An Anglican bishop supports mass evangelism as a legitimate and necessary approach to mankind
To speak on a subject which can never be mastered, and about which one is always trying to learn, is difficult. While those in professions like medicine, engineering, and law are given long training in the theoretical and practical nature of their jobs, ministers of the Christian Church launch upon the most important work in all the world—evangelism—with but a shadow of preparation. And the members of that Church have even less. At best, with little help, a few spend their lives trying to learn how to do this work, while the majority persuade themselves it is the exclusive work of the few. Most never learn. Neither do they bend their spiritual, intellectual, social, and artistic knowledge to the task. Even ministers blunder along as best they can and all too often die amateurs.
No training can do for a minister what experience and a spiritual life can do. But he, and every Christian, can be helped to begin on the right lines some form of evangelism within a group. The present evangelistic poverty of the Church causes many to look back to the rich traditions of the past for inspiration and guidance. But if we do this, we must emerge with the principles, not necessarily the methods, of former days. We must not attempt our service for God and man as if we lived in a pre-television, pre-radio, pre-electronics era.
The future of your nation, and mine, depends on evangelism, and evangelism depends on skilled, trained, and equipped groups within their churches who, strong in Christ and confident of the Good News they proclaim, look on their task without misgivings in a world in which truth has disappeared. Many of the godliest men and women, many of the most effective evangelists, have been outside the stream of the ordained ministry.
I personally acknowledge my deep indebtedness to a laywoman who prayed me into the Kingdom—my mother—and to godly laymen who have encouraged me in the things of God. No Christian is outside our Lord’s last command; all carry this obligation. Much of the future of evangelism depends upon lay men and women. But we must also hope for a skilled clergy, specialized in certain aspects, who not only can offer their experience for group evangelism but also can train others.
Evangelism is the normal work of the Church and exists for the conversion of sinners. But this does not detract from the need for specialists and methods and the need to make special efforts from time to time.
Evangelism is not the conversion of every person. One could say a city was evangelized when everyone in that city had been faced with the challenge of Christ and made aware of his invitation. The old Roman principles of teaching—to win people’s interest, to impart information, and to incite to action—might well be serviceable to our methods and techniques in evangelism. Group evangelism is a special effort to convert people to God. It is a concentration of spiritual effort upon one place for a brief period.
The method by which God has educated our race and guided its moral and spiritual welfare has been special missions. The mission of the prophets, the dispatch of Moses to deliver and restore a race of slaves, the challenge of Elijah, the warnings of Jonah, the voice of John the Baptist, the going out of apostles to conquer the world for Christ—each emphasized a different phase of the prophetic message, but all made the claim of God absolute upon each person.
The first purpose of evangelism is to seek and save those who are lost. We must proclaim, in new tones, the twofold vision of the love of God and the loss of God, of eternal life and eternal separation. We must win from the individual that decision on which his salvation now depends. There is no room for shallow universalism, for some vague belief in heaven and hell. Such a belief is a product, not of love, but of the self-indulgent morality of our times and of the invasion of hedonism into the affluent society of the West.
No such religious trivialities will invoke the blessing of God. Modern prophets have been described as “mild-mannered men standing before a mild-mannered congregation, asking them to be more mild.” “Wherefore,” said St. Paul to the Ephesian elders, “I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:26, 27).
The faithful will always need to be spiritually stimulated, to “come alive,” as the Psalmist so often prays. The Christian needs times of renewal to save him from the peril of lukewarmness. A special mission provides opportunities for sacrifice, for working for others, for confessing Christ; all these experiences rescue him from spiritual selfishness and nerve the life with that touch of pain and concern without which there is no progress.
There is such movement in the world today that by the time the local church catches up with a situation it no longer exists! There is the movement among youth toward delinquency and crime, in society toward immorality and divorce, in organized religion toward liberalism or ritualism. And the Church should be in movement, too, moving society towards Christ, putting thought above the conflict, putting conversion by Christ above all other plans for improvement.
On the grave of a missionary, it is written:
“When he came, there was no light.
When he died, there was no darkness.”
What is group evangelism? It is evangelism other than personal, one-win-one evangelism. The latter is basic evangelism. Group evangelism is a special effort to convert men and women to God, a concentration of spiritual effort in one place for a brief time.
To the Jews I was a Jew.… To those under the Law I put myself … under the Law.… To the weak I became a weak man.… I have … been all things to all sorts of men … that I might win some to God (1 Cor. 9:20–23, Phillips).
Today there are two types of group, or mass, evangelism: the direct method and the indirect method. The preaching (direct) method includes every variety of group evangelism in which a person meets people face-to-face, whether in a specialized way or in the traditional environment of the Church. In the mediated (indirect) method, the message is communicated through the printed page, radio, TV, film, or other mechanical media.
1. The Direct Method. There is much in the present condition of Western society that closely parallels Old Testament times. And each generation of prophets must find the prophetic approach as chosen men and women who are sent to the task for which they are gifted. Some will have the touch of a Jeremiah, who with yearning love tries to woo people back to God. Others, with the double approach of an Isaiah, will reveal God as unapproachably holy but full of forgiving love. Another will be like John the Baptist; piercing the conscience like steel, he will stress the need to repent because of certain judgment. Someone else, overwhelmed by a personal experience of the love of God, will seek to win men as did Hosea of old. The expression of the message will differ with different temperaments. It is the prophet’s experience of God that is of primary importance. He must make the ways of God essential, and a reality. He must bring religious phraseology into the language of ordinary non-theological men and women. This will mark the difference between that bigger body of men and women who are truly disciples and that infinitely smaller group who have the prophetic voice that can speak to people in terms they understand.
The other great problem in communicating the message, more apparent in the person-to-person method than in any other, is the problem of contact. Yet this is not only our problem but our peculiar obligation. Conversion is God’s work alone; our work is to contact the unconverted. For this we shall need all the consecrated imagination of which we are capable. The environment and the character of the people with whom we want to make contact will largely determine the methods we use. Climate, culture, and economics will also be variables in the formula for success. Many methods would be meaningless or impractical in certain areas. The basic facts of the Gospel—that Christ died for our sins, rose for our justification, lives as our intercessor—have universal appeal.
The person-to-person or direct method will not vary in message. But the methods used to make contact are influenced by climate, culture, and character of the audience. Safeguarded by Scripture—“for the Jews ask for miraculous proofs and the Greeks an intellectual panacea, but all we preach is Christ crucified … Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:22–24, Phillips)—we must vary techniques or methods in order to reach the unsaved.
In the New Testament, open-air evangelism would seem to have been the ready “harvest field.” In some countries the outdoors may still be the natural place for group evangelism. But in the West, this setting seems to have lost all effectiveness and drawing power, unless it occurs in a place where the crowd is readymade. At the time when John Wesley and George Whitefield addressed thousands in the open air, it was a novelty for a gentleman to appear in such a situation; the results, moreover, indicate that these men were spiritually dynamic. Since then, churches that have followed this good example by treating the open-air service as a training ground for would-be preachers and amateurs have been most unwise. Passers-by may have thought they were observing a sample of the church’s normal performance—and reacted accordingly.
Whether the sending of the “Seventy” by our Lord “to every city and place where he himself would come” (Luke 10:1) included house-to-house visitation, we do not know. We do know, however, that the visitation method has been used most successfully in North America in recent years, and also in Britain, although with less success. The method is by no means new, however. Under the Parish System of the Church of England, generations of clergy have documented each home in their parish with information on every family, its work and interests. Pastoral concern was basically the purpose of this house-to-house visitation.
Since 1835, the London City Mission has made a feature of financing full-time lay missionaries. Men specially trained for this work spend their time in allocated areas in working-class districts, going from home to home. A daily journal is kept that records their visits, details of all contacts, and the results of each. A copy of this record is always at headquarters.
The skill commercial firms require of their salesmen should be an example to us whose task is to commend the most valuable treasure this earth affords. Churches in the West have organized men and women into teams of two to visit thousands of homes. Trained to engage in conversation those courteous enough to give them a hearing, these teams make the transition to spiritual things comfortably, if not easily.
Team evangelism can be carried into factories and business houses, to cinemas—wherever there are stationary groups of people to be evangelized, and wherever opportunity permits.
2. The Indirect Method. Let us first consider film evangelism. Apart from the Lutheran church, the great Protestant denominations do relatively little in this important area of visual aids. The work has been left largely to individuals and independent organizations, who have had to bear the burden with little or no support from the churches. With this method perhaps more than any other, the object of the exercise must be kept constantly in view. We so often design an occasion that is supposed to reach the unconverted but that in fact is arranged to suit the Christian. In film evangelism, we are trying to create a situation that reaches the unconverted, a situation where the nonchurch-goer will find it easy to cross over to our ground, or at least to familiar ground. While this method has been fully exploited in sophisticated communities, its usefulness is not exhausted.
There are two types of films to consider. First is the religious film, which if produced for evangelism, should be able to do the whole work—convey the message and produce a verdict. The human “agent” is still required, to provide counseling or any other help for the persons responding to the appeal of the film message. It is increasingly difficult for the obviously religious film to attract an audience of unconverted people unless they are brought by converted friends.
The alternative to the religious film is the selective professional (secular) film. A film with a good story and an obvious moral can “lift” the viewer several stages in his mental attitude toward life; after the film an evangelist can begin immediately at that level to apply the Gospel. The right secular film, in the right setting, can still be an effective incentive to the “outsider” to attend. The evangelist can generally be relied upon to remember that he is a “fisher of men”; he needs imagination and enterprise in the choice of his “bait,” however. All too often we blame the “fish,” when results do not come. To change the metaphor, it is possible for a businessman to be sincere, honest, faithful, and yet bankrupt. We tend to turn all our evangelistic efforts into just another religious service that is geared to the converted, who quite properly want to sing hymns and open and close the meeting with prayer. It could be said of one or another leader that he was “a man in whom men could find no fault, but in whom God could find no fruit.” Our failure to reach the lost is not so much a lack of love as a lack of imagination and of desperation to reach the unchurched at all costs. “I have been all things to all sorts of men,” said Paul, “that by every possible means I might win some to God” (1 Cor. 9:22b, Phillips).
The potential in Newspaper evangelism, especially in areas where no other mass means of communication are available, should challenge all thinking Christians. If a group of Christians sponsored a regular column in a national newspaper, they would reach millions of readers and embark on a spiritual adventure that might well discover new areas of prayer support and release new blessing in the churches or participating groups. The larger the space taken, the better. In England, for example, §2,000 would buy a whole page in a newspaper that has 3.5 million readers.
The Christian Church has exploited meetings, clubs, and organizations of every shape and form. It has turned the pen and the press to brilliant account. It has utilized the Magic Lantern, and to some extent the cinema. In this generation, Christians have the challenge to buy up the opportunities presented by radio and television. We are faced with one of the greatest problems of all time, namely, the “population explosion.” Between 1900 and 1962 the world population doubled; between 1962 and 1980 (i.e., eighteen years) it is expected to double again. Surely this phenomenon has not caught God unawares, and he has allowed it to coincide with the two electronic miracles of broadcasting. How else will we perform the task of causing everyone to hear (and/or see) and believe? I regard the following words of our Lord as the greatest comfort and challenge: “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life …” (John 5:24). How can we expect people to hear unless we use the media to which they listen? According to certain experts in this field of broadcasting, “both place and space” may be running out for any new Christian broadcasting project.
What overseas missionary broadcasting there is, we owe almost entirely to North American Christian enterprise. Undoubtedly St. Paul would have made magnificent use of the microphone and of the television camera, for both vehicles convey the passion and message of the user to both sinner and saint in an all-penetrating medium that knows no barrier.
Radio today is not the radio of the early thirties, for when television came, radio lost its place as the only means of home entertainment. The radio set or loudspeaker is no longer the center piece in the living room. But though radio has vacated the family room, it has taken up new and important positions in the kitchen, the bedroom, the car, the factory, the barber shop, the outdoors, and even the pocket. The transistor radio has revolutionized radio broadcasting and has become woven into the daily fabric of our lives. More radio sets are being sold today than ever before, in both developed and underdeveloped areas of the world. In countries enjoying a high standard of living, there are approximately two radios in each home, with 96 per cent of the population listening to radio some time during the day. Radio has developed a vast audience, the largest congregation ever mustered.
In less affluent areas where few own radio receivers, a unique opportunity exists for Christians to provide these “mechanical missionaries.”
In a certain area of the United States, a Protestairt group sponsored a radio test campaign. For nine weeks it used 110 thirty-second radio “spots” each week over three stations. The objective of the “spots” was to promote the basic truth that “when a man accepts Christ as sin-forgiver and leader, he gets a whole new outlook on life.” Effectiveness of the broadcast was to be measured among men between eighteen and forty years of age. Interviews took place prior to the test, and 43 per cent of those interviewed were unaware of the basic Christian truth the radio messages were to promote. After the trial period of nine weeks, it was found that 32.9 per cent, that is, approximately one out of every three, had some form of recall of the “Gospel Spots.” The progress was from continued unawareness among some listeners, to awareness among others, to understanding, and on to action by a rewarding number.
For best results, radio ministry must be coupled with literature follow-up. But where literature is not possible, radio must “go it alone.” While we may not build mature Christians, at least we shall bring men and women into communion with Him who is the Light and Hope of the world, the source of eternal life.
Television is becoming available in more and more countries. Dr. Billy Graham has said, “Experience has shown that more people will respond to the gospel message on television than to any other means of communication.” Although television has been with us for nearly thirty years, for most Christians it would be a strange new medium in which to work, since there are few Christians experienced in TV to guide or help. It would seem better to use films with a message rather than not have a Christian program on TV at all, or rather than use a preacher who does not “come over” well on a TV screen or who lacks the conversational style essential to this intimate instrument that brings the speaker right into the living room.
There are many books on “know-how,” and in some cities there are training schools, where at least the basic “do’s and don’ts” can be learned and scriptwriters discovered and encouraged. Generally speaking, religion has been badly represented on television and a religious program gets poor ratings.
But the rewards are worth any expense and trouble, in a medium that does more than any other means of communication to shape the social and moral life of the people. Television is the greatest single influence on the minds and lives of people today, far exceeding the power of radio, film, and press. The aim in religious telecasting should be to give the viewer what you want him to have of your faith but packaged as he likes it.
Regrettably, some countries do not allow time to be purchased on television; this fact is a grievous handicap to the cause of Christ. It might be debated whether any revival of true religion has ever come without the use of modern means of communication. Certainly we cannot think of the Great Reformation without the use of the printing press. And the first use given to this invention was the printing of the Bible. When a man had a Bible of his own, he was a modern.
We now live in a mechanized and electronic environment that in large measure exerts a materialistic influence on people. Unless churches realize this fact, and approach communication of the Gospel with new energy and action, the decay of the Church will increase. Television has become the modern market place, where news and views are communicated with terrifying speed and cleverness. Every major denomination should have its own broadcasting house and film studio.
Whatever the method of outreach, evangelism should involve the individual in both aspects of conversion, personal acceptance of Christ and open confession. Right from the beginning the intellect has been involved, and man has had to make a mental assent. “Whom do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27) was addressed to a group, but the response to the question was individual. Said Peter, “Thou art the Christ.” Much harm is done by those who shirk the stern duty of winning others through conviction and confession. And this failure often robs a person for life of the opportunity of a thorough conversion.
Anyone who is content to say “peace, peace” when there is no peace, and who fails to emphasize the urgency of a decision for Christ now, is but a spiritual “quack.” No one can love more truly or more deeply than our blessed Lord, and it was he who unveiled the terrible consequences of unrepented sin in a final judgment. The refusal to echo his teaching generally springs from some sin or weakness in the evangelist—love of popularity, for example, or failure to realize the extreme holiness of God.
So often we lack the courage to press home conviction and thus miss the first step in a true conversion. This point in evangelistic work is most delicate, and not even our Lord attempts to “force the door” to any man’s soul. But we must, nevertheless, move on from preaching to dealing personally with individuals.
