If you truly love Christ, and other people, and believe the gospel that Jesus is Lord, how could you not be passionate about promoting that gospel? In other words, even how could you not think evangelism is a very, very important activity of God's people and a great need for this world?
And yet, sometimes I wonder whether we do damage to it by kind of overselling it.
I had this thought the other day when a friend of mine, a very active Christian who is involved in Christian work, with his wife also heavily involved in demanding, responsible work, told me they were looking for another church. "Why?" I asked them.
"We want church to be something that uplifts us and inspires us and helps us to do the week's work ahead of us," he said. "What's wrong with your present church?" I asked. He looked somewhat sheepishly at me. "The trouble is," he said, "the answer to every question is evangelism".
I think he was the victim of the overselling of evangelism. For this man who is deeply committed to exactly evangelism, it was becoming a turn-off. Spiritually he was being malnourished and his Christian life not entirely helped.
Why would we make the answer to everything as evangelism? And have no other understanding of Scripture and lives?
I guess it is easy. We have an anxiety that if we don't really push evangelism, it won't be done. And we know how easy it is in the face of the hardness and spiritual complacency of so many Sydney people just to retreat into some other approach and not really be committed to promoting the gospel.
And so often you see a theological drift where other needs and demands and other good works, valuable as they are, can displace rather than complement evangelism.
So it's easy to make it the one thing or the only thing, to make the best thing the only thing.
His comment reminded me of a talk I heard many, many years ago when I was working as university chaplain. The speaker was giving a very fine address on 2 Peter 3. He described the way in which the writer talks about the coming judgement and the dissolving of the earth and a new heaven and a new earth. He came to verse 11: "Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in . . ." I waited for him to continue the text. He did, but they were words not found in 2 Peter: "to be leading lives as evangelists, sharing Christ with our friends. Rescuing them."
It wasn't that what he said was wrong. It is just not what was in the text. The text said, "leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming day of God". He went on that while you are waiting for these things, "strive to be found with him at peace, without spot or blemish".
I am not against evangelism. I am not even being patronising towards it. But it can't be the answer to everything. Otherwise we miss the Scripture.
