I remain committed to evangelistic preaching, not just because of the Great Commission, but also because of its great satisfaction.
—Myron Augsburger
Since day one, the church has used one method to reach out to people more frequently and more successfully than any other.
It’s the way the gospel was brought to Europe by Paul, and the way it spread throughout the West by the Dominican and Franciscan orders, among others. It was central in the life, worship, and outreach of the Reformation. It was the means by which lives were ignited and entire towns transformed in the great awakenings in this country. Today, it remains the one task, more than any other, that most congregations expect of their pastors, because it is the main vehicle for communicating to them and the larger community God’s grace and peace.
I’m talking, of course, about preaching.
A church can and should reach out to the community in a variety of ways, many of which are discussed in this book. But we would be remiss if we overlooked preaching, particularly evangelistic preaching. All preaching seeks to communicate God’s grace and peace, but evangelistic preaching is unique. In that sense, it deserves particular attention.
The objections
In spite of its noble history, some preachers remain hesitant about evangelistic preaching. Many wonder about the place of the evangelistic sermon in a church setting, where the hearers supposedly are already believers. The four objections I encounter most, and my responses, are these:
Evangelistic sermons don’t help believers. Because evangelism is aimed at the unbeliever, and because unbelievers usually constitute only a small minority of a congregation, some preachers reason that the evangelistic sermon is out of place in a worship service. Not quite. In spite of these assumptions, the evangelistic sermon remains necessary also for the believer, for three reasons.
First, it helps believers clarify how they will present the gospel to their friends during the week. When they hear the pastor articulate the evangelistic message, it gives them a model and a message for their own witnessing. Frequently members thank me for a sermon that gave them ways to explain their faith to a friend at work.
Second, the evangelistic sermon gives relatively nonverbal members an opportunity to share the gospel with their friends, without saying a word! Many of our members bring friends to church so they not only can see the gospel at work, but also hear it articulated. Once, members of a Sunday school class invited their unchurched friends to a dinner, and they clarified on the invitation that a pastor would be present to talk about Christ. My presence as a pastor offered a natural way to introduce Christ into the evening.
Third, people who regularly come to church don’t necessarily have a personal relationship with Christ and, thus, need to be evangelized—to hear and respond to the good news.
A number of years ago, Archbishop William Temple formed a commission to study evangelism in England. The commission concluded that the church is a field for evangelism when it ought to be a force for evangelism. It has been estimated by D. Elton Trueblood that two-thirds of the members of American churches know nothing about personal conversion. We may disagree about the numbers, but few pastors will deny the reality.
I once preached at a noonday service in which struggling single parents were being ministered to, both with preaching and with gifts of food and clothing. After the service, as people were filing out, shaking my hand, one woman, well dressed and dignified, said, “Thanks for that message. That was just what they needed.”
I held on to her hand and said, “But don’t we all need it?”
“Well, maybe sometime I’ll be in trouble,” she replied, “and then I’ll need it.”
“Are you married?” I asked. She acknowledged she was. So to make a point, I said, “I guess you needed a man in your life. Is that why you got married?”
She stiffened. “I love my husband. That’s why I married!”
“Well, that’s the way it is with salvation,” I said. “It isn’t a crutch we use because we’re in trouble. We walk with Christ because we love him.”
Those who have never known Christ and those whose relationship has become stale need to hear the good news presented afresh.
Evangelistic sermons are simplistic. Some preachers think their preaching gifts and their congregations demand sermons that challenge the mind. They assume the evangelistic sermon does anything but that, because it aims at people’s most elementary need. They are right about the aim of the sermon, but they couldn’t be more wrong about its intellectual quality.
An evangelistic sermon will clarify the gospel and highlight its uniqueness in the world today. That means, then, the preacher must understand clearly the alternatives to Christ, many of which are worldviews that listeners hold. In addition, the preacher will have to work at speaking fairly about these other views, for listeners will turn off the one who sounds uninformed or biased.
To put it another way, if you’re trying to communicate the gospel in the midst of the modern world, when New Age, existentialist, hedonist, and materialist worldviews compete for people’s loyalties, you can be sure evangelistic preaching will challenge preacher and listener intellectually.
Not that we need to sound academic. In fact, we shouldn’t. But that makes the task even more challenging. Although we must recognize the complexity of worldviews people hold, and the complexity of reasons for holding them, we need to translate Christian theology into the clearest and simplest language.
I was invited to speak at a weeklong, citywide crusade in Salt Lake City in 1963. Early in the week, a spokesman for the Mormon church went on television and said, “Go to this meeting. We need a revival of religion in America. It’ll do you good. But remember, we’ve got all this and more.” I felt my task was to show that they didn’t have all this, let alone more.
On the first night I spoke on Hebrews 1, that passage that highlights the uniqueness of Christ so eloquently. In short, the text and the situation demanded that I speak on christology. But I also needed to communicate the uniqueness of the church’s christology in ways people could understand.
So, I said plainly that Jesus is not a prophet in a series of prophets. In that setting, they knew exactly what I meant. Then I explained that Christians do not say Jesus is like God, as many do when they speak about their prophet, but that God is like Jesus:
“If my son walked in and said, ‘I’m John Myron Augsburger, Myron Augsburger’s son,’ people might say, ‘Well, of course. You’re like your father.’ But if they hadn’t seen me and they met him, they couldn’t say that; they wouldn’t have any comparison to make. But they could say, ‘Ah! So this is what the Myron Augsburger family is like.'”
I concluded by explaining that no other person or prophet is like Jesus, because he is the only one who expresses to us what the Father is like.
Competent evangelistic preaching can be more formidable than giving a lecture in a seminary classroom. Not all evangelistic preaching will be intellectually demanding. But if we want to challenge people to love God with their minds, much of it will be.
Evangelistic preaching is event oriented. Some evangelistic preachers simply aim to bring listeners to the edge of decision and then go for the jugular at the invitation, using any tactic available. Naturally, some church members hesitate to bring friends to hear such a presentation, fearing the tactics used by the evangelist will alienate their loved ones and put a strain on those relationships.
If that’s evangelistic preaching, it’s understandable that many pastors want nothing to do with it. Neither do I. Yet I don’t abandon evangelism in the pulpit.
Instead, I do it differently. When evangelistic preaching becomes merely event oriented, it becomes unlike the rest of the Christian life, which is a long-term proposition. That’s why I take the long view when I preach evangelistically.
When I preach as an evangelist, I recognize that people may have invited friends. Some people present may not know Jesus Christ in a personal way, and some Christians present have ongoing relationships with these unbelievers. My goal is to enhance that relationship by pointing the unbeliever to Jesus, not damage that relationship.
I was scheduled to preach evangelistically in British Columbia last year. The organizers and I agreed to have a session for educators. The idea was to encourage the Christian schoolteacher to invite an unbelieving colleague to a dinner meeting where the Christian message would be presented.
In that setting, then, through preaching and discussion that followed, I aimed to interpret why Christianity makes sense out of life. And when I was through, I wanted the Christian schoolteacher to remain comfortable driving home with the unbelieving colleague he or she invited. So, I tried to present the claims of Christ compellingly but leave people the freedom to think and to reflect about their decision. That means I must trust the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives over time, as he always does.
Evangelistic preaching depends on the preacher. Some preachers quail before the evangelistic sermon. They look at their preaching gifts and the awesomeness of the evangelistic task, and they refuse to do it from the pulpit. There’s too much riding on the sermon, they feel, and they don’t think they’re up to the task.
Well, less rides on the preacher than they think. Naturally, preachers do well to craft their message so that it presents the good news in as compelling a fashion as possible. But we also do well to remember that the effectiveness of evangelistic preaching depends in great part not on us but on the members of the church.
Billy Graham came to Washington, D.C., in 1982 to lead a crusade. Thousands attended, and many became Christians, including a few people connected with our church.
One young woman I baptized as a result told me, “Yes, I came to Christ in the Graham meeting. But that isn’t what brought me to Christ.” She then talked about two Christian men from our church with whom she worked at the fire department. She said that observing their Christian lives had made her approach them and say, “I need what you’ve got.” So they invited her to their Bible study and then to attend the Graham crusade.
Likewise, people come to our church, hear an evangelistic sermon, and become Christians because first they’ve been impressed with the witness and friendship of our members.
Evangelism, then, does not depend primarily on the preacher. Certainly, the sermon plays a vital role in the process. But it is a church effort. No one person has to bear the weight of this joyous but formidable task.
The elements of style
The evangelistic sermon has taken many forms over the centuries. Methodist Bishop Quayle said that preaching is not so much preparing a sermon and delivering it as it is preparing a preacher and delivering him. In spite of the many changes in time and culture, that remains especially true of evangelistic preaching.
Fundamental to our preparation, of course, is immersion in prayer and Scripture. But beyond that, I preach more effective evangelistic sermons when I remember the following things.
Practice vicarious dialogue. Evangelism is not a gimmick. It’s not some smooth technique of persuasion. Too many people think of the evangelist as a smooth salesman who comes in to sign people up. Instead, when I evangelize, I’m not trying to manipulate people’s minds about their deepest needs and questions and sell them the gospel. Rather, I’m simply trying to describe their deepest concerns and show how Jesus addresses them.
I do that by practicing “vicarious dialogue.” As I prepare my sermon, I try to listen to the objections and questions my listeners may have at certain points in my message: “Yes, but what about this?” or “Okay, but so what?” Then I craft my sermon to respond to people’s questions at appropriate points. This forces me to think seriously about the people I’m addressing. It also helps them see that I am not just trying to get them interested in something they don’t care about; I’m responding to their interests.
Don’t put down; lift up Christ. In 1964, I attended a missions conference in western Pakistan where Anglican Bishop Wolmar spoke. It was during the time when many were suggesting we impose a moratorium on foreign missions. Wolmar said, “We will long want missionaries to come to Pakistan, but not the kind who come reaching down to help poor benighted souls. Instead, we want those who will come and stand alongside them, regarding them as sincerely religious, showing them what Jesus offers that they don’t have.”
Unfortunately, some preachers misrepresent others’ views, seeking to rebut them, or they ridicule their opinions. Instead, I try to understand other religions and worldviews, present them fairly and accurately, and lift Jesus higher.
A friend of mine who has a doctorate in Islamic studies, David Shenk, does this well in a book he cowrote with Islamic scholar Badra Katereqqa, Islam and Christianity. David wrote chapters on how the Christian views the Islamic faith; Katereqqa described how the Muslim views the Christian faith. Then they each wrote a response to the other. In the end, they each acknowledged that their disagreement hinged on the Christian idea that God loved us so much that he entered the world in Christ and suffered. For the Muslim that’s impossible; for the Christian, it’s essential. In sum, David didn’t try to condemn Islam; he simply showed the Muslim readers the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.
Use language that connects. I was talking with a man from the inner city of Washington, D.C. When he learned I was a preacher, he demanded in a belligerent tone, “Tell me what difference it makes in my life that Jesus died on a cross two thousand years ago.”
Fond of theology as I am, I was tempted to describe to him the theological meaning of the atonement. Instead, I said, “Do you have some close friends?” When he nodded yes, I continued, “Suppose one of them gets in trouble. What are you going to do with him?”
“Help him out,” he said.
“How long are you going to hang in?”
“Well, he’s your friend. You hang in.”
“But he gets in worse trouble still. When can you cop out?”
A little peeved, he said, “Man, if he’s your friend, you don’t cop out. Even criminals won’t cop out.”
I looked at him and said, “And God came to us as a friend and identified with us in our problem. When can he cop out?”
“You mean Jesus?” he asked.
“Yes. If he’s a friend, when can he say, ‘That’s it. I’ve gone far enough with you’?”
All at once, his eyes lit up, and he said, “You mean that’s why Jesus had to die?”
“That’s one reason. He couldn’t cop out short of death, or else he wasn’t really hanging in with you.”
He stood up and dusted off his pants. Then he grinned at me and walked off down the street, squaring his shoulders as he went. As I watched him walk away, I muttered to him (although he couldn’t hear), “You don’t know it, but you’ve been evangelized.”
There’s more to the atonement than that, of course. But what I did explain of the atonement, I explained in language with which this man could identify. The same sort of thing has to happen for evangelistic preaching to be effective.
The elements of variety
Effective evangelistic preaching also depends on using a variety of elements.
Themes. All evangelistic preaching aims to bring people to a decision to accept Christ. We make a mistake, however, if we assume that all evangelistic preaching must begin and end on the same note. Christ meets needs in a variety of ways: he’s the propitiation for our sins, yes, but he’s also the norm for ethics, the Shepherd of sheep, the Bread of Life, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I preached a series of evangelistic sermons in Kansas and after the first night’s sermon, a woman shook my hand at the door and said, “Thank you for that message. But I didn’t hear anything about the blood tonight.”
I said, “No, that wasn’t my subject.”
“In our church,” she said, “we hear about the blood in every sermon.”
“Well,” I said, “you come back tomorrow night.”
She did, and she heard about the blood. At the door she shook my hand and thanked me, saying how she appreciated hearing about the blood of Christ. I kept holding her hand and said, “Madam, you do yourself and your pastor a disservice. The gospel has so many elements. If you insist he preach every Sunday on the blood of Christ, he will never get to other themes that could enrich your faith.”
Needs. Too many times we fail to recognize that people come to hear us for different reasons. Some people come out of fear of death. Others come out of a sense of emptiness—their lives lack meaning, and they’re bored. Some want their salvation assured. Others’ lives are in shambles, and they need help. And sometimes people are troubled by their addictions, enslaved to chemicals, ambition, or bad relationships. Preaching is better when adjusted to the needs calling to be addressed.
Cultures. Although largely young, white professionals attend our church, we do have a number of minority groups actively involved. A message that works for one subculture, of course, may not work for another. I need to remember the variety of cultures I address. And it doesn’t hurt to get help in doing so.
Sometimes we invite a guest preacher who speaks the language of the black community, or a music group that appeals more to another ethnic subculture. A different part of the neighborhood often turns out for them, one that doesn’t come to hear me.
Settings. I get calls from university campus and community groups to speak or lead in prayer. I often accept these invitations and use them to “preach” evangelistically in a new setting.
I was invited to lead the invocation at a national insurance conference in Washington, D.C. Not all of the conference planners were particularly interested in Christianity, but some were Christians and thought prayer was a good thing to have on the program. So I went to dinner with the group. When they called on me to lead the invocation, I stepped up to the microphone and said, “If I’m going to lead you in prayer, then it’s better if you understand where I’m coming from.”
Succinctly I indicated that I was a committed Christian. I hadn’t come simply as a professional minister who prays for a living, but as one whose walk with Christ is extremely meaningful. I went so far as to invite God to be working in the life of each person at this event. Then I led in prayer.
After the program, a number of people came and thanked me, not for the prayer, but for my introductory comments. I rarely do something along those lines, but in that setting, I felt a touch of evangelism was necessary. Naturally, I don’t want to misuse such situations. But if handled with tact, we can use them effectively to present Christ to others.
The ways of measuring
It irks me when, after an evangelistic sermon, someone asks, “How many did you get down front?” Evangelism’s effectiveness can’t be measured that way. Yet in many churches, the altar call remains the measure of the preacher’s success. And that can lead to many sorts of manipulation.
I was in one evangelistic meeting when the evangelist closed his message by asking, “How many of you want to love the Lord more? Raise your hand.” Of course, we all raised our hands. Then he said, “If you really mean that, stand up.” Naturally, a lot of us stood up. Then he said, “If you really mean that, come down front.” And a lot of people walked to the front and were taken to a counseling room and received prayer. Later they were reported as people who responded to the invitation. Yet as a listener, I felt manipulated.
So, giving an invitation can be used inappropriately. Yet I believe at the right time and place it’s the right thing to do. It is one way in which people can make a public commitment to Christ.
There are few hard-and-fast guidelines as to the right time and place. Different churches, different pastors, and different sermons will demand different responses.
Sometimes it’s far better to let people pray in silence after a sermon, encouraging them to talk to me after the service or during the week. Other times, in planning a public invitation, I make it clear from the beginning where the sermon is heading. Once in a while, I make a judgment in the midst of the service; I didn’t plan it, but by the end of the sermon I sense it is appropriate to invite people to make a public response.
Even though the time and place is flexible, there are two things we try to do to make invitations meaningful for the people coming forward.
First, we prepare the people for the invitation. That means sometimes offering an invitation in nonevangelistic settings. For instance, after a sermon on Christ’s power in our lives, we may invite people to come forward to have an elder pray for them about some area in which they need to experience more of Christ’s power. That not only gives Christians an opportunity to be ministered to, it also makes an invitation after an evangelistic sermon less threatening. Unbelievers who attend our church become aware that in our congregation, it’s natural for people to go forward to pray and to be helped.
Second, in offering an evangelistic invitation, we try to be clear about the level of commitment we are inviting people to make. If we give a narrow invitation just for unbelievers, spotlighting them unduly, we put those people in a tight spot. They may feel awkward about walking to the front of a congregation of committed Christians. That’s an unnecessary social hurdle to expect them to overcome. On the other hand, we don’t want to play games with people and make the invitation so general it applies to anyone who wants to do better in life.
The subject of the sermon, of course, will determine to a large degree what we invite people to do. But we try to be as specific as possible without throwing up needless social barriers.
The fruit of atheists
In 1980, I spent a year at Princeton Theological Seminary as a scholar-in-residence. Esther and I lived in a seminary apartment during our stay. One of my first mornings there, as I stepped into the hall to get my mail, a young woman approached me and asked, “Are you Dr. Augsburger?” I said I was. “Well, my husband and I live upstairs and I wanted to meet you.” Then, just like that, she asked, “Where were you in the summer of 1959?”
I thought a bit and said, “Well, I think I was on an evangelistic mission.”
She asked, “Were you in Arthur, Illinois?”
“Yes, I was,” I said.
“Do you remember the young Mennonite girl who brought one of her atheist high school friends to talk to you?”
“No,” I had to admit, “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, I was that atheist. We talked for an hour and you gave me all the reasons I should be a Christian. But you didn’t push me to make a commitment. When we got up to leave, you turned to me and said, ‘Marilyn, I’m sorry for you, because you’re going to miss out on so much that Jesus intends for you to enjoy.'”
“Well,” she concluded, “I never got away from that.”
She had become a Christian. She had earned a doctorate in philosophy and, with her husband, was a guest teacher that year at Princeton. They’re both on the faculty at the University of California at Santa Barbara. About two years ago, she was ordained in the Episcopal church.
You can see why, then, I remain committed to evangelistic preaching. It’s not just because of the Great Commission. It’s also because of its great satisfaction.
Copyright © 1996 by Christianity Today/Leadership
