Brother Paul: They believe there is only one reason why God has left them here on earth: that is to evangelize the lost. Anyone who is not actively pursuing this holy purpose is missing the mark. The Great Commission cannot be compromised. Their methods are anointed preaching with signs following. The leaders instruct the evangelism teams to go to a new village and inquire about the worst problem in the village. Then they are to go and minister to that problem and
show that Jesus is the all-powerful Savior.

With this success, they turn to the people and preach Jesus to them.

Excerpt from article by Denny Kenaston of The Remnant Magazine (Distributed by H2H Magazine)

For the entire interview, use the following link. The article can be found under January/February 2003:
www.charityministies.org/theremnant/theremnant-textonly.cfm

What do you think of this telling answer about living out the Great Commission compared to how we live it out here.

More on Jesus Movements soon…

When Mark Cahill’s Newsletter arrives in my email every month, I always open it to see what Mark’s talking about each month. This month’s title was “Andy Stanley Says We Must Earn”, and right away I knew who Andy Stanley was because he is the head pastor of a large mega church in Atlanta called North Point Community Church, where Passion Conference’s Founder, Louie Giglio has been on staff in the past (check out 268generation.com for more info). Andy Stanley is also the son of a well known baptist preacher, Charles Stanley. I have heard Andy Stanley speak at Passion’s Thirsty Conference and have also been encouraged by his book How Good is good enough?. But, after what Mark shared from a USAToday, I was discouraged by Andy Stanley’s comments regarding evangelism. Mark writes in his newsletter about the following USA TODAY Article:

“One thing I do now when I hear quotes from Christian people is to see if the quote can be backed up with Scripture. One pastor told me one of the mistakes we regularly make with Christians is that when we listen to them we put our guard down instead of putting our guard up. Andy Stanley, a pastor here in Atlanta, said: “If we were able to rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity, I think we would put the emphasis on developing relationships with non-believers, serving them, loving them, and making them feel accepted…Only then would we earn the right to share the gospel.”"

What stuck out to you in this quote from Andy Stanley? For me, it was unequivocally his statement, “only then would we earn the right to share the gospel”. This sounds a lot like many Christians today that I speak with, and some at my church in Orange County who have used this statement to defend what may be complacency toward sharing the gospel with strangers or their possible fear of evangelism altogether. As you will see from Mark’s newsletter, he uses sound biblical understanding to look at this argument. Please take a look at his full newsletter here.

I do not wish to cause division by bringing this into the light, but I do hope that this can foster sound biblical doctrine, a missional heart like Jesus had, and more unity than ever before. We need to analyze our viewpoints toward why we don’t share our faith with strangers. I think this goes so much deeper than evangelism. In fact, I’ve been fighting the wrong battle for too long. The real issue is about the church, and fighting against the institution of Christianity. We need to be about a Jesus movement that disciples well, embodys the life of Jesus well, and be a community with the purpose of reaching out to the world around us. And, I know that if you and I together are willing to seek out these answers in both the Scriptures and life of Jesus, we will become a unified church with the heartbeat of Jesus’ heartbeat “who came to seek and save that which is lost”… …and I guarantee they won’t just be your neighbors, coworkers or family members.

See one of Mark’s videos called “No Crossing Over: Is it true that people in hell believe in personal evangelism, but people on earth do not?”:

About Andy Stanley
Andy Stanley serves as senior pastor of the campuses of North Point Ministries, including North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia; Buckhead Church in Atlanta, Georgia; and Browns Bridge Community Church in Cumming, Georgia. Each Sunday, over twenty thousand attend one of these NPM campuses. Andy is the bestselling author of Visioneering, The Next Generation Leader, The Best Question Ever, and How Good Is Good Enough? Andy and his wife, Sandra, have two sons and a daughter.

About Mark Cahill
Mak Cahill has a business degree from Auburn University, where he was an honorable mention Academic All-American in basketball. He has worked in the business world at IBM and in various management positions, and he taught high school for four years. Mark now speaks to more than 25,000 people a year at conferences, camps, retreats, etc. He has also appeared on numerous radio and television shows. Mark’s favorite thing to do is to go out and meet people and find out what they believe and why they believe it. Mark has written “One Thing You can’t do in heaven” and “One Heartbeat Away”.

I feel there are many in the Christian community that care about doing this well, both to reach the culture and to honor God with their actions. But there are also extremes, those Christians who totally avoid culture and stay in their christian bubbles either out of fear or just a lack of understanding on how to do this at all, And, the other extreme, those that becomes so entrenched in culture that their culture changes them more than them having an impact for the Kingdom of God.

What is Paul really trying to communicate to us as we try to reach different cultures in society? I found a good interview that sheds some light on this volatile topic, In a recent interview with John Macarthur on Crosswalk.com:

Edwards (Interviewer): One of the things I get most frustrated about is whenever people like you who are standing for truth point out the error both in the emergent church and in the seeker movement people will immediately run to 1 Corinthians 9 and begin screaming, “You know Paul said, ‘I became all things to all men,’ which means to the grunge I become as grunge, to the Universalist I become as a Universalist.” But in 1 Corinthians 9 Paul isn’t saying that we compromise the message and we become whatever the audience needs us to be in order to make the gospel palatable.

John MacArthur (Response): Well, of course not. All he is saying is there’s a foundation in the proclamation of the gospel with the Jew and there’s a different starting point with the Gentile. If I’m going to evangelize a Jew, I’m going to start with the Old Testament because that’s the substantial basis. So every time the Apostle Paul preached to the Jews he started with the Scripture—the Old Testament Scripture. Every time he evangelized Gentiles he started with creation. For example, in Acts 14 and Acts 17 he talks about the unknown God. Who is the unknown God? He’s the God who made everything—that was the foundation.

All he is saying in 1 Corinthians 9 is you must understand the starting point of your audience and here’s the point: ideologically. In other words, how do they think ideologically, philosophically, religiously? What are the ideas, the theories, the viewpoints that they hold? It’s not about identifying with their lifestyle; it’s not about being able to converse about every episode of South Park, every R-rated movie and every Rap song—that’s not it at all.

How do people think religiously, how do they perceive truth?—those are the starting points that Paul was establishing. That’s a far cry from saying that to reach this generation we must do their music, we must dress the way they dress, we must live the way they live, we must be familiar with the baser components of their culture. That’s a million miles from what the Apostle Paul had in mind. He was talking about those things that controlled their thought process and their worldview.

Paul Edwards is the host of The Paul Edwards Program, a columnist and pastor. His program is heard daily on WLQV in Detroit and on godandculture.com. Contact him at paul@godandculture.com.

To Summarize:

1. The gospel is Christological.

2. The gospel is theological.

3. The gospel is biblical.

4. The gospel is thus apostolic.

5. The gospel is historical.

6. The gospel is personal.

7. The gospel is universal.

8. The gospel is eschatological.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-19)
by: D. A. Carson
article url: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/articles.php?a=81

Many have commented on the fact that the church in the western world is going through a time of remarkable fragmentation. This fragmentation extends to our understanding of the gospel. For some Christians, “the gospel” is a narrow set of teachings about Jesus and his death and resurrection which, rightly believed, tip people into the kingdom. After that, real discipleship and personal transformation begin, but none of that is integrally related to “the gospel.” This is a far cry from the dominant New Testament emphasis that understands “the gospel” to be the embracing category that holds much of the Bible together, and takes Christians from lostness and alienation from God all the way through conversion and discipleship to the consummation, to resurrection bodies, and to the new heaven and the new earth.

The Church, at least in America, must not take a wait-and-see approach while the Kingdom of the world advances aggressively and intentionally to lead people away from Jesus. We are called to be ready in season and out of season, we’re called to proclaim the Gospel, we’re called gently and lovingly lead people to the truth.

THE CHRISTIAN VISION PROJECT has a similar passion to encourage the Church in these efforts, and I was encouraged by a recent article I read by Ajith Fernando, who speaks directly and courageously about the priority of evangelism that is needed in the Church again. I pray that many read his article and seek the Lord Jesus for passion to equip their churches and boldness to share their faith as an example that others may follow.

Getting Back on Course

It’s time to return to the priority of evangelism.

Ajith Fernando | posted 11/02/2007 08:59AM

The Christian Vision Project’s big question this year has been,What must we learn, and unlearn, to be agents of God’s mission in the world? Many respondents have argued for increased attention to issues of global justice. Ajith Fernando, longtime Youth for Christ leader in Sri Lanka, doesn’t disagree, but wonders if we’re in danger of forgetting what he considers our highest mission priority. Fernando is the author of a number of books, including Jesus Driven Ministry and The Call to Joy and Pain: Embracing Suffering in Your Ministry (both Crossway), and is a corresponding editor for Christianity Today.

Related articles and links

The Church is notorious for its course corrections. Toward the end of the 19th century, theological liberals began to emphasize the humanness of Christ. They presented Christ’s life as the main focus of the gospel. Evangelicals reacted by emphasizing the atoning work of Christ (especially as explained by Paul), almost to the exclusion of the life of Christ. So liberals concentrated on good deeds and evangelicals on saving souls.

But by the middle of the 20th century, we evangelicals realized our mistake. Carl F. H. Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in 1947 and the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 were landmark documents leading us to once again see social concern as an element of the church’s mission. Some evangelicals gave greater weight than before to the Gospels and the kingdom of God, while others advocated for a right-wing political agenda. But regardless of where we fell on the political spectrum, we were encouraged to engage the culture and seek to demonstrate the Christian ethic daily.

The old “evangelism versus social action” war was over—or so I believed. In Sri Lanka, I was devoted to raising up a “post-war” generation for whom social involvement and evangelism were natural outgrowths of commitment to Christ.

Neglecting Evangelism?

But lately some disconcerting trends—more course corrections, if you will—have left me feeling uneasy. I hear evangelicals talking a lot about justice and kingdom values but not proclaiming the gospel to those of other faiths and winning them for Christ. Of course, if someone asks them about Christianity, they will explain the gospel. Thus, some people will be converted to Christ through their witness.

But that is a woefully inadequate strategy. Most of the billions of people in the world who do not know Christ will not come and ask us. We need to take the initiative to go to them.

Earlier evangelicals emphasized proclamation, while liberals emphasized presence—living out our Christianity before the people among whom we live. I fear that the old “presence versus proclamation” battle has come back to the church, or will shortly. Some evangelicals are going down that same road, though they claim to believe in proclamation evangelism.

This is why I am calling for a fresh commitment to proactive evangelism. We can’t wait for people to come to us—we must urgently go to them. We must look for ways to make contact with them and use all our creativity and determination to communicate the gospel.

Yes, I praise God that evangelicals have discovered the AIDS challenge. I am only sorry that it took us so long. In biblical times, God called his people to pay special attention to sojourners, widows, orphans, and the oppressed. AIDS patients are the equivalent of such people today.

I pray that many evangelicals will devote themselves to lifelong service with such marginalized groups, including the mentally ill, the homeless, and the neglected aged. And, as Moses and Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you” (Mark 14:7; Deut. 15:11), indicating that we will have a responsibility to the poor as long as this world exists.

However, we must remember that today our society has accepted AIDS ministry and social development as attractive avenues of service. Evangelism will never have that attraction. Those wanting to follow Christ in seeking and saving the lost will always be despised for their supposed arrogance.

We Christians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America get very sensitive when we are accused of being arrogant. We do not like to be associated with the colonial rulers who looked down on us and on our cultures.

Worse, nations are outlawing conversion through what is called coercion. Those evangelizing among non-Christians are being persecuted severely in many places of the world. So we face several obstacles that could stop our evangelistic momentum and replace it with more palatable agendas.

Stark Reality

How could we be guilty of such negligence? The following questions challenge our shortsightedness:

• In the sayings of Jesus, he talked much about the coming judgment. Do we? If not, the next generation won’t believe it. One generation neglects the belief; the next generation rejects it.

• Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” The context shows that the Lord is talking about eternal destruction, which we can avert only by accepting his grace, denying self, taking up the cross, and following him. Does this perspective color the way we look at people who do not follow Jesus?

• Why did the Holy Spirit ensure that there are seven statements of Christ’s Great Commission in the New Testament—one each in Matthew (28:18-20), Mark (16:15-18), and Luke (24:46-49), and two each in John (17:18; 20:21-23) and Acts (1:8; 10:42)? Is it not because Jesus believed that before he left, it was important to drill into his disciples’ minds the priority of the work of saving souls for eternity?

Now of course the Great Commission would be meaningless if those who obeyed it did not also obey the Great Commandment to love God and our neighbor. And we must continue to challenge people with the dual responsibility to live the gospel in society and to take the gospel to the unreached.

The Language of Priority

Can we then say that evangelism must have priority over social concern? I have always been reluctant to use the language of priority. I have felt that such talk comes out of the Western desire to have things nicely lined up in a logical progression (e.g. God, family, and ministry).

I prefer to simply say that our calling is to be obedient to God totally. If God is in control of our lives, he will lead us so that we will give the proper place to the whole will of God for us.

But Satan is also active, and he does not like to see the population of heaven increase. He will do all he can to prevent Christians from making disciples by going to the nations, baptizing people, and teaching them the commands of the Lord (Matt. 28:19-20). I fear that many evangelicals have fallen into Satan’s trap of upholding kingdom values to the diminution of God’s call to proactively go after the lost and proclaim the gospel.

Yes, we are called to be holistic. But part of holistic Christianity surely is the statement of Christ that all earthly gain is worthless if a person loses his life to eternal destruction. The stark fact of lostness places before us the urgency of evangelism. No, such thinking is not common in some evangelical circles today. A theological faculty member of a university in Europe held a seminar a few years ago to discuss one of my books. One of the presenters, an evangelical scholar, faulted me for using the supposedly confusing term “lostness” when referring to those who do not believe in Christ.

As for me, I will do all I can to encourage people to live the Christian life in society. But I will also follow Christ’s example in placing before Christians the fact of eternal damnation and the glory of eternal salvation.

And I will challenge them to follow the agenda of Jesus, who “came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10), reminding them of the advice of Jude, who said, “… save others by snatching them out of the fire” (Jude 23).

The Combined Witness of the Whole Church

I am reluctant to reinsert the priority argument. But we need clarity. Some will rightly say that because of calling or circumstances in some parts of the world, faithful Christians cannot always preach. They are called instead to social work, and government regulations prohibit combining social work with evangelism. Fair enough.

Even though Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka is an evangelistic organization, we did not do any gospel proclamation during our massive tsunami-relief operation in 2005, according to government rules. Integrity demanded that we not do what we love to do—persuade people to receive Christ’s salvation. (I believe, of course, that people were impressed by the gospel simply by seeing the way Christians helped them. But we would not call that evangelism.)

After about four months of almost total immersion in tsunami relief, we returned to our primary call, evangelism, and in the process refused millions of rupees offered to us for new tsunami-related relief projects. This does not mean that we do no social work now. As a youth organization, we do a lot of things, especially in education, to help youth from economically poor backgrounds advance in life. But we try not to tie that work too closely with evangelism. We do not want people to think that our help is tied to conversion.

In Nepal, Christian missionaries have been laboring faithfully for over 50 years, doing social work in the name of Christ. Evangelism, however, has been prohibited. For the first 30 years of this ministry, they saw little evangelistic fruit, but in the past 20 or so there has been an amazing evangelistic harvest of hundreds of thousands of people coming to Christ through the work of local Christians. I believe the faithful witness of the missionaries played a major role in helping people listen to the gospel as proclaimed by the Nepalese.

So, yes, some parts of the body of Christ may be called to do things other than proclaiming the gospel of eternal salvation, though they would verbally advocate other aspects of the kingdom agenda—such as justice, fair play, and righteous values. Indeed, every Christian needs to be committed to the whole gospel, seeking to be a personal witness through life and word.

To that end, Christian social-service organizations must ensure that their workers are not only committed to their social work, but also to Christ as Lord of their lives. So even though verbal witness may not be part of their job descriptions, they need to be committed to it in their personal lives.

Let me also add that much of the church’s witness through social engagement and human rights advocacy will be done by laypeople who go into the structures of society and live out their Christianity. The local church and Christian organizations should teach the laity a truly biblical approach that motivates and guides them in their service. No one disputes that we must apply the Scriptures to the social issues of the day in our preaching and teaching. Pastors should also pray for laypeople serving in society and advise, comfort, and encourage them. For example, John Wesley sent his last letter to William Wilberforce encouraging him in his antislavery campaign.

Practical realities will dictate that not every segment of the church will be involved in all forms of proactive evangelism and all forms of social engagement. Parachurch organizations will indeed specialize, while being committed to the whole mission of the church. Local churches will do a little of most aspects of the mission of the church.

But taken together, the whole body of Christ will be engaged in the whole mission of the church. As the Lausanne movement puts it, the whole church must take the whole gospel to the whole world.

The tendency among some evangelicals to downplay verbal proclamation—including persuading people to receive Christ’s salvation—demands a fresh call for evangelicals to emphasize the urgency of proactive evangelism. And if talk of priority will help the church to a fresh commitment, then so be it.

Christ certainly seems to share that priority: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life?” (Matt. 16:26).

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Ajith Fernando was one of the speakers at Urbana 2006. A shortened version of one of his talks, “Missionaries For the Right Reasons,” is available from Urbana.org.

Fernando’s books, including Jesus Driven Ministry and The Call to Joy and Pain, are available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

John Piper wrote a tract here that outlines this very point about the importance of being very explicit with Jesus in our God-talk:

Since September 11, 2001, I have seen more clearly than ever how essential it is to exult
explicitly in the excellence of Christ crucified for sinners and risen from the dead. Christ
must be explicit in all our God-talk. It will not do, in this day of pluralism, to talk about
the glory of God in vague ways. God without Christ is no God. And a no-God cannot save or
satisfy the soul. Following a no-God—whatever his name or whatever his religion—will
be a wasted life. God-in-Christ is the only true God and the only path to joy.

To bring us to this highest and most durable of all pleasures, God made his Son, Jesus
Christ, a bloody spectacle of blameless suffering and death. This is what it cost to rescue
us from a wasted life. The eternal Son of God “did not count equality with God a thing to
be grasped, but made himself nothing.” He took “the form of a servant” and was born “in
the likeness of men . . . . He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).

All Things Were Made for Him
This Jesus was and is a real historical man in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells
bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Since he is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God,”
as the old Nicene Creed says, and since his death and resurrection are the central act of
God in history, it is not surprising to hear the Bible say, “All things were created through
him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). For him! That means for his glory.

Ever since the incarnate, redeeming work of Jesus, God is gladly glorified by sinners
only through the glorification of the risen God-Man, Jesus Christ. His bloody death is
the blazing center of the glory of God. There is no way to the glory of the Father but through
the Son. All the promises of joy in God’s presence, and pleasures at his right hand, come to
us only through faith in Jesus Christ.

If We Reject Him, We Reject God

Jesus is the litmus test of reality for all persons and all religions. He said it clearly: “The one
who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). People and religions who
reject Christ reject God. Do other religions know the true God? Here is the test: Do they
reject Jesus as the only Savior for sinners who was crucified and raised by God from
the dead? If they do, they do not know God in a saving way.

That is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Or when he said, “Whoever
does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (John 5:23). Or when
he said to the Pharisees, “If God were your Father, you would love me” (John 8:42).

If we would see and savor the glory of God, we must see and savor Christ. For
Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). To put it another way, if
we would embrace the glory of God, we must embrace the Gospel of Christ. The reason for
this is not only because we are sinners and need a Savior to die for us, but also because
this Savior is himself the fullest and most beautiful manifestation of the glory of God.
He purchases our undeserved and everlasting pleasure, and he becomes for us our alldeserving,
everlasting Treasure.

The Gospel is the Good News of the Glory of Christ

This is how the Gospel is defined. When we are converted through faith in Christ, what we see with the eyes of our hearts is “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is
the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The Gospel is the good news of all-conquering
beauty. Or to say it the way Paul does, it is the good news of “the glory of Christ.”
When we embrace Christ, we embrace God. We see and savor God’s glory. There is no
savoring of God’s glory if we do not see it in Christ. This is the only window through
which a sinner may see the face of God and not be incinerated.

The Bible says that when God illuminates our hearts at conversion, he gives “the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).
Either we see the glory of God “in the face of Jesus Christ,” or we don’t see it at all.
And “the face of Jesus Christ” is the beauty of Christ reaching its climax in the cross.
The bloody face of Christ crucified (and triumphant!) is the countenance of the glory
of God. What was once foolishness to us becomes our wisdom and our power and our
boast (1 Corinthians 1:18, 24).

Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that
it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in
every pain.

See the online presentation here: http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/2wtl/

There is a critique of this booklet on Pulpit Magazine’s blog here: http://www.sfpulpit.com/2007/02/16/two-ways-to-live/

About the Two ways to live summary of the gospel

“At the most basic level, Two Ways to Live is simply a memorable summary of the Christian gospel. Or to put it more accurately, it is the Christian gospel including some of its necessary presuppositions and background.

In the New Testament, the word ‘gospel’ usually refers to the proclamation of Jesus Christ crucified. It is the announcement that God’s kingdom has arrived in the person of his Son, the powerful Messiah, who inaugurates his worldwide reign by dying and rising again so that repentance and forgiveness can be preached to all nations. This Jesus Christ now rules at God’s right hand, from where he will come again to judge.

In other words, Jesus himself is the focus of the Christian message or ‘gospel’. However, Jesus does not arrive in a vacuum. He arrives as the culmination of God’s plans, and their outworking in history. He comes and dies and rises, “according to the Scriptures”. He arrives in the context of all that God has already revealed about himself and humanity.

All this is part of the background or ‘worldview’ that the biblical authors took for granted, but which many modern (or postmodern) people do not share. If we are to know and tell the gospel in a world where these basic assumptions about God and human guilt are no longer shared, or even common, then we need to fill in some of the rest of the story. We need to provide some of the background.

This is what Two Ways to Live seeks to do. It fills in some of the wider story of the Bible, some of the biblical theology, so that the message about Jesus makes sense.

If you are completely new to Two Ways to Live, you may like to pause at this point and read through the basic text of the outline, as found in the online presentation of Two ways to live. You will see that the six points not only provide a brief summary of the whole story of the Bible, but fit logically together as a coherent set of propositions.

1. God the creator; humanity ruling under his authority.
2. Humanity rebels, wishing to run things its own way.
3. God judges (and will judge) humanity for this rebellion.
4. In his love, God sends Jesus to die as an atoning sacrifice.
5. In his power, God raises Jesus to life as ruler and judge.
6. This presents us with a challenge to repent and believe.

Notice that there is a clear and easy-to-follow movement through the six points, not only logically but historically. At one level it is a set of six ideas or propositions, one leading naturally and logically to the next. However, these propositions are not abstract or removed from history. They represent in miniature the whole history of the world.

In other words, for those in these postmodern times who share very little with us in terms of Christian assumptions, Two Ways to Live provides a simple way to tell the whole story, to communicate (in brief) the whole Christian worldview.

The drawings that accompany Two Ways to Live are designed to make this communication process easier. They serve at one level to help Christians learn and remember the Two Ways to Live gospel outline. At another level, they can also be useful in making the message clear and memorable as we share it with someone. The drawings may not be used in every circumstance, but they are an important part of the overall package.

Another advantage of the presentation is that it leads naturally to challenging someone to become a Christian, then and there. As the great American chess master Bobby Fischer always maintained: the first thing to learn about chess is how to get checkmate.”