainly not sensible nor Scriptural to do the work of evangelism with any method just for the sake of being able to say that we are practicing evangelism. Our evangelistic practices must be done in God's way and by God's power, otherwise we might create a monstrosity of methods and means, which get decisions, but not true fruit of the Holy Spirit...[i]t is ours to preach [the] gospel to every creature throughout the world, and trust the Holy Spirit to do His work of calling out the people of God.
Knowing that it is not within us nor even our responsibility to convert men, and knowing that God does His work through the preaching of the Word of God, we will be moved more and more from the methods of the flesh to the solid preaching of the Word of God. the result of this preaching of the Word will be truer and more stable converts.
...many pastors of our land preach very little of the Word of God, even though some might pride themselves on their conservative outlook. They do not take a text, a passage, or a theme, and study exegetically the verses involved, and then build a solid Biblical sermon from these labors. Instead, they preach their experiences, or some one else's stories or experiences. The main portion of their sermon becomes not the meat of the Word, but stories and illustrations with possibly a verse read at the beginning and some others thrown in along the way.
One should not think he has preached the Word just because he has stirred excitement; or given out some information; or read a text in the pulpit; or gotten some decisions; or talked about God, Christ or the Bible; or occupied a pulpit for a certain length of time; or emotionalized while in the pulpit. One can do all of these and never preach the Word of God.
...if we feel it is our duty and responsibility to move upon men's wills in order to cause them to make a decison, we will become exciters and exhorters open to the possibility of attracting every foul and offensive method (foul and offensive to God, while possibly pleasing and alluring to men) for evangelism, worship and preaching. Such techniques may get desired decisions, but not stable spirtual fruit."
Wow!! And this is from a novel!!
I'd be intersted to know what anyone reading this thinks of that excerpt... :)
By the way, the ISBN for the book is 0-925703-11-7 (tell my wife she should buy it for me!)
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3 comments:
I definitely agree that not enough pastors preach the Word. And I'm sick of it. It's so hard to find a good church for this very reason. It's quite sad that there are so many churches everywhere, but hardly any that are willing to feed us meat. Very sad. We need to keep praying for this country for sure.
If you agree with this statement in this work of fiction, I think you'll like Ashamed of the Gospel by John MacArthur (non-fiction). As a marketing professor, I have a strange disconnect because I think marketing has no place within the church. Only the Word saves - not marketing techniques that get people to walk the aisle.
Most churches including our own former church are into marketing Christ. Just take a look deeper into the "emerging church" movement and the simple church model. Sadly the Western/USA church has become a stench in the nostrils of our God. Todd W.
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