When Jerry and Barbara Cook came to the mission congregation in Gresham, Oregon, in 1965, they found six or seven families meeting in a building leased for $1 a year-“and that was a rip-off,” he says. The Cooks did not sweep in with energetic plans for outreach and growth, however. “I’d been around the church all my life,” Jerry says, “and I came to Gresham to get away from the politics and ladder-climbing. All I wanted to do was invest my life in a small group of people and work out the Christian faith in a not-too-obvious corner.”
Then what is he doing pastoring a church today that numbers 3,000-after spinning off six daughter congregations with as many as 300 members at a time? “I think God double-crossed me,” he says with a grin. “He told me to do one thing in the ministry and got me into something else.”
That something else has been explained in several books, most notably Love, Acceptance & Forgiveness (Regal, 1979), which describes how this Foursquare congregation learned to reach out to the greater Portland area. LEADERSHIP Senior Editor Dean Merrill went to Gresham to discuss evangelism and the local church.
Here are two stark figures from the World Christian Encyclopedia on conversions 1970-1980: the United States-with all its evangelism programs, training seminars, books, crusades, and media ministries-showed a net loss (-595,900), while over the same decade, the Soviet Union saw a net gain of 164,182. What are we doing wrong?
Well . . . perhaps we don’t have a big enough definition of evangelism. When I say “evangelism,” I mean not only verbal proclamation but visual proclamation as well: the whole disclosure of God in the world. That’s a function of the church-to continue the incarnational principle Christ started.
He gave us his Spirit so disclosure would go on. That’s why I’m never comfortable with evangelism being a specialty in the church-a department. Our whole essence is to disclose God, so he can confront people.
Part of our problem is this: we’re trying to do the confronting. We’re trying to convert people. Conversion chases after a person’s beliefs, lifestyle, and relationships saying, “We have the answer.” Then we must inform the person what the question is that he should be asking. The whole process is artificial.
Apparently the church in Soviet Russia isn’t doing this. Certainly the church in mainland China isn’t, and yet it’s growing beyond all imagination despite restrictions. They’re simply disclosing God’s life in the midst of death.
Is there a difference, then, between evangelism and seeking conversions?
I see a tremendous distinction. They may have started out to be similar, but today they are far apart.
Many Christians tend to feel guilty if, while talking to someone who’s apparently not a Christian, they don’t confront the person in some way to convert him. What happens is that everybody winds up feeling uncomfortable. No one likes to be related to convertively. So churches teach sales techniques to hide the convertive element, but they don’t succeed.
I don’t see Christ coming primarily to convert us. He came to establish a relationship of love, of care, of concern. Yes, he was confrontational at times about certain theological and ethical issues, but not particularly convertive. He wasn’t thrown into deep depression when, at one point in his ministry, people found his words to be quite tough and decided to walk away. Jesus didn’t have to go to the mountains for R&R after that. All he had on his agenda was to show us who God is and what he is like. And he did a very good job of it.
Would you say evangelism sometimes fails because we try too hard?
We try too hard to do the wrong things. No matter how much effort or ingenuity you put into the wrong mode, you still fail. I can be tremendously energetic about trying to drive my car across the Columbia River, but the fact of the matter is that cars don’t float very well. If I’m smart, I’ll use the bridge. In our endeavor to convert people to our view of Christianity (not even the Christian faith, but our view of it), we’ve lost touch with the person.
Why do you think lay people choke up at the mention of evangelism or witnessing?
Because they know intuitively how they’d respond if approached in the usual way. Laymen are not stupid. They know some of our approaches are unnatural, an insult on dignity. In fact, many of them are successful at sales in the commercial world because they’ve already mastered many of the techniques we’re pitching.
You don’t sell the gospel! It’s not for sale. It’s a lifestyle of walking with. Christ, living out the life he sponsors inside us. That has to be seen.
If it could have been formulated, then Christ would not have had to come.
Is this what you meant earlier by “visual proclamation”?
Yes-living out an obvious quality of life day after day. In a recent interview, Os Guinness said one of our great problems today is “privatization,” by which he meant dichotomizing our lives into sacred and secular. Tournier makes the point that we must see all of life as sacred. That’s what I mean by visual proclamation-simply being Christian, thinking Christianly. Not “being a Christian,” but being Christian.
In The Presence of the Kingdom, Jacques Ellul talks about how the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God can never coincide, but they do touch. That’s where the Christian must stand: right where Satan’s domain meets God’s. That’s the place to define our Christianness.
That’s where the Christians in the Eastern bloc stand-right at the rub. Sometimes that posture releases them from prison, sometimes it takes them to prison. But it always transcends the present order.
This is the vitality of evangelism: the world sees the kingdom in effect. They don’t just hear about a conversion experience. They see God disclosed in the life of the believers.
How do you guide the average person at East Hill Church to understand what he or she is supposed to do? You’re obviously against buttonholing-what then?
Do you know what? I’m not the least concerned about what they do. I am deeply concerned that they know who they are-children of God-in every situation. I want them authentically related to the God of the Bible-not a god who judges them on performance. (It’s tremendously frustrating to try to relate to a god who doesn’t exist, especially when your pastor keeps saying, “Well, just pray and serve and read the Bible more.”)
If our people here are in touch with the God who’s not embarrassed with weakness or intimidated by failure, they can live in freedom. God’s people must be defined in terms of being, not doing.
Then where is the payoff? How do non-Christians enter the kingdom?
They are drawn to a relationship. That’s why “sinners” were drawn to Jesus. He never attacked them. He simply said, “You can be forgiven.”
We in the church have gotten it backwards: our posture has been to preach guilt to the sinner and love to the self-righteous. Well, making a person feel guilty does not result in very much intimacy. Jesus knew that. So he never attacked the sinner. He simply said, “I forgive you.” Meanwhile, he attacked the self-righteous with a vengeance, because he knew that until they felt guilty, they couldn’t be forgiven.
Until we come to grips with this, we will always be putting off the non-Christian and patronizing the Christian.
You were raised in a minister’s home. How did you come to feel so comfortable with non-Christians?
Actually, I’ve come to the place that I don’t think categorically anymore. I don’t even like the categories of “sinner” and “Christian.” Some of the greatest sinners I’ve met have been in the Christian community, standing in great need of repair, grace, forgiveness.
Now that is not to say I don’t believe in a person accepting forgiveness from Christ and coming into a redeemed, reconciled position. I deeply believe that. But what I must extend to others is the noncategorical relationship I’ve received from God. I’m really glad that when I get to heaven, God won’t look at me and say, “Well, Jerry, it’s good that you’re here and all that, but I just don’t care for your type. You’re going to live over in the far end of heaven because you’re just not my kind of guy.” I was so much his kind of guy that he died for me.
I don’t relate to unbelievers in order to get them to be believers. I just relate to people and love them. The thing that intrigues me about Jesus was that he was so comfortable with “sinners”- and they were so comfortable with him. That’s the greater point to make. How many Christians do non-Christians care to be around?
There’s a whole class of jokes about non-Christians’ discomfort with preachers, isn’t there?
Yes, and the tragedy is that most of them aren’t jokes. They’re really true. But people were so comfortable with Jesus they wanted him at their parties. If Christians get invited to a party today, they take it as an insult to their witness.
I don’t think Jesus ever violated his personal standards. But he was comfortable at the parties and said these were the folks he came to be with. If he displayed any uncomfortableness, it was with the religious types.
You must have had people in the congregation over the years who’ve found this idea hard to swallow.
Oh, yes-people who grew up thinking that to be separate from the world meant being separate from unbelieving people, rather than from the world system. Legalism is deeply ingrained in all of us.
How have you been able to effect change?
I don’t know a methodology. I just love people and try to establish a loving community. Very often when people come into our fellowship, the first reaction we notice is, of all things, weeping. Men or women-it doesn’t matter. Just two weeks ago a lady in her sixties finally came up to talk to me after I’d watched her about five Sundays. She’d sit four or five rows from the front, and as soon as we’d start the service, out would come the handkerchief. She wasn’t out of control or anything-just quietly weeping. And I thought we were a rather joyful group!
I said to her, “I’ve been wanting to meet you. Why have you been crying so much?”
She looked at me and said, “I’ve never felt so important in my whole life, and I want to talk to you about giving my life to Christ.”
I said, “Why talk to me? Why not talk to Jesus about it? He’ll be glad to give you any information you want.”
“You mean right here?”
“Just try it!”
She began her walk with Christ right there.
Here’s another example of dealing with “separation.” Some people in the church wanted us to start a group for ex-gays. We could have a better ministry to this category, they said, if we formed a group for them.
Something bothered me about that, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. The longer I talked with the people, though, the more I began to realize the problem: they wanted the group for their own protection. This would allow them to identify who in the congregation had that particular sin history so then they could insulate themselves and especially their children, just in case.
We explored this together, and they saw my point. They said, “You know, we need to talk about this on Sunday morning.”
So one Sunday I stood up and said, “Next week we want to have a great convention. I’d like for you all to identify yourselves by the most prominent sin of your past and then get together, make signs, and so forth. Put your signs up on poles like at a political convention; we’ll have the ex-gays over here, and the ex-gossips here, and the ex-gluttons here, the ex-liars, the ex-rapists, the ex-child abusers . . .” Well, it got to be ridiculous, and people realized the point: We are not ex-anything. We are becoming new persons in Christ. We have the incredible privilege of loving others in Christ’s name, regardless of the present, past, or even future. As he said about one woman, “Her many sins have been forgiven-for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
To some groups of Christians, the word evangelism means mainly talking. To others, it connotes modeling. So far you’ve spoken more about the second than the first.
Again, I’m not interested in categories. I am interested in authentically relating to God, in being truly Christian.
Do people at East Hill say “Come to church with me” very often?
All the time-but not as a set-up. They do it simply because they love to be in church and want their friends to enjoy the experience. If I relate to you as a Christian man, you’ll come to know me in all areas-including the places I like to go. And I’ll want to share those with you, since you’re my friend.
But if I try to hook you to church so the pro can work on you to get you converted, or so I can win a prize for bringing you-well, even fish don’t appreciate hooks, let alone people.
Do you preach evangelistically? Do you ever say, “You must be born again”?
I can’t conceive of my ever leaving that out. It’s a constant theme: that we are loved by God and can respond to that love.
Now if you’re asking whether I give altar calls, the answer is sometimes, but not very often. Maybe it’s just a matter of style, but I don’t see why a person should have to wait that long to commit his life to Christ if he wants to. At the front end of our services, right after an opening chorus, I say something like “During the morning, you will very likely be confronted with Christ as a living person. You’ll see evidence of his life around you, and you may desire to begin your relationship with Christ in a meaningful way. As soon as you sense that, just simply say to the Lord, ‘I want to begin my life with you. I want to respond to your love.’ That’s the process all the rest of us are in as well: responding to God as best we can all the time.”
Why wait for an hour and a half? Why not let people go ahead? Forgiveness is available. Let’s get on with it. The whole meeting is an altar call, I suppose. It’s a place where the people of God meet with God, and since it’s primarily designed for believers, why not let unbelievers become believers right away?
How does that person know the essential facts of salvation in order to make an intelligent decision?
The only essential fact is knowing you have a need for God. If you’re aware of that, God is capable of responding to you.
After that, yes-you need someone to share your experience and respond to your questions. That is normally the friend with whom you came to church in the first place, who’s probably beside you. If not, there are other options. At the end of the service, when people are standing with hands joined, I will often say, “If you have begun your walk with Christ this morning or made a significant response to God in some way, there are three things you can do. Number one, the pastors of the church will be here at the front; come down and talk to us. Or, number two, you can call us during the week. Or, number three, you can make contact with someone you know to be a Christian. If you’ve made a basic response to Christ this morning, just tighten your grip on the hand next to you. That person won’t jump on your back or jam a Bible down your neck; he or she will simply say, ‘I’m really glad for you, and if I can help, here’s my name and phone number.’ “
We average from fifty to a hundred decisions like that every week. But that’s not why we have public services. Those people are simply in the atmosphere and respond. Beyond that, we don’t do much in a formal way. The Holy Spirit is incredibly capable.
Is evangelism a gift? And if so, how do you respond to people who say, “I’m really sorry, pastor, but I don’t have that gift”?
I’d say, “Excuse me . . . I don’t think I understand that statement.” That’s like saying, “I don’t have the gift of breathing.” What Ephesians 4 is talking about, in my view, is that Christ has given to the church certain persons-apostles, prophets, evangelists, and so forth-to equip the saints to do the work of ministry, which includes evangelism. The text never says there’s a “gift of evangelism.”
The evangelist equips us all to keep evangelism in good focus. The prophet equips us with insight. All facets of the body’s life must be emphasized in order for us to be whole.
Do you have some evangelists at East Hill Church?
Yes. Loran Wright, for example. He’s a very soft-spoken man, single-and responsible for leading literally dozens of our people in expressing the life of Christ in downtown Portland. I’m not talking about passing out tracts; I’m talking about establishing friendships with people in some very seamy lifestyles. Every week Loran and that group show up at church with one or more persons they have touched.
It seems like there are always four or five desperate people living in his home. I’ve said, “Loran, sometimes I worry about your safety,” and he just brushes me off with “Aw, they’re OK-no problem!” One of them just recently had to turn himself in for a Class A felony after coming to know and love Christ.
There are other evangelists in the church who aren’t in street ministry at all, but they challenge and guide us into different areas.
I’m not saying the person who stands up and preaches a crusade isn’t an evangelist; he certainly is. But within the local body, there are incredible evangelists who are just as much a gift to us as I am a gift of pastoral teaching.
What happens when evangelism becomes too institutionalized or organized?
What happens when my friendship with you gets too organized or charted out? We begin orbiting away from each other. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it.
If I knock on your door and give you my pitch, you may say thank you, but you’re really glad I don’t live next door to you.
Did you try some of that in the early days?
Oh, yes-and I was so scared. I was also guilt-ridden, because I was the pastor. We had organized a weeknight door-to-door calling program, and our little group (virtually all the adults in the church) made it through the first night on sheer adrenalin. I mean, we were fired up.
We made it through the second night on commitment.
The third night, we didn’t like it anymore. I remember covering about three or four houses and then running into a great big guy. “Whaddya want?” he said through the screen door.
I started my little appeal, and pretty soon he thundered, “YA KNOW WHAT? I DON’T LIKE YOU, AND I DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”
I stood there for a minute and then said, “You know . . . neither do I. I really like Jesus, and I’d like to tell you about him, but you can’t hear me, can you?”
“No, I sure can’t,” he said, and slammed the door.
We all gathered back at the church, and I told the people what had happened. “Now, folks,” I said, “I didn’t like me on that porch. What I want to know is this: Am I just having a problem with fear, or are some of you in the same boat?” We went around the room, and they said, “We don’t think this is the way to do the job.”
I went home and told Barbara, “I won’t do that again.” It wasn’t because the man was big or mean; he was just being honest.
So door-to-door is an inappropriate technique?
For some people, yes-but not for others. Some people can walk onto a porch and release the life of Christ right into a person-it’s phenomenal. We have a few of those here, and they’re terrific. We try to light a fire under them and turn them loose.
A lot of people have been brought to Christ because somebody knocked on their door. Hallelujah! But that approach is not obligatory.
If you’re going door-to-door, be prepared to do more than knock. Be prepared to enter a life, to establish a relationship.
After that ugly night, our group began to pray, “Lord, show us how the life of Christ can be communicated through us in a way that helps people. We don’t mean it has to be comfortable or nonconfrontive, but we do want to be heard.”
From that time on, we began to learn more and more about disclosing God in our everyday lives, not judging people but loving them.
You ended Love, Acceptance & Forgiveness with what you called “a comma instead of a period.” What have you learned about evangelism since then?
Christians have asked me, “How can I love a person without conveying to them that what they’re doing is OK?” I’ve begun answering with these three things:
Love is not license.
Acceptance is not agreement.
Forgiveness is not compromise.
I remember the first homosexual I ever talked to at length. I realized two things: (1) I really cared for him, and (2) I was deeply committed to the fact that his lifestyle would utterly destroy him. Now-how to convey both those facts?
I said to him at one point, “I am really committed to you as a person. I love you, and in so doing I am committed to confronting your lifestyle and helping you see how destructive it is. You may never agree with me as long as we know each other, but this will always be my posture with you.”
Did that shut down the relationship right there?
I didn’t see him again for a year. Then he showed up in church one morning. I caught his eye, and when we got together at the end of the service, I said, “Where have you been? You ran.”
He said, “I did. You scared me. You were the first person who ever distinguished between who I was and what I was doing.” He had, in fact, gone to another city, where he met a small group of Christians. He made a commitment to Christ there and was extricating himself from the gay lifestyle.
He stayed in our congregation for a number of years, got married, and fathered a son. They’re now in a church we started near here.
My goal was not to get him to drop a gay lifestyle. My goal was to really accept him and communicate Christ’s love to him. But that didn’t mean agreeing with him.
A young man who was part of our college group for three or four years and had never had any obvious problems suddenly found himself facing serious charges in court. He was sent to the state psychiatric hospital for two years. What should we do?
Well, a group of our college people held onto him. They stayed in regular touch, writing to him, driving 40 miles to visit him. Often he called during their meetings to talk with them. I remember when he got his first pass and showed up in person. They embraced him. His psychiatrist says he’s never seen a patient respond to treatment so remarkably, and the reason is the outside support he’s receiving.
This isn’t compromise, but it’s forgiveness. It’s saying, “We’ll walk with you through the process of change, because that’s the process we’re in, too.” Evangelism is in the embrace, not just the formula.
What’s the most important thing you can say to local church leaders about evangelism?
Focus on the people you have, not the ones you hope to get. Whenever we try to build big churches, we get in trouble. When we invest ourselves in building big people, we make progress.
If you have only ten people . . . define and illustrate Christianness to them. Go for it. (If you have a thousand or two thousand, it’s a frustration.) Your purpose is to build the people who are in the world every day. Turn them on, and turn them loose.
Evangelism is an effect. When we try to organize an effect, we get confused. You can’t organize a serendipity. Our job is not so much to evangelize as to “Immanuelize”-to disclose God with us in the midst of our lives, our conversations, our worship. That’s when evangelism happens.
Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
