Editoral: What's happened to Evangelism in the Modern Church?
My personal belief concerning the church in this present time is the modern church of this age as a whole has become so self-centered, too complacent and too focused on financial prosperity. Her self-centeredness comes from has caused her to lack the enthusiasm or the willingness to carry out on a large public scale the mandate Jesus gave the disciples of Matthew 28: 19- 20 to "go and make other disciples".
There seems to be a “serious” lack (of a large scale) of evangelistic effort on the part of many of our churches to carry the “true” gospel message, the message that’s truly needed in the world today. Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t churches or individual members within a number of churches thataren't striving to carry out God’s will and evangelize the gospel of Jesus Christ to people in their communities, on their jobs, etc.. There is, and they do, but we need a more “yeoman’s” effort on the part of more churches and individual members besides the ones who have the committment to do so..
Spiritually, I believe the real “dilemma” of many of our churches is many of the members more carnal minded, and have not fully submitted themselves unto the righteousness of Christ, nor have they made a real committment to Christian stewardship and evangelism. They seem to be focusing more on “earthly” things pertaining to man than focusing on those things pertaining to Christ. It just like the Apostle Paul said to the church in Rome in Romans 10:2- 3, to this issue: You could say part of the reason for an “evangelistic” downturn stems from churches trying more
to establish their own righteousness, displaying a “zeal” for God, while working in ignorance, not according to real knowledge of things that really matter to God, especially in the area of “Evangelism”. There seems to be a “willful” ignorance of God’s righteousness and we seem to be more determined to establish our own righteousness, refusing to become submissive to him rather and choosing to act as if we are our own God. Churches within the same neighborhood used to fellowship and cooperate with each other, sometimes doing joint ventures in the perspective communities. Now many of them are only concerned withp ersonal reconition and tend to be non-cooperative these days.
You can readily see that the modern church age has become more “Laodecean” in nature, not seeing the real need for true evangelism or real spiritual growth in the body of Christ, yet we boast of great prosperity, lively worship services, having many community and social action programs, as we concentrate on building great state of the art superstructures and having standing room only attendance at all of our worship services. If you compare the historic church of Laodecea (Revelation 3:14- 22) to the churches of this modern era, you can clearly see just like that church, we the modern church has the same great disparity of her point of view of how she sees herself in comparison to the way God sees her.
Let’s look at the modern church from a financial perspective. Many of larger and mega-churches in this modern era see themselves as being financially sound, focusing more on becoming “lenders” and not the “borrowers”. Many advertise themselves as being “crème de la crème” churches or as one church in “multiple” locations. They’ve developed a “corporate” attitude, focusing on multi-million dollar building projects, and modernization. Many of these churches socially and spiritually change in arrogance as they experience “mega” growth and financially solvent, becoming “spiritually uppidy” abandoning community evangelism and exchanging it for "economic utopia", following the “money trail” and eventually, they move out of “the projects” or lower econonimac class neighborhoods, rather than stay, evangelize the misfortunate and maladjusted in the projects and help in revitalizing the masses, men of every birth. The potential of an "economic cash cow" and a "cosmopolitan community status" grabs hold of them and turns them away from true evangelism and presenting a sincere evangelistic ministering to the public and God’s true ministry to the people no matter their social economic condition..
As we represent the church of today, it seem as if we focus more on financial prosperity than we focus on the lack of real spiritual piety. This blinds us to what’s more important. It shows that we are more interest in “recreation” than in “regeneration”. We sponsor more “crossover” musicals, shows, concerts, and plays putting more of the focus in entertaining the masses rather than spiritually educating and enlightening them. The term for this phenomena is called “creative evangelism” by putting a “tincture” of a bible messages in these events. It’s just like my late pastor the Reverend John L. Freeman said once: “We are sitting more on the “premises” of God and standing less on the “promises” of God”.
Many of our evangelical cyber space medias are inundated twenty-four hours a day with ministry after ministry claming to sponsor this missionary project and that missionary project, having this type of bible conference and that type of conference while begging the public both churched and un-churched to spend tons of money and travel to this town or that town to “limited” seated places and or send financial support for their efforts to modernize the world and make it a better place in the name of God. There are some churches that even make the claim that they are so together that they have arrived spiritually and financially. I beg to differ with that! Yet, their members (some of them) publicly act as if they have no need to mature spiritually or otherwise. I believe God sees many of the churches in this age totally different than the way we see them. I believe God sees some of the churches as being wretched, poor, blind and naked spiritually, but God also see some individuals and churches still strive to and carry out the evangelistic mission here on earth. You really could say that there is a element of all the "7 churches" the Apostle John wrote to on the Isle of Patmos in every church.
I've talked to several pastors over the past few weeks about their churches growth. Many of them admitted that the majority of their growth in church attendance stems from “transient”, that is members leaving other church congregations moving from church to church, looking for the “perfect” church or a "better" version of the church similar to the one they were members of. On the average, they said, they may get one or two people that experience conversion to Christ while attending a worship service at their churches and become members.
It is sad to say, but it seems nowadays, many of the churches don’t put forth a real conscientious effort, nor take the time to train their members in the area of evangelism and those who do have a hard time getting their members to commit to coming often to the training sessions. Some of the pastors were clearly frustrated and sadly conceded that most of the congregational members don’t have a desire to evangelize, and will not take the time to get the training. Their members simply will not sacrifice the time to go in the community to witness. Many of them fear walking through the crime- ridden neighborhoods their churches are located in and some members have seen crimes occur first hand and know the locations of troubled areas where crime takes place on
regular basis in those community. Some of them have been victimized by lawless people or have seen tragedies occur on an regular basis and really don’t wish to be placed in harm’s way, so they’ve become complacent and choose not to make the effort.
My personal belief concerning the church in this present time is the modern church of this age as a whole has become so self-centered, too complacent and too focused on financial prosperity. Her self-centeredness comes from has caused her to lack the enthusiasm or the willingness to carry out on a large public scale the mandate Jesus gave the disciples of Matthew 28: 19- 20 to "go and make other disciples".
There seems to be a “serious” lack (of a large scale) of evangelistic effort on the part of many of our churches to carry the “true” gospel message, the message that’s truly needed in the world today. Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t churches or individual members within a number of churches thataren't striving to carry out God’s will and evangelize the gospel of Jesus Christ to people in their communities, on their jobs, etc.. There is, and they do, but we need a more “yeoman’s” effort on the part of more churches and individual members besides the ones who have the committment to do so..
Spiritually, I believe the real “dilemma” of many of our churches is many of the members more carnal minded, and have not fully submitted themselves unto the righteousness of Christ, nor have they made a real committment to Christian stewardship and evangelism. They seem to be focusing more on “earthly” things pertaining to man than focusing on those things pertaining to Christ. It just like the Apostle Paul said to the church in Rome in Romans 10:2- 3, to this issue: You could say part of the reason for an “evangelistic” downturn stems from churches trying more
to establish their own righteousness, displaying a “zeal” for God, while working in ignorance, not according to real knowledge of things that really matter to God, especially in the area of “Evangelism”. There seems to be a “willful” ignorance of God’s righteousness and we seem to be more determined to establish our own righteousness, refusing to become submissive to him rather and choosing to act as if we are our own God. Churches within the same neighborhood used to fellowship and cooperate with each other, sometimes doing joint ventures in the perspective communities. Now many of them are only concerned withp ersonal reconition and tend to be non-cooperative these days.
You can readily see that the modern church age has become more “Laodecean” in nature, not seeing the real need for true evangelism or real spiritual growth in the body of Christ, yet we boast of great prosperity, lively worship services, having many community and social action programs, as we concentrate on building great state of the art superstructures and having standing room only attendance at all of our worship services. If you compare the historic church of Laodecea (Revelation 3:14- 22) to the churches of this modern era, you can clearly see just like that church, we the modern church has the same great disparity of her point of view of how she sees herself in comparison to the way God sees her.
Let’s look at the modern church from a financial perspective. Many of larger and mega-churches in this modern era see themselves as being financially sound, focusing more on becoming “lenders” and not the “borrowers”. Many advertise themselves as being “crème de la crème” churches or as one church in “multiple” locations. They’ve developed a “corporate” attitude, focusing on multi-million dollar building projects, and modernization. Many of these churches socially and spiritually change in arrogance as they experience “mega” growth and financially solvent, becoming “spiritually uppidy” abandoning community evangelism and exchanging it for "economic utopia", following the “money trail” and eventually, they move out of “the projects” or lower econonimac class neighborhoods, rather than stay, evangelize the misfortunate and maladjusted in the projects and help in revitalizing the masses, men of every birth. The potential of an "economic cash cow" and a "cosmopolitan community status" grabs hold of them and turns them away from true evangelism and presenting a sincere evangelistic ministering to the public and God’s true ministry to the people no matter their social economic condition..
As we represent the church of today, it seem as if we focus more on financial prosperity than we focus on the lack of real spiritual piety. This blinds us to what’s more important. It shows that we are more interest in “recreation” than in “regeneration”. We sponsor more “crossover” musicals, shows, concerts, and plays putting more of the focus in entertaining the masses rather than spiritually educating and enlightening them. The term for this phenomena is called “creative evangelism” by putting a “tincture” of a bible messages in these events. It’s just like my late pastor the Reverend John L. Freeman said once: “We are sitting more on the “premises” of God and standing less on the “promises” of God”.
Many of our evangelical cyber space medias are inundated twenty-four hours a day with ministry after ministry claming to sponsor this missionary project and that missionary project, having this type of bible conference and that type of conference while begging the public both churched and un-churched to spend tons of money and travel to this town or that town to “limited” seated places and or send financial support for their efforts to modernize the world and make it a better place in the name of God. There are some churches that even make the claim that they are so together that they have arrived spiritually and financially. I beg to differ with that! Yet, their members (some of them) publicly act as if they have no need to mature spiritually or otherwise. I believe God sees many of the churches in this age totally different than the way we see them. I believe God sees some of the churches as being wretched, poor, blind and naked spiritually, but God also see some individuals and churches still strive to and carry out the evangelistic mission here on earth. You really could say that there is a element of all the "7 churches" the Apostle John wrote to on the Isle of Patmos in every church.
I've talked to several pastors over the past few weeks about their churches growth. Many of them admitted that the majority of their growth in church attendance stems from “transient”, that is members leaving other church congregations moving from church to church, looking for the “perfect” church or a "better" version of the church similar to the one they were members of. On the average, they said, they may get one or two people that experience conversion to Christ while attending a worship service at their churches and become members.
It is sad to say, but it seems nowadays, many of the churches don’t put forth a real conscientious effort, nor take the time to train their members in the area of evangelism and those who do have a hard time getting their members to commit to coming often to the training sessions. Some of the pastors were clearly frustrated and sadly conceded that most of the congregational members don’t have a desire to evangelize, and will not take the time to get the training. Their members simply will not sacrifice the time to go in the community to witness. Many of them fear walking through the crime- ridden neighborhoods their churches are located in and some members have seen crimes occur first hand and know the locations of troubled areas where crime takes place on
regular basis in those community. Some of them have been victimized by lawless people or have seen tragedies occur on an regular basis and really don’t wish to be placed in harm’s way, so they’ve become complacent and choose not to make the effort.
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